Part II — Dialectic of Teleological Judgment
Original German
Zweite Abtheilung. A 311 385 Dialektik der teleologischen Urtheilskraft.
69 Was eine Antinomie der Urtheilskraft sei.
Die bestimmende Urtheilskraft hat für sich keine Principien, welche Begriffe von Objecten gründen. Sie ist keine Autonomie; denn sie subsumirt nur unter gegebenen Gesetzen, oder Begriffen, als Principien. Eben darum ist sie auch keiner Gefahr ihrer eigenen Antinomie und keinem Widerstreit ihrer Principien ausgesetzt. So war die transscendentale Urtheilskraft, welche die Bedingungen unter Kategorieen zu subsumiren enthielt, für sich nicht nomothetisch; sondern nannte nur die Bedingungen der sinnlichen Anschauung, unter welchen einem gegebenen Begriffe, als Gesetze des Verstandes, Realität (Anwendung) gegeben werden kann: worüber sie niemals mit sich selbst in Uneinigkeit (wenigstens den Principien nach) gerathen konnte.
Allein die reflectirende Urtheilskraft soll unter einem Gesetze subsumiren, A 312 welches noch nicht gegeben und also in der That nur ein Princip der Reflexion über Gegenstände ist, für die es uns objectiv gänzlich an einem Gesetze mangelt, oder an einem Begriffe vom Object, der zum Princip für vorkommende Fälle hinreichend wäre. Da nun kein Gebrauch der Erkenntnißvermögen ohne Principien verstattet werden darf, so wird die reflectirende Urtheilskraft in solchen Fällen ihr selbst zum Princip dienen müssen: welches, weil es nicht objectiv ist und keinen für die Absicht hinreichenden Erkenntnißgrund des Objects unterlegen kann, als bloß subjectives Princip zum zweckmäßigen Gebrauche der Erkenntnißvermögen, nämlich über eine Art Gegenstände zu reflectiren, dienen soll. Also hat in Beziehung auf solche Fälle die reflectirende Urtheilskraft ihre Maximen und zwar nothwendige zum Behuf der Erkenntniß der Naturgesetze 386 in der Erfahrung, um vermittelst derselben zu Begriffen zu gelangen, sollten diese auch Vernunftbegriffe sein; wenn sie solcher durchaus bedarf, um die Natur nach ihren empirischen Gesetzen bloß kennen zu lernen. — Zwischen diesen nothwendigen Maximen der reflectirenden Urtheilskraft kann nun ein Widerstreit, mithin eine Antinomie Statt finden, worauf sich eine Dialektik gründet, die, wenn jede von zwei einander widerstreitenden Maximen in der Natur der Erkenntnißvermögen ihren Grund hat, eine natürliche Dialektik genannt werden kann und ein A 313 unvermeidlicher Schein, den man in der Kritik entblößen und auflösen muß, damit er nicht betrüge.
70 Vorstellung dieser Antinomie.
So fern die Vernunft es mit der Natur als Inbegriff der Gegenstände äußerer Sinne zu thun hat, kann sie sich auf Gesetze gründen, die der Verstand theils selbst a priori der Natur vorschreibt, theils durch die in der Erfahrung vorkommenden empirischen Bestimmungen ins Unabsehliche erweitern kann. Zur Anwendung der erstern Art von Gesetzen, nämlich der allgemeinen der materiellen Natur überhaupt, braucht die Urtheilskraft kein besonderes Princip der Reflexion; denn da ist sie bestimmend, weil ihr ein objectives Princip durch den Verstand gegeben ist. Aber was die besondern Gesetze betrifft, die uns nur durch Erfahrung kund werden können, so kann unter ihnen eine so große Mannigfaltigkeit und Ungleichartigkeit sein, daß die Urtheilskraft sich selbst zum Princip dienen muß, um auch nur in den Erscheinungen der Natur nach einem Gesetze zu forschen und es auszuspähen, indem sie ein solches zum Leitfaden bedarf, wenn sie ein zusammenhängendes Erfahrungserkenntniß nach einer durchgängigen Gesetzmäßigkeit der Natur, die Einheit derselben nach empirischen Gesetzen, auch nur hoffen soll. Bei dieser zufälligen Einheit der besonderen Gesetze kann es sich nun zutragen: daß A 314 die Urtheilskraft in ihrer Reflexion von zwei Maximen ausgeht, deren eine ihr der bloße Verstand a priori an die Hand giebt; die andere aber durch besondere Erfahrungen veranlaßt wird, welche die Vernunft ins Spiel bringen, um nach einem besondern Princip die Beurtheilung der körperlichen Natur und ihrer Gesetze anzustellen. Da trifft es sich dann, daß diese zweierlei Maximen nicht wohl neben einander bestehen zu 387 können den Anschein haben, mithin sich eine Dialektik hervorthut, welche die Urtheilskraft in dem Princip ihrer Reflexion irre macht.
Die erste Maxime derselben ist der Satz: Alle Erzeugung materieller Dinge und ihrer Formen muß als nach bloß mechanischen Gesetzen möglich beurtheilt werden.
Die zweite Maxime ist der Gegensatz: Einige Producte der materiellen Natur können nicht als nach bloß mechanischen Gesetzen möglich beurtheilt werden (ihre Beurtheilung erfordert ein ganz anderes Gesetz der Causalität, nämlich das der Endursachen).
Wenn man diese regulativen Grundsätze für die Nachforschung nun in constitutive der Möglichkeit der Objecte selbst verwandelte, so würden sie so lauten:
Satz: Alle Erzeugung materieller Dinge ist nach bloß mechanischen Gesetzen möglich.
Gegensatz: Einige Erzeugung derselben ist nach bloß mechanischen A 315 Gesetzen nicht möglich.
In dieser letzteren Qualität, als objective Principien für die bestimmende Urtheilskraft, würden sie einander widersprechen, mithin einer von beiden Sätzen nothwendig falsch sein; aber das wäre alsdann zwar eine Antinomie, doch nicht der Urtheilskraft, sondern ein Widerstreit in der Gesetzgebung der Vernunft. Die Vernunft kann aber weder den einen noch den andern dieser Grundsätze beweisen: weil wir von Möglichkeit der Dinge nach bloß empirischen Gesetzen der Natur kein bestimmendes Princip a priori haben können.
Was dagegen die zuerst vorgetragene Maxime einer reflectirenden Urtheilskraft betrifft, so enthält sie in der That gar keinen Widerspruch. Denn wenn ich sage: ich muß alle Ereignisse in der materiellen Natur, mithin auch alle Formen als Producte derselben ihrer Möglichkeit nach nach bloß mechanischen Gesetzen beurtheilen, so sage ich damit nicht: sie sind darnach allein (ausschließungsweise von jeder andern Art Causalität) möglich; sondern das will nur anzeigen: ich soll jederzeit über dieselben nach dem Princip des bloßen Mechanisms der Natur reflectiren und mithin diesem, soweit ich kann, nachforschen, weil, ohne ihn zum Grunde der Nachforschung zu legen, es gar keine eigentliche Naturerkenntniß geben kann. Dieses hindert nun die zweite Maxime bei gelegentlicher Veranlassung nicht, nämlich bei einigen Naturformen (und A 316 auf deren Veranlassung sogar der ganzen Natur), nach einem Princip zu 388 spüren und über sie zu reflectiren, welches von der Erklärung nach dem Mechanism der Natur ganz verschieden ist, nämlich dem Princip der Endursachen. Denn die Reflexion nach der ersten Maxime wird dadurch nicht aufgehoben, vielmehr wird es geboten, sie, so weit man kann, zu verfolgen; auch wird dadurch nicht gesagt, daß nach dem Mechanism der Natur jene Formen nicht möglich wären. Nur wird behauptet, daß die menschliche Vernunft in Befolgung derselben und auf diese Art niemals von dem, was das Specifische eines Naturzwecks ausmacht, den mindesten Grund, wohl aber andere Erkenntnisse von Naturgesetzen wird auffinden können; wobei es als unausgemacht dahin gestellt wird, ob nicht in dem uns unbekannten inneren Grunde der Natur selbst die physisch-mechanische und die Zweckverbindung an denselben Dingen in einem Princip zusammen hängen mögen: nur daß unsere Vernunft sie in einem solchen nicht zu vereinigen im Stande ist, und die Urtheilskraft also als (aus einem subjectiven Grunde) reflectirende, nicht als (einem objectiven Princip der Möglichkeit der Dinge an sich zufolge) bestimmende Urtheilskraft genöthigt ist, für gewisse Formen in der Natur ein anderes Princip, als das des Naturmechanisms zum Grunde ihrer Möglichkeit zu denken.
71 A 317 Vorbereitung zur Auflösung obiger Antinomie.
Wir können die Unmöglichkeit der Erzeugung der organisirten Naturproducte durch den bloßen Mechanism der Natur keineswegs beweisen, weil wir die unendliche Mannigfaltigkeit der besondern Naturgesetze, die für uns zufällig sind, da sie nur empirisch erkannt werden, ihrem ersten innern Grunde nach nicht einsehen und so das innere, durchgängig zureichende Princip der Möglichkeit einer Natur (welches im Übersinnlichen liegt) schlechterdings nicht erreichen können. Ob also das productive Vermögen der Natur auch für dasjenige, was wir als nach der Idee von Zwecken geformt oder verbunden beurtheilen, nicht eben so gut als für das, wozu wir bloß ein Maschinenwesen der Natur zu bedürfen glauben, zulange; und ob in der That für Dinge als eigentliche Naturzwecke (wie wir sie nothwendig beurtheilen müssen) eine ganz andere Art von ursprünglicher Causalität, die gar nicht in der materiellen Natur oder ihrem intelligibelen Substrat enthalten sein kann, nämlich ein architektonischer Verstand, zum 389 Grunde liege: darüber kann unsere in Ansehung des Begriffs der Causalität, wenn er a priori specificirt werden soll, sehr enge eingeschränkte Vernunft schlechterdings keine Auskunft geben. — Aber daß respectiv auf unser Erkenntnißvermögen der bloße Mechanism der Natur für die Erzeugung A 318 organisirter Wesen auch keinen Erklärungsgrund abgeben könne, ist eben so ungezweifelt gewiß. Für die reflectirende Urtheilskraft ist also das ein ganz richtiger Grundsatz: daß für die so offenbare Verknüpfung der Dinge nach Endursachen eine vom Mechanism unterschiedene Causalität, nämlich einer nach Zwecken handelnden (verständigen) Weltursache, gedacht werden müsse; so übereilt und unerweislich er auch für die bestimmende sein würde. In dem ersteren Falle ist er bloße Maxime der Urtheilskraft, wobei der Begriff jener Causalität eine bloße Idee ist, der man keinesweges Realität zuzugestehen unternimmt, sondern sie nur zum Leitfaden der Reflexion braucht, die dabei für alle mechanische Erklärungsgründe immer offen bleibt und sich nicht aus der Sinnenwelt verliert; im zweiten Falle würde der Grundsatz ein objectives Princip sein, das die Vernunft vorschriebe und dem die Urtheilskraft sich bestimmend unterwerfen müßte, wobei sie aber über die Sinnenwelt hinaus sich ins Überschwengliche verliert und vielleicht irre geführt wird.
Aller Anschein einer Antinomie zwischen den Maximen der eigentlich physischen (mechanischen) und der teleologischen (technischen) Erklärungsart beruht also darauf: daß man einen Grundsatz der reflectirenden Urtheilskraft mit dem der bestimmenden und die Autonomie der ersteren (die bloß subjectiv für unsern Vernunftgebrauch in Ansehung der besonderen A 319 Erfahrungsgesetze gilt) mit der Heteronomie der anderen, welche sich nach den von dem Verstande gegebenen (allgemeinen oder besondern) Gesetzen richten muß, verwechselt.
72 Von den mancherlei Systemen über die Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur.
Die Richtigkeit des Grundsatzes, daß über gewisse Dinge der Natur (organisirte Wesen) und ihre Möglichkeit nach dem Begriffe von Endursachen geurtheilt werden müsse, selbst auch nur wenn man, um ihre Beschaffenheit durch Beobachtung kennen zu lernen, einen Leitfaden verlangt, ohne sich bis zur Untersuchung über ihren ersten Ursprung zu 390 versteigen, hat noch niemand bezweifelt. Die Frage kann also nur sein: ob dieser Grundsatz bloß subjectiv gültig, d. i. bloß Maxime unserer Urtheilskraft, oder ein objectives Princip der Natur sei, nach welchem ihr außer ihrem Mechanism (nach bloßen Bewegungsgesetzen) noch eine andere Art von Causalität zukomme, nämlich die der Endursachen, unter denen jene (die bewegenden Kräfte) nur als Mittelursachen ständen.
Nun könnte man diese Frage oder Aufgabe für die Speculation gänzlich unausgemacht und unaufgelöset lassen: weil, wenn wir uns mit der letzteren innerhalb den Gränzen der bloßen Naturerkenntniß begnügen, wir an jenen Maximen genug haben, um die Natur, so weit als menschliche A 320 Kräfte reichen, zu studiren und ihren verborgensten Geheimnissen nachzuspüren. Es ist also wohl eine gewisse Ahnung unserer Vernunft, oder ein von der Natur uns gleichsam gegebener Wink, daß wir vermittelst jenes Begriffs von Endursachen wohl gar über die Natur hinauslangen und sie selbst an den höchsten Punkt in der Reihe der Ursachen knüpfen könnten, wenn wir die Nachforschung der Natur (ob wir gleich darin noch nicht weit gekommen sind) verließen, oder wenigstens einige Zeit aussetzten und vorher, worauf jener Fremdling in der Naturwissenschaft, nämlich der Begriff der Naturzwecke, führe, zu erkunden versuchten.
Hier müßte nun freilich jene unbestrittene Maxime in die ein weites Feld zu Streitigkeiten eröffnende Aufgabe übergehen: ob die Zweckverknüpfnug in der Natur eine besondere Art der Causalität für dieselbe beweise; oder ob sie, an sich und nach objectiven Principien betrachtet, nicht vielmehr mit dem Mechanism der Natur einerlei sei, oder auf einem und demselben Grunde beruhe: nur daß wir, da dieser für unsere Nachforschung in manchen Naturproducten oft zu tief versteckt ist, es mit einem subjectiven Princip, nämlich dem der Kunst, d. i. der Causalität nach Ideen, versuchen, um sie der Natur der Analogie nach unterzulegen; welche Nothülfe uns auch in vielen Fällen gelingt, in einigen zwar zu mißlingen scheint, auf alle Fälle aber nicht berechtigt, eine besondere, von A 321 der Causalität nach bloß mechanischen Gesetzen der Natur selbst unterschiedene Wirkungsart in die Naturwissenschaft einzuführen. Wir wollen, indem wir das Verfahren (die Causalität) der Natur wegen des Zweckähnlichen, welches wir in ihren Producten finden, Technik nennen, diese in die absichtliche (technica intentionalis) und in die unabsichtliche (technica naturalis) eintheilen. Die erste soll bedeuten: daß das productive 391 Vermögen der Natur nach Endursachen für eine besondere Art von Causalität gehalten werden müsse; die zweite: daß sie mit dem Mechanism der Natur im Grunde ganz einerlei sei, und das zufällige Zusammentreffen mit unseren Kunstbegriffen und ihren Regeln, als bloß subjective Bedingung sie zu beurtheilen, fälschlich für eine besondere Art der Naturerzeugung ausgedeutet werde.
Wenn wir jetzt von den Systemen der Naturerklärung in Ansehung der Endursachen reden, so muß man wohl bemerken: daß sie insgesammt dogmatisch, d. i. über objective Principien der Möglichkeit der Dinge, es sei durch absichtlich oder lauter unabsichtlich wirkende Ursachen, unter einander streitig sind, nicht aber etwa über die subjective Maxime, über die Ursache solcher zweckmäßigen Producte bloß zu urtheilen: in welchem letztern Falle disparate Principien noch wohl vereinigt werden könnten, anstatt daß im ersteren contradictorisch-entgegengesetzte einander A 322 aufheben und neben sich nicht bestehen können.
Die Systeme in Ansehung der Technik der Natur, d. i. ihrer productiven Kraft nach der Regel der Zwecke, sind zwiefach: des Idealismus, oder des Realismus der Naturzwecke. Der erstere ist die Behauptung: daß alle Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur unabsichtlich; der zweite: daß einige derselben (in organisirten Wesen) absichtlich sei; woraus denn auch die als Hypothese gegründete Folge gezogen werden könnte, daß die Technik der Natur, auch was alle andere Producte derselben in Beziehung auf das Naturganze betrifft, absichtlich, d. i. Zweck, sei.
1) Der Idealism der Zweckmäßigkeit (ich verstehe hier immer die objective) ist nun entweder der der Casualität, oder der Fatalität der Naturbestimmung in der zweckmäßigen Form ihrer Producte. Das erstere Princip betrifft die Beziehung der Materie auf den physischen Grund ihrer Form, nämlich die Bewegungsgesetze; das zweite auf ihren und der ganzen Natur hyperphysischen Grund. Das System der Casualität, welches dem Epikur oder Demokritus beigelegt wird, ist, nach dem Buchstaben genommen, so offenbar ungereimt, daß es uns nicht aufhalten darf; dagegen ist das System der Fatalität (wovon man den Spinoza zum Urheber macht, ob es gleich allem Ansehen nach viel älter ist), welches sich auf etwas Übersinnliches beruft, wohin also unsere Einsicht A 323 nicht reicht, so leicht nicht zu widerlegen: darum weil sein Begriff von dem Urwesen gar nicht zu verstehen ist. So viel ist aber klar: daß die Zweckverbindung in der Welt in demselben als unabsichtlich angenommen 392 werden muß (weil sie von einem Urwesen, aber nicht von seinem Verstande, mithin keiner Absicht desselben, sondern aus der Nothwendigkeit seiner Natur und der davon abstammenden Welteinheit abgeleitet wird), mithin der Fatalismus der Zweckmäßigkeit zugleich ein Idealism derselben ist.
2) Der Realism der Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur ist auch entweder physisch oder hyperphysisch. Der erste gründet die Zwecke in der Natur auf dem Analogon eines nach Absicht handelnden Vermögens, dem Leben der Materie (in ihr, oder auch durch ein belebendes inneres Princip, eine Weltseele) und heißt der Hylozoism. Der zweite leitet sie von dem Urgrunde des Weltalls, als einem mit Absicht hervorbringenden (ursprünglich lebenden) verständigen Wesen ab und ist der Theism.28
73 A 324 Keines der obigen Systeme leistet das, was es vorgiebt.
Was wollen alle jene Systeme? Sie wollen unsere teleologischen Urtheile über die Natur erklären und gehen damit so zu Werke, daß ein Theil die Wahrheit derselben läugnet, mithin sie für einen Idealism der Natur (als Kunst vorgestellt) erklärt; der andere Theil sie als wahr anerkennt und die Möglichkeit einer Natur nach der Idee der Endursachen darzuthun verspricht.
1) Die für den Idealism der Endursachen in der Natur streitenden Systeme lassen nun einerseits zwar an dem Princip derselben eine Causalität nach Bewegungsgesetzen zu (durch welche die Naturdinge zweckmäßig existiren); aber sie läugnen an ihr die Intentionalität, d. i. 393 daß sie absichtlich zu dieser ihrer zweckmäßigen Hervorbringung bestimmt, oder mit anderen Worten ein Zweck die Ursache sei. Dieses ist die Erklärungsart Epikurs, nach welcher der Unterschied einer Technik der Natur von der bloßen Mechanik gänzlich abgeläugnet wird, und nicht allein für die Übereinstimmung der erzeugten Producte mit unsern Begriffen vom A 325 Zwecke, mithin für die Technik, sondern selbst für die Bestimmung der Ursachen dieser Erzeugung nach Bewegungsgesetzen, mithin ihre Mechanik der blinde Zufall zum Erklärungsgrunde angenommen, also nichts, auch nicht einmal der Schein in unserm teleologischen Urtheile erklärt, mithin der vorgebliche Idealism in demselben keineswegs dargethan wird.
Andererseits will Spinoza uns aller Nachfrage nach dem Grunde der Möglichkeit der Zwecke der Natur dadurch überheben und dieser Idee alle Realität nehmen, daß er sie überhaupt nicht für Producte, sondern für einem Urwesen inhärirende Accidenzen gelten läßt und diesem Wesen, als Substrat jener Naturdinge, in Ansehung derselben nicht Causalität, sondern bloß Subsistenz beilegt und (wegen der unbedingten Nothwendigkeit desselben sammt allen Naturdingen, als ihm inhärirenden Accidenzen) den Naturformen zwar die Einheit des Grundes, die zu aller Zweckmäßigkeit erforderlich ist, sichert, aber zugleich die Zufälligkeit derselben, ohne die keine Zweckeinheit gedacht werden kann, entreißt und mit ihr alles Absichtliche, so wie dem Urgrunde der Naturdinge allen Verstand wegnimmt.
Der Spinozism leistet aber das nicht, was er will. Er will einen Erklärungsgrund der Zweckverknüpfung (die er nicht läugnet) der Dinge der Natur angeben und nennt bloß die Einheit des Subjects, dem sie alle inhäriren. Aber wenn man ihm auch diese Art zu existiren für die Weltwesen A 326 einräumt, so ist doch jene ontologische Einheit darum noch nicht sofort Zweckeinheit und macht diese keinesweges begreiflich. Die letztere ist nämlich eine ganz besondere Art derselben, die aus der Verknüpfung der Dinge (Weltwesen) in einem Subjecte (dem Urwesen) gar nicht folgt, sondern durchaus die Beziehung auf eine Ursache, die Verstand hat, bei sich führt und selbst, wenn man alle diese Dinge in einem einfachen Subjecte vereinigte, doch niemals eine Zweckbeziehung darstellt: wofern man unter ihnen nicht erstlich innere Wirkungen der Substanz als einer Ursache, zweitens eben derselben als Ursache durch ihren Verstand denkt. Ohne diese formalen Bedingungen ist alle Einheit bloße Naturnothwendigkeit und, wird sie gleichwohl Dingen beigelegt, die wir 394 als außer einander vorstellen, blinde Nothwendigkeit. Will man aber das, was die Schule die transscendentale Vollkommenheit der Dinge (in Beziehung auf ihr eigenes Wesen) nennt, nach welcher alle Dinge alles an sich haben, was erfordert wird, um so ein Ding und kein anderes zu sein, Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur nennen: so ist das ein kindisches Spielwerk mit Worten statt Begriffen. Denn wenn alle Dinge als Zwecke gedacht werden müssen, also ein Ding sein und Zweck sein einerlei ist, so giebt es im Grunde nichts, was besonders als Zweck vorgestellt zu werden verdiente.
Man sieht hieraus wohl: daß Spinoza dadurch, daß er unsere Begriffe A 327 von dem Zweckmäßigen in der Natur auf das Bewußtsein unserer selbst in einem allbefassenden (doch zugleich einfachen) Wesen zurückführte und jene Form bloß in der Einheit des letzern suchte, nicht den Realism, sondern bloß den Idealism der Zweckmäßigkeit derselben zu behaupten die Absicht haben mußte, diese aber selbst doch nicht bewerkstelligen konnte, weil die bloße Vorstellung der Einheit des Substrats auch nicht einmal die Idee von einer auch nur unabsichtlichen Zweckmäßigkeit bewirken kann.
2) Die, welche den Realism der Naturzwecke nicht bloß behaupten, sondern ihn auch zu erklären vermeinen, glauben eine besondere Art der Causalität, nämlich absichtlich wirkender Ursachen, wenigstens ihrer Möglichkeit nach einsehen zu können; sonst könnten sie es nicht unternehmen jene erklären zu wollen. Denn zur Befugniß selbst der gewagtesten Hypothese muß wenigstens die Möglichkeit dessen, was man als Grund annimmt, gewiß sein, und man muß dem Begriffe desselben seine objective Realität sichern können.
Aber die Möglichkeit einer lebenden Materie (deren Begriff einen Widerspruch enthält, weil Leblosigkeit, inertia, den wesentlichen Charakter derselben ausmacht) läßt sich nicht einmal denken; die einer belebten Materie und der gesammten Natur, als eines Thiers, kann nur sofern (zum Behuf einer Hypothese der Zweckmäßigkeit im Großen der Natur) dürftiger A 328 Weise gebraucht werden, als sie uns an der Organisation derselben im Kleinen in der Erfahrung offenbart wird, keinesweges aber a priori ihrer Möglichkeit nach eingesehen werden. Es muß also ein Cirkel im Erklären begangen werden, wenn man die Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur an organisirten Wesen aus dem Leben der Materie ableiten will und dieses Leben wiederum nicht anders als in organisirten Wesen kennt, also ohne 395 dergleichen Erfahrung sich keinen Begriff von der Möglichkeit derselben machen kann. Der Hylozoism leistet also das nicht, was er verspricht.
Der Theism kann endlich die Möglichkeit der Naturzwecke als einen Schlüssel zur Teleologie eben so wenig dogmatisch begründen; ob er zwar vor allen Erklärungsgründen derselben darin den Vorzug hat, daß er durch einen Verstand, den er dem Urwesen beilegt, die Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur dem Idealism am besten entreißt und eine absichtliche Causalität für die Erzeugung derselben einführt.
Denn da müßte allererst, für die bestimmende Urtheilskraft hinreichend, die Unmöglichkeit der Zweckeinheit in der Materie durch den bloßen Mechanism derselben bewiesen werden, um berechtigt zu sein den Grund derselben über die Natur hinaus auf bestimmte Weise zu setzen. Wir können aber nichts weiter herausbringen, als daß nach der Beschaffenheit und den Schranken unserer Erkenntnißvermögen (indem wir den ersten, inneren Grund selbst dieses Mechanisms nicht einsehen) wir A 329 auf keinerlei Weise in der Materie ein Princip bestimmter Zweckbeziehungen suchen müssen, sondern für uns keine andere Beurtheilungsart der Erzeugung ihrer Producte als Naturzwecke übrig bleibe, als die durch einen obersten Verstand als Weltursache. Das ist aber nur ein Grund für die reflectirende, nicht für die bestimmende Urtheilskraft und kann schlechterdings zu keiner objectiven Behauptung berechtigen.
74 Die Ursache der Unmöglichkeit, den Begriff einer Technik der Natur dogmatisch zu behandeln, ist die Unerklärlichkeit eines Naturzwecks.
Wir verfahren mit einem Begriffe (wenn er gleich empirisch bedingt sein sollte) dogmatisch, wenn wir ihn als unter einem anderen Begriffe des Objects, der ein Princip der Vernunft ausmacht, enthalten betrachten und ihn diesem gemäß bestimmen. Wir verfahren aber mit ihm bloß kritisch, wenn wir ihn nur in Beziehung auf unser Erkenntnißvermögen, mithin auf die subjectiven Bedingungen ihn zu denken betrachten, ohne es zu unternehmen über sein Object etwas zu entscheiden. Das dogmatische Verfahren mit einem Begriffe ist also dasjenige, welches für die bestimmende, das kritische das, welches bloß für die reflectirende Urtheilskraft gesetzmäßig ist.
396 Nun ist der Begriff von einem Dinge als Naturzwecke ein Begriff, A 330 der die Natur unter eine Causalität, die nur durch Vernunft denkbar ist, subsumirt, um nach diesem Princip über das, was vom Objecte in der Erfahrung gegeben ist, zu urtheilen. Um ihn aber dogmatisch für die bestimmende Urtheilskraft zu gebrauchen, müßten wir der objectiven Realität dieses Begriffs zuvor versichert sein, weil wir sonst kein Naturding unter ihm subsumiren könnten. Der Begriff eines Dinges als Naturzwecks ist aber zwar ein empirisch bedingter, d. i. nur unter gewissen in der Erfahrung gegebenen Bedingungen möglicher, aber doch von derselben nicht zu abstrahirender, sondern nur nach einem Vernunftprincip in der Beurtheilung des Gegenstandes möglicher Begriff. Er kann also als ein solches Princip seiner objectiven Realität nach (d. i. daß ihm gemäß ein Object möglich sei) gar nicht eingesehen und dogmatisch begründet werden; und wir wissen nicht, ob er bloß ein vernünftelnder und objectiv leerer (conceptus ratiocinans), oder ein Vernunftbegriff, ein Erkenntniß gründender, von der Vernunft bestätigter (conceptus ratiocinatus), sei. Also kann er nicht dogmatisch für die bestimmende Urtheilskraft behandelt werden: d. i. es kann nicht allein nicht ausgemacht werden, ob Dinge der Natur, als Naturzwecke betrachtet, für ihre Erzeugung eine Causalität von ganz besonderer Art (die nach Absichten) erfordern, oder nicht; sondern es kann auch nicht einmal darnach gefragt werden, weil der Begriff eines A 331 Naturzwecks seiner objectiven Realität nach durch die Vernunft gar nicht erweislich ist (d. i. er ist nicht für die bestimmende Urtheilskraft constitutiv, sondern für die reflectirende bloß regulativ).
Daß er es aber nicht sei, ist daraus klar, weil er als Begriff von einem Naturproduct Naturnothwendigkeit und doch zugleich eine Zufälligkeit der Form des Objects (in Beziehung auf bloße Gesetze der Natur) an eben demselben Dinge als Zweck in sich faßt; folglich, wenn hierin kein Widerspruch sein soll, einen Grund für die Möglichkeit des Dinges in der Natur und doch auch einen Grund der Möglichkeit dieser Natur selbst und ihrer Beziehung auf etwas, das nicht empirisch erkennbare Natur (übersinnlich), mithin für uns gar nicht erkennbar ist, enthalten muß, um nach einer andern Art Causalität als der des Naturmechanisms beurtheilt zu werden, wenn man seine Möglichkeit ausmachen will. Da also der Begriff eines Dinges als Naturzwecks für die bestimmende Urtheilskraft überschwenglich ist, wenn man das Object durch die Vernunft betrachtet (ob er zwar für die reflectirende Urtheilskraft in Ansehung 397 der Gegenstände der Erfahrung immanent sein mag), mithin ihm für bestimmende Urtheile die objective Realität nicht verschafft werden kann: so ist hieraus begreiflich, wie alle Systeme, die man für die dogmatische Behandlung des Begriffs der Naturzwecke und der Natur, als A 332 eines durch Endursachen zusammenhängenden Ganzen, nur immer entwerfen mag, weder objectiv bejahend, noch objectiv verneinend irgend etwas entscheiden können; weil, wenn Dinge unter einem Begriffe, der bloß problematisch ist, subsumirt werden, die synthetischen Prädicate desselben (z. B. hier: ob der Zweck der Natur, den wir uns zu der Erzeugung der Dinge denken, absichtlich oder unabsichtlich sei) eben solche (problematische) Urtheile, sie mögen nun bejahend oder verneinend sein, vom Object abgeben müssen, indem man nicht weiß, ob man über Etwas oder Nichts urtheilt. Der Begriff einer Causalität durch Zwecke (der Kunst) hat allerdings objective Realität, der einer Causalität nach dem Mechanism der Natur eben sowohl. Aber der Begriff einer Causalität der Natur nach der Regel der Zwecke, noch mehr aber eines Wesens, dergleichen uns gar nicht in der Erfahrung gegeben werden kann, nämlich eines solchen als Urgrundes der Natur, kann zwar ohne Widerspruch gedacht werden, aber zu dogmatischen Bestimmungen doch nicht taugen: weil ihm, da er nicht aus der Erfahrung gezogen werden kann, auch zur Möglichkeit derselben nicht erforderlich ist, seine objective Realität durch nichts gesichert werden kann. Geschähe dieses aber auch, wie kann ich Dinge, die für Producte göttlicher Kunst bestimmt angegeben werden, noch unter Producte der Natur zählen, deren Unfähigkeit, dergleichen nach ihren A 333 Gesetzen hervorzubringen, eben die Berufung auf eine von ihr unterschiedene Ursache nothwendig machte?
75 Der Begriff einer objectiven Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur ist ein kritisches Princip der Vernunft für die reflectirende Urtheilskraft.
Es ist doch etwas ganz Anderes, ob ich sage: die Erzeugung gewisser Dinge der Natur, oder auch der gesammten Natur ist nur durch eine Ursache, die sich nach Absichten zum Handeln bestimmt, möglich; oder ich kann nach der eigenthümlichen Beschaffenheit meiner Erkenntnißvermögen über die Möglichkeit jener Dinge und ihre 398 Erzeugung nicht anders urtheilen, als wenn ich mir zu dieser eine Ursache, die nach Absichten wirkt, mithin ein Wesen denke, welches nach der Analogie mit der Causalität eines Verstandes productiv ist. Im ersteren Falle will ich etwas über das Object ausmachen und bin verbunden, die objective Realität eines angenommenen Begriffs darzuthun; im zweiten bestimmt die Vernunft nur den Gebrauch meiner Erkenntnißvermögen angemessen ihrer Eigenthümlichkeit und den wesentlichen Bedingungen ihres Umfanges sowohl, als ihrer Schranken. Also ist das erste Princip ein objectiver Grundsatz für die bestimmende, das zweite ein subjectiver Grundsatz bloß für die reflectirende Urtheilskraft, mithin eine Maxime A 334 derselben, die ihr die Vernunft auferlegt.
Wir haben nämlich unentbehrlich nöthig, der Natur den Begriff einer Absicht unterzulegen, wenn wir ihr auch nur in ihren organisirten Producten durch fortgesetzte Beobachtung nachforschen wollen; und dieser Begriff ist also schon für den Erfahrungsgebrauch unserer Vernunft eine schlechterdings nothwendige Maxime. Es ist offenbar: daß, da einmal ein solcher Leitfaden die Natur zu studiren aufgenommen und bewährt gefunden ist, wir die gedachte Maxime der Urtheilskraft auch am Ganzen der Natur wenigstens versuchen müssen, weil sich nach derselben noch manche Gesetze derselben dürften auffinden lassen, die uns nach der Beschränkung unserer Einsichten in das Innere des Mechanisms derselben sonst verborgen bleiben würden. Aber in Ansehung des letztern Gebrauchs ist jene Maxime der Urtheilskraft zwar nützlich, aber nicht unentbehrlich, weil uns die Natur im Ganzen als organisirt (in der oben angeführten engsten Bedeutung des Worts) nicht gegeben ist. Hingegen in Ansehung der Producte derselben, welche nur als absichtlich so und nicht anders geformt müssen beurtheilt werden, um auch nur eine Erfahrungserkenntniß ihrer innern Beschaffenheit zu bekommen, ist jene Maxime der reflectirenden Urtheilskraft wesentlich nothwendig: weil selbst der Gedanke von ihnen als organisirten Dingen, ohne den Gedanken einer Erzeugung mit A 335 Absicht damit zu verbinden, unmöglich ist.
Nun ist der Begriff eines Dinges, dessen Existenz oder Form wir uns unter der Bedingung eines Zwecks als möglich vorstellen, mit dem Begriffe einer Zufälligkeit desselben (nach Naturgesetzen) unzertrennlich verbunden. Daher machen auch die Naturdinge, welche wir nur als Zwecke möglich finden, den vornehmsten Beweis für die Zufälligkeit des Weltganzen aus und sind der einzige für den gemeinen Verstand eben 399 sowohl als den Philosophen geltende Beweisgrund der Abhängigkeit und des Ursprungs desselben von einem außer der Welt existirenden und zwar (um jener zweckmäßigen Form willen) verständigen Wesen: daß also die Teleologie keine Vollendung des Aufschlusses für ihre Nachforschungen, als in einer Theologie findet.
Was beweiset nun aber am Ende auch die allervollständigste Teleologie? Beweiset sie etwa, daß ein solches verständiges Wesen da sei? Nein; nichts weiter, als daß wir nach Beschaffenheit unserer Erkenntnißvermögen, also in Verbindung der Erfahrung mit den obersten Principien der Vernunft, uns schlechterdings keinen Begriff von der Möglichkeit einer solchen Welt machen können, als so, daß wir uns eine absichtlich-wirkende oberste Ursache derselben denken. Objectiv können wir also nicht den Satz darthun: es ist ein verständiges Urwesen; sondern nur subjectiv für den Gebrauch unserer Urtheilskraft in ihrer Reflexion über die Zwecke A 336 in der Natur, die nach keinem anderen Princip als dem einer absichtlichen Causalität einer höchsten Ursache gedacht werden können.
Wollten wir den obersten Satz dogmatisch, aus teleologischen Gründen, darthun: so würden wir von Schwierigkeiten befangen werden, aus denen wir uns nicht herauswickeln könnten. Denn da würde diesen Schlüssen der Satz zum Grunde gelegt werden müssen: die organisirten Wesen in der Welt sind nicht anders, als durch eine absichtlich-wirkende Ursache möglich. Daß aber, weil wir diese Dinge nur unter der Idee der Zwecke in ihrer Causalverbindung verfolgen und diese nach ihrer Gesetzmäßigkeit erkennen können, wir auch berechtigt wären, eben dieses auch für jedes denkende und erkennende Wesen als nothwendige, mithin dem Objecte und nicht bloß unserm Subjecte anhängende Bedingung vorauszusetzen: das müßten wir hiebei unvermeidlich behaupten wollen. Aber mit einer solchen Behauptung kommen wir nicht durch. Denn da wir die Zwecke in der Natur als absichtliche eigentlich nicht beobachten, sondern nur in der Reflexion über ihre Producte diesen Begriff als einen Leitfaden der Urtheilskraft hinzu denken: so sind sie uns nicht durch das Object gegeben. A priori ist es sogar für uns unmöglich, einen solchen Begriff seiner objectiven Realität nach als annehmungsfähig zu rechtfertigen. Es bleibt also schlechterdings ein nur auf subjectiven Bedingungen, A 337 nämlich der unseren Erkenntnißvermögen angemessen reflectirenden Urtheilskraft, beruhender Satz, der, wenn man ihn als objectiv-dogmatisch geltend ausdrückte, heißen würde: Es ist ein Gott; nun aber für 400 uns Menschen nur die eingeschränkte Formel erlaubt: Wir können uns die Zweckmäßigkeit, die selbst unserer Erkenntniß der inneren Möglichkeit vieler Naturdinge zum Grunde gelegt werden muß, gar nicht anders denken und begreiflich machen, als indem wir sie und überhaupt die Welt uns als ein Product einer verständigen Ursache (eines Gottes) vorstellen.
Wenn nun dieser auf einer unumgänglich nothwendigen Maxime unserer Urtheilskraft gegründete Satz allem sowohl speculativen als praktischen Gebrauche unserer Vernunft in jeder menschlichen Absicht vollkommen genugthuend ist: so möchte ich wohl wissen, was uns dann darunter abgehe, daß wir ihn nicht auch für höhere Wesen gültig, nämlich aus reinen objectiven Gründen (die leider unser Vermögen übersteigen), beweisen können. Es ist nämlich ganz gewiß, daß wir die organisirten Wesen und deren innere Möglichkeit nach bloß mechanischen Principien der Natur nicht einmal zureichend kennen lernen, viel weniger uns erklären können; und zwar so gewiß, daß man dreist sagen kann: es ist für Menschen ungereimt, auch nur einen solchen Anschlag zu fassen, oder zu A 338 hoffen, daß noch etwa dereinst ein Newton aufstehen könne, der auch nur die Erzeugung eines Grashalms nach Naturgesetzen, die keine Absicht geordnet hat, begreiflich machen werde; sondern man muß diese Einsicht den Menschen schlechterdings absprechen. Daß dann aber auch in der Natur, wenn wir bis zum Princip derselben in der Specification ihrer allgemeinen uns bekannten Gesetze durchdringen könnten, ein hinreichender Grund der Möglichkeit organisirten Wesen, ohne ihrer Erzeugung eine Absicht unterzulegen (also im bloßen Mechanism derselben), gar nicht verborgen liegen könne, das wäre wiederum von uns zu vermessen geurtheilt; denn woher wollen wir das wissen? Wahrscheinlichkeiten fallen hier gar weg, wo es auf Urtheile der reinen Vernunft ankommt. — Also können wir über den Satz: ob ein nach Absichten handelndes Wesen als Weltursache (mithin als Urheber) dem, was wir mit Recht Naturzwecke nennen, zum Grunde liege, objectiv gar nicht, weder bejahend noch verneinend, urtheilen; nur so viel ist sicher, daß, wenn wir doch wenigstens nach dem, was uns einzusehen durch unsere eigene Natur vergönnt ist (nach den Bedingungen und Schranken unserer Vernunft), urtheilen sollen, wir schlechterdings nichts anders als ein verständiges Wesen der Möglichkeit jener Naturzwecke zum Grunde legen können: welches der Maxime unserer reflectirenden Urtheilskraft, folglich einem subjectiven, A 339 401 aber dem menschlichen Geschlecht unnachlaßlich anhängenden Grunde allein gemäß ist.
76 Anmerkung.
Diese Betrachtung, welche es gar sehr verdient in der Transscendentalphilosophie umständlich ausgeführt zu werden, mag hier nur episodisch zur Erläuterung (nicht zum Beweise des hier Vorgetragenen) eintreten.
Die Vernunft ist ein Vermögen der Principien und geht in ihrer äußersten Forderung auf das Unbedingte; da hingegen der Verstand ihr immer nur unter einer gewissen Bedingung, die gegeben werden muß, zu Diensten steht. Ohne Begriffe des Verstandes aber, welchen objective Realität gegeben werden muß, kann die Vernunft gar nicht objectiv (synthetisch) urtheilen und enthält als theoretische Vernunft für sich schlechterdings keine constitutive, sondern bloß regulative Principien. Man wird bald inne: daß, wo der Verstand nicht folgen kann, die Vernunft überschwenglich wird und in zwar gegründeten Ideen (als regulativen Principien), aber nicht objectiv gültigen Begriffen sich hervorthut; der Verstand aber, der mit ihr nicht Schritt halten kann, aber doch zur Gültigkeit für Objecte nöthig sein würde, die Gültigkeit jener Ideen der Vernunft nur auf das Subject, aber doch allgemein für alle von dieser Gattung, d. i. auf die Bedingung einschränke, daß nach der Natur unseres (menschlichen) Erkenntnißvermögens oder gar überhaupt nach dem Begriffe, den wir uns von dem Vermögen eines endlichen vernünftigen Wesens überhaupt machen können, nicht anders als so könne und müsse gedacht werden: ohne doch zu behaupten, daß der Grund eines solchen Urtheils A 340 im Objecte liege. Wir wollen Beispiele anführen, die zwar zu viel Wichtigkeit und auch Schwierigkeit haben, um sie hier sofort als erwiesene Sätze dem Leser aufzudringen, die ihm aber Stoff zum Nachdenken geben und dem, was hier unser eigenthümliches Geschäft ist, zur Erläuterung dienen können.
Es ist dem menschlichen Verstande unumgänglich nothwendig, Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit der Dinge zu unterscheiden. Der Grund davon liegt im Subjecte und der Natur seiner Erkenntnißvermögen. Denn wären zu dieser ihrer Ausübung nicht zwei ganz heterogene Stücke, Verstand für Begriffe und sinnliche Anschauung für Objecte, die ihnen correspondiren, erforderlich: so würde es keine solche Unterscheidung 402 (zwischen dem Möglichen und Wirklichen) geben. Wäre nämlich unser Verstand anschauend, so hätte er keine Gegenstände als das Wirkliche. Begriffe (die bloß auf die Möglichkeit eines Gegenstandes gehen) und sinnliche Anschauungen (welche uns etwas geben, ohne es dadurch doch als Gegenstand erkennen zu lassen) würden beide wegfallen. Nun beruht aber alle unsere Unterscheidung des bloß Möglichen vom Wirklichen darauf, daß das erstere nur die Position der Vorstellung eines Dinges respectiv auf unsern Begriff und überhaupt das Vermögen zu denken, das letztere aber die Setzung des Dinges an sich selbst (außer diesem Begriffe) bedeutet. Also ist die Unterscheidung möglicher Dinge von wirklichen eine solche, die bloß subjectiv für den menschlichen Verstand gilt, da wir nämlich etwas immer noch in Gedanken haben können, ob es gleich nicht ist, oder etwas als gegeben uns vorstellen, ob wir gleich noch keinen Begriff davon haben. Die Sätze also: daß Dinge möglich sein können, ohne wirklich zu sein, daß also aus der bloßen Möglichkeit auf die Wirklichkeit gar nicht geschlossen werden könne, gelten ganz richtig für die menschliche A 341 Vernunft, ohne darum zu beweisen, daß dieser Unterschied in den Dingen selbst liege. Denn daß dieses nicht daraus gefolgert werden könne, mithin jene Sätze zwar allerdings auch von Objecten gelten, so fern unser Erkenntnißvermögen als sinnlich-bedingt sich auch mit Objecten der Sinne beschäftigt, aber nicht von Dingen überhaupt: leuchtet aus der unablaßlichen Forderung der Vernunft ein, irgend ein Etwas (den Urgrund) als unbedingt nothwendig existirend anzunehmen, an welchem Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit gar nicht mehr unterschieden werden sollen, und für welche Idee unser Verstand schlechterdings keinen Begriff hat, d. i. keine Art ausfinden kann, wie er ein solches Ding und seine Art zu existiren sich vorstellen solle. Denn wenn er es denkt (er mag es denken, wie er will), so ist es bloß als möglich vorgestellt. Ist er sich dessen als in der Anschauung gegeben bewußt, so ist es wirklich, ohne sich hiebei irgend etwas von Möglichkeit zu denken. Daher ist der Begriff eines absolut-nothwendigen Wesens zwar eine unentbehrliche Vernunftidee, aber ein für den menschlichen Verstand unerreichbarer problematischer Begriff. Er gilt aber doch für den Gebrauch unserer Erkenntnißvermögen nach der eigenthümlichen Beschaffenheit derselben, mithin nicht vom Objecte und hiemit für jedes erkennende Wesen: weil ich nicht bei jedem das Denken und die Anschauung, als zwei verschiedene Bedingungen der Ausübung seiner Erkenntnißvermögen, mithin der Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit der Dinge, 403 voraussetzen kann. Für einen Verstand, bei dem dieser Unterschied nicht einträte, würde es heißen: alle Objecte, die ich erkenne, sind (existiren); und die Möglichkeit einiger, die doch nicht existirten, d. i. Zufälligkeit derselben, wenn sie existiren, also auch die davon zu unterscheidende Nothwendigkeit würde in die Vorstellung eines solchen Wesens gar nicht A 342 kommen können. Was unserm Verstande aber so beschwerlich fällt, der Vernunft hier mit seinen Begriffen es gleich zu thun, ist bloß: daß für ihn als menschlichen Verstand dasjenige überschwenglich (d. i. den subjectiven Bedingungen seines Erkenntnisses unmöglich) ist, was doch die Vernunft als zum Object gehörig zum Princip macht. — Hierbei gilt nun immer die Maxime, daß wir alle Objecte da, wo ihr Erkenntniß das Vermögen des Verstandes übersteigt, nach den subjectiven, unserer (d. i. der menschlichen) Natur nothwendig anhängenden Bedingungen der Ausübung ihrer Vermögen denken; und wenn die auf diese Art gefällten Urtheile (wie es auch in Ansehung der überschwenglichen Begriffe nicht anders sein kann) nicht constitutive Principien, die das Object, wie es beschaffen ist, bestimmen, sein können, so werden es doch regulative, in der Ausübung immanente und sichere, der menschlichen Absicht angemessene Principien bleiben.
So wie die Vernunft in theoretischer Betrachtung der Natur die Idee einer unbedingten Nothwendigkeit ihres Urgrundes annehmen muß: so setzt sie auch in praktischer ihre eigene (in Ansehung der Natur) unbedingte Causalität, d. i. Freiheit, voraus, indem sie sich ihres moralischen Gebots bewußt ist. Weil nun aber hier die objective Nothwendigkeit der Handlung als Pflicht derjenigen, die sie als Begebenheit haben würde, wenn ihr Grund in der Natur und nicht in der Freiheit (d. i. der Vernunftcausalität) läge, entgegengesetzt und die moralisch-schlechthin-nothwendige Handlung physisch als ganz zufällig angesehen wird (d. i. daß das, was nothwendig geschehen sollte, doch öfter nicht geschieht): so ist klar, daß es nur von der subjectiven Beschaffenheit unsers praktischen Vermögens herrührt, daß die moralischen Gesetze als Gebote (und die ihnen gemäße Handlungen A 343 als Pflichten) vorgestellt werden müssen, und die Vernunft diese Nothwendigkeit nicht durch ein Sein (Geschehen), sondern Sein-Sollen ausdrückt: welches nicht Statt finden würde, wenn die Vernunft ohne Sinnlichkeit (als subjective Bedingung ihrer Anwendung auf Gegenstände der Natur) ihrer Causalität nach, mithin als Ursache in einer intelligibelen, mit dem moralischen Gesetze durchgängig übereinstimmenden 404 Welt betrachtet würde, wo zwischen Sollen und Thun, zwischen einem praktischen Gesetze von dem, was durch uns möglich ist, und dem theoretischen von dem, was durch uns wirklich ist, kein Unterschied sein würde. Ob nun aber gleich eine intelligibele Welt, in welcher alles darum wirklich sein würde, bloß nur weil es (als etwas Gutes) möglich ist, und selbst die Freiheit als formale Bedingung derselben für uns ein überschwenglicher Begriff ist, der zu keinem constitutiven Prinzip, ein Object und dessen objective Realität zu bestimmen, tauglich ist: so dient die letztere doch nach der Beschaffenheit unserer (zum Theil sinnlichen) Natur und Vermögens für uns und alle vernünftige mit der Sinnenwelt in Verbindung stehende Wesen, so weit wir sie uns nach der Beschaffenheit unserer Vernunft vorstellen können, zu einem allgemeinen regulativen Princip, welches die Beschaffenheit der Freiheit als Form der Causalität nicht objectiv bestimmt, sondern und zwar mit nicht minderer Gültigkeit, als ob dieses geschähe, die Regel der Handlungen nach jener Idee für jedermann zu Geboten macht.
Eben so kann man auch, was unsern vorhabenden Fall betrifft, einräumen: wir würden zwischen Naturmechanism und Technik der Natur, d. i. Zweckverknüpfung in derselben, keinen Unterschied finden, wäre unser Verstand nicht von der Art, daß er vom Allgemeinen zum Besondern gehen muß, und die Urtheilskraft also in Ansehung des Besondern keine A 344 Zweckmäßigkeit erkennen, mithin keine bestimmende Urtheile fällen kann, ohne ein allgemeines Gesetz zu haben, worunter sie jenes subsumiren könne. Da nun aber das Besondere als ein solches in Ansehung des Allgemeinen etwas Zufälliges enthält, gleichwohl aber die Vernunft in der Verbindung besonderer Gesetze der Natur doch auch Einheit, mithin Gesetzlichkeit erfordert (welche Gesetzlichkeit des Zufälligen Zweckmäßigkeit heißt), und die Ableitung der besonderen Gesetze aus den allgemeinen in Ansehung dessen, was jene Zufälliges in sich enthalten, a priori durch Bestimmung des Begriffs vom Objecte unmöglich ist: so wird der Begriff der Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur in ihren Producten ein für die menschliche Urtheilskraft in Ansehung der Natur nothwendiger, aber nicht die Bestimmung der Objecte selbst angehender Begriff sein, also ein subjectives Princip der Vernunft für die Urtheilskraft, welches als regulativ (nicht constitutiv) für unsere menschliche Urtheilskraft eben so nothwendig gilt, als ob es ein objectives Princip wäre.
77 405 Von der Eigenthümlichkeit des menschlichen Verstandes, wodurch uns der Begriff eines Naturzwecks möglich wird.
Wir haben in der Anmerkung Eigenthümlichkeiten unseres (selbst des oberen) Erkenntnißvermögens, welche wir leichtlich als objective Prädicate auf die Sachen selbst überzutragen verleitet werden, angeführt; aber sie betreffen Ideen, denen angemessen kein Gegenstand in der Erfahrung A 345 gegeben werden kann, und die alsdann nur zu regulativen Principien in Verfolgung der letzeren dienen konnten. Mit dem Begriffe eines Naturzwecks verhält es sich zwar eben so, was die Ursache der Möglichkeit eines solchen Prädicats betrifft, die nur in der Idee liegen kann; aber die ihr gemäße Folge (das Product selbst) ist doch in der Natur gegeben, und der Begriff einer Causalität der letzteren, als eines nach Zwecken handelnden Wesens, scheint die Idee eines Naturzwecks zu einem constitutiven Princip desselben zu machen: und darin hat sie etwas von allen andern Ideen Unterscheidendes.
Dieses Unterscheidende besteht aber darin: daß gedachte Idee nicht ein Vernunftprincip für den Verstand, sondern für die Urtheilskraft, mithin lediglich die Anwendung eines Verstandes überhaupt auf mögliche Gegenstände der Erfahrung ist; und zwar da, wo das Urtheil nicht bestimmend, sondern bloß reflectirend sein kann, mithin der Gegenstand zwar in der Erfahrung gegeben, aber darüber der Idee gemäß gar nicht einmal bestimmt (geschweige völlig angemessen) geurtheilt, sondern nur über ihn reflectirt werden kann.
Es betrifft also eine Eigenthümlichkeit unseres (menschlichen) Verstandes in Ansehung der Urtheilskraft in der Reflexion derselben über Dinge der Natur. Wenn das aber ist, so muß hier die Idee von einem andern möglichen Verstande, als dem menschlichen zum Grunde liegen A 346 (so wie wir in der Kritik der r. V. eine andere mögliche Anschauung in Gedanken haben mußten, wenn die unsrige als eine besondere Art, nämlich die, für welche Gegenstände nur als Erscheinungen gelten, gehalten werden sollte), damit man sagen könne: gewisse Naturproducte müssen nach der besonderen Beschaffenheit unseres Verstandes von uns ihrer Möglichkeit nach als absichtlich und als Zwecke erzeugt betrachtet werden, ohne doch darum zu verlangen, daß es wirklich eine besondere 406 Ursache, welche die Vorstellung eines Zwecks zu ihrem Bestimmungsgrunde hat, gebe, mithin ohne in Abrede zu ziehen, daß nicht ein anderer (höherer) Verstand, als der menschliche auch im Mechanism der Natur, d. i. einer Causalverbindung, zu der nicht ausschließungsweise ein Verstand als Ursache angenommen wird, den Grund der Möglichkeit solcher Producte der Natur antreffen könne.
Es kommt hier also auf das Verhalten unseres Verstandes zur Urtheilskraft an, daß wir nämlich darin eine gewisse Zufälligkeit der Beschaffenheit des unsrigen aufsuchen, um diese Eigenthümlichkeit unseres Verstandes zum Unterschiede von anderen möglichen anzumerken.
Diese Zufälligkeit findet sich ganz natürlich in dem Besondern, welches die Urtheilskraft unter das Allgemeine der Verstandesbegriffe bringen soll; denn durch das Allgemeine unseres (menschlichen) Verstandes ist das Besondere nicht bestimmt; und es ist zufällig, auf wie vielerlei A 347 Art unterschiedene Dinge, die doch in einem gemeinsamen Merkmale übereinkommen, unserer Wahrnehmung vorkommen können. Unser Verstand ist ein Vermögen der Begriffe, d. i. ein discursiver Verstand, für den es freilich zufällig sein muß, welcherlei und wie sehr verschieden das Besondere sein mag, das ihm in der Natur gegeben werden und das unter seine Begriffe gebracht werden kann. Weil aber zum Erkenntniß doch auch Anschauung gehört, und ein Vermögen einer völligen Spontaneität der Anschauung ein von der Sinnlichkeit unterschiedenes und davon ganz unabhängiges Erkenntnißvermögen, mithin Verstand in der allgemeinsten Bedeutung sein würde: so kann man sich auch einen intuitiven Verstand (negativ, nämlich bloß als nicht discursiven) denken, welcher nicht vom Allgemeinen zum Besonderen und so zum Einzelnen (durch Begriffe) geht, und für welchen jene Zufälligkeit der Zusammenstimmung der Natur in ihren Producten nach besondern Gesetzen zum Verstande nicht angetroffen wird, welche dem unsrigen es so schwer macht, das Mannigfaltige derselben zur Einheit des Erkenntnisses zu bringen; ein Geschäft, das der unsrige nur durch Übereinstimmung der Naturmerkmale zu unserm Vermögen der Begriffe, welche sehr zufällig ist, zu Stande bringen kann, dessen ein anschauender Verstand aber nicht bedarf.
Unser Verstand hat also das Eigene für die Urtheilskraft, daß im A 348 Erkenntniß durch denselben durch das Allgemeine das Besondere nicht bestimmt wird, und dieses also von jenem allein nicht abgeleitet werden kann; gleichwohl aber dieses Besondere in der Mannigfaltigkeit der Natur 407 zum Allgemeinen (durch Begriffe und Gesetze) zusammenstimmen soll, um darunter subsumirt werden zu können, welche Zusammenstimmung unter solchen Umständen sehr zufällig und für die Urtheilskraft ohne bestimmtes Princip sein muß.
Um nun gleichwohl die Möglichkeit einer solchen Zusammenstimmung der Dinge der Natur zur Urtheilskraft (welche wir als zufällig, mithin nur durch einen darauf gerichteten Zweck als möglich vorstellen) wenigstens denken zu können, müssen wir uns zugleich einen andern Verstand denken, in Beziehung auf welchen und zwar vor allem ihm beigelegten Zweck wir jene Zusammenstimmung der Naturgesetze mit unserer Urtheilskraft, die für unsern Verstand nur durch das Verbindungsmittel der Zwecke denkbar ist, als nothwendig vorstellen können.
Unser Verstand nämlich hat die Eigenschaft, daß er in seinem Erkenntnisse, z. B. der Ursache eines Products, vom Analytisch-Allgemeinen (von Begriffen) zum Besondern (der gegebenen empirischen Anschauung) gehen muß; wobei er also in Ansehung der Mannigfaltigkeit des letztern nichts bestimmt, sondern diese Bestimmung für die Urtheilskraft A 349 von der Subsumtion der empirischen Anschauung (wenn der Gegenstand ein Naturproduct ist) unter dem Begriff erwarten muß. Nun können wir uns aber auch einen Verstand denken, der, weil er nicht wie der unsrige discursiv, sondern intuitiv ist, vom Synthetisch-Allgemeinen (der Anschauung eines Ganzen als eines solchen) zum Besondern geht, d. i. vom Ganzen zu den Theilen; der also und dessen Vorstellung des Ganzen die Zufälligkeit der Verbindung der Theile nicht in sich enthält, um eine bestimmte Form des Ganzen möglich zu machen, die unser Verstand bedarf, welcher von den Theilen als allgemeingedachten Gründen zu verschiedenen darunter zu subsumirenden möglichen Formen als Folgen fortgehen muß. Nach der Beschaffenheit unseres Verstandes ist hingegen ein reales Ganze der Natur nur als Wirkung der concurrirenden bewegenden Kräfte der Theile anzusehen. Wollen wir uns also nicht die Möglichkeit des Ganzen als von den Theilen, wie es unserm discursiven Verstande gemäß ist, sondern nach Maßgabe des intuitiven (urbildlichen) die Möglichkeit der Theile (ihrer Beschaffenheit und Verbindung nach) als vom Ganzen abhängend vorstellen: so kann dieses nach eben derselben Eigenthümlichkeit unseres Verstandes nicht so geschehen, daß das Ganze den Grund der Möglichkeit der Verknüpfung der Theile (welches in der discursiven Erkenntnißart Widerspruch sein würde), sondern nur daß die 408 Vorstellung eines Ganzen den Grund der Möglichkeit der Form desselben A 350 und der dazu gehörigen Verknüpfung der Theile enthalte. Da das Ganze nun aber alsdann eine Wirkung, Product, sein würde, dessen Vorstellung als die Ursache seiner Möglichkeit angesehen wird, das Product aber einer Ursache, deren Bestimmungsgrund bloß die Vorstellung ihrer Wirkung ist, ein Zweck heißt: so folgt daraus, daß es bloß eine Folge aus der besondern Beschaffenheit unseres Verstandes sei, wenn wir Produkte der Natur nach einer andern Art der Causalität, als der der Naturgesetze der Materie, nämlich nur nach der der Zwecke und Endursachen, uns als möglich vorstellen, und daß dieses Princip nicht die Möglichkeit solcher Dinge selbst (selbst als Phänomene betrachtet) nach dieser Erzeugungsart, sondern nur die unserem Verstande mögliche Beurtheilung derselben angehe. Wobei wir zugleich einsehen, warum wir in der Naturkunde mit einer Erklärung der Producte der Natur durch Causalität nach Zwecken lange nicht zufrieden sind, weil wir nämlich in derselben die Naturerzeugung bloß unserm Vermögen sie zu beurtheilen, d. i. der reflectirenden Urtheilskraft und nicht den Dingen selbst zum Behuf der bestimmenden Urtheilskraft angemessen zu beurtheilen verlangen. Es ist hiebei auch gar nicht nöthig zu beweisen, daß ein solcher intellectus archetypus möglich sei, sondern nur daß wir in der Dagegenhaltung unseres discursiven, der Bilder bedürftigen Verstandes (intellectus ectypus) und der A 351 Zufälligkeit einer solchen Beschaffenheit auf jene Idee (eines intellectus archetypus) geführt werden, diese auch keinen Widerspruch enthalte.
Wenn wir nun ein Ganzes der Materie seiner Form nach als ein Product der Theile und ihrer Kräfte und Vermögen sich von selbst zu verbinden (andere Materien, die diese einander zuführen, hinzugedacht) betrachten: so stellen wir uns eine mechanische Erzeugungsart desselben vor. Aber es kommt auf solche Art kein Begriff von einem Ganzen als Zweck heraus, dessen innere Möglichkeit durchaus die Idee von einem Ganzen voraussetzt, von der selbst die Beschaffenheit und Wirkungsart der Theile abhängt, wie wir uns doch einen organisirten Körper vorstellen müssen. Hieraus folgt aber, wie eben gewiesen worden, nicht, daß die mechanische Erzeugung eines solchen Körpers unmöglich sei; denn das würde soviel sagen, als, es sei eine solche Einheit in der Verknüpfung des Mannigfaltigen für jeden Verstand unmöglich (d. i. widersprechend) sich vorzustellen, ohne daß die Idee derselben zugleich die erzeugende Ursache derselben sei, d. i. ohne absichtliche Hervorbringung. Gleichwohl würde dieses 409 in der That folgen, wenn wir materielle Wesen als Dinge an sich selbst anzusehen berechtigt wären. Denn alsdann würde die Einheit, welche den Grund der Möglichkeit der Naturbildungen ausmacht, lediglich die Einheit des Raums sein, welcher aber kein Realgrund der Erzeugungen, sondern A 352 nur die formale Bedingung derselben ist; obwohl er mit dem Realgrunde, welchen wir suchen, darin einige Ähnlichkeit hat, daß in ihm kein Theil ohne in Verhältniß auf das Ganze (dessen Vorstellung also der Möglichkeit der Theile zum Grunde liegt) bestimmt werden kann. Da es aber doch wenigstens möglich ist, die materielle Welt als bloße Erscheinung zu betrachten und etwas als Ding an sich selbst (welches nicht Erscheinung ist), als Substrat, zu denken, diesem aber eine correspondirende intellectuelle Anschauung (wenn sie gleich nicht die unsrige ist) unterzulegen: so würde ein, obzwar für uns unerkennbarer, übersinnlicher Realgrund für die Natur Statt finden, zu der wir selbst mitgehören, in welcher wir also das, was in ihr als Gegenstand der Sinne nothwendig ist, nach mechanischen Gesetzen, die Zusammenstimmung und Einheit aber der besonderen Gesetze und der Formen nach denselben, die wir in Ansehung jener als zufällig beurtheilen müssen, in ihr als Gegenstande der Vernunft (ja das Naturganze als System) zugleich nach teleologischen Gesetzen betrachten und sie nach zweierlei Principien beurtheilen würden, ohne daß die mechanische Erklärungsart durch die teleologische, als ob sie einander widersprächen, ausgeschlossen wird.
Hieraus läßt sich auch das, was man sonst zwar leicht vermuthen, aber schwerlich mit Gewißheit behaupten und beweisen konnte, einsehen, A 353 daß zwar das Princip einer mechanischen Ableitung zweckmäßiger Naturproducte neben dem teleologischen bestehen, dieses letztere aber keinesweges entbehrlich machen könnte: d. i. man kann an einem Dinge, welches wir als Naturzweck beurtheilen müssen (einem organisirten Wesen), zwar alle bekannte und noch zu entdeckende Gesetze der mechanischen Erzeugung versuchen und auch hoffen dürfen damit guten Fortgang zu haben, niemals aber der Berufung auf einen davon ganz unterschiedenen Erzeugungsgrund, nämlich der Causalität durch Zwecke, für die Möglichkeit eines solchen Products überhoben sein; und schlechterdings kann keine menschliche Vernunft (auch keine endliche, die der Qualität nach der unsrigen ähnlich wäre, sie aber dem Grade nach noch so sehr überstiege) die Erzeugung auch nur eines Gräschens aus bloß mechanischen Ursachen zu verstehen hoffen. Denn wenn die teleologische Verknüpfung der Ursachen und 410 Wirkungen zur Möglichkeit eines solchen Gegenstandes für die Urtheilskraft ganz unentbehrlich ist, selbst um diese nur am Leitfaden der Erfahrung zu studieren; wenn für äußere Gegenstände als Erscheinungen ein sich auf Zwecke beziehender hinreichender Grund gar nicht angetroffen werden kann, sondern dieser, der auch in der Natur liegt, doch nur im übersinnlichen Substrat derselben gesucht werden muß, von welchem uns aber alle mögliche Einsicht abgeschnitten ist: so ist es uns schlechterdings unmöglich, aus der Natur selbst hergenommene Erklärungsgründe für A 354 Zweckverbindungen zu schöpfen, und es ist nach der Beschaffenheit des menschlichen Erkenntnißvermögens nothwendig, den obersten Grund dazu in einem ursprünglichen Verstande als Weltursache zu suchen.
78 Von der Vereinigung des Princips des allgemeinen Mechanismus der Materie mit dem teleologischen in der Technik der Natur.
Es liegt der Vernunft unendlich viel daran, den Mechanism der Natur in ihren Erzeugungen nicht fallen zu lassen und in der Erklärung derselben nicht vorbei zu gehen: weil ohne diesen keine Einsicht in die Natur der Dinge erlangt werden kann. Wenn man uns gleich einräumt: daß ein höchster Architekt die Formen der Natur, so wie sie von je her da sind, unmittelbar geschaffen, oder die, welche sich in ihrem Laufe continuirlich nach eben demselben Muster bilden, prädeterminirt habe: so ist doch dadurch unsere Erkenntniß der Natur nicht im mindesten gefördert: weil wir jenes Wesens Handlungsart und die Ideen desselben, welche die Principien der Möglichkeit der Naturwesen enthalten sollen, gar nicht kennen und von demselben als von oben herab (a priori) die Natur nicht erklären können. Wollen wir aber von den Formen der Gegenstände der Erfahrung, also von unten hinauf (a posteriori), weil wir in diesen Zweckmäßigkeit anzutreffen glauben, um diese zu erklären, uns auf eine nach Zwecken A 355 wirkende Ursache berufen: so würden wir ganz tautologisch erklären und die Vernunft mit Worten täuschen, ohne noch zu erwähnen: daß da, wo wir uns mit dieser Erklärungsart ins Überschwengliche verlieren, wohin uns die Naturerkenntniß nicht folgen kann, die Vernunft dichterisch zu schwärmen verleitet wird, welches zu verhüten eben ihre vorzüglichste Bestimmung ist.
411 Von der andern Seite ist es eine eben sowohl nothwendige Maxime der Vernunft, das Princip der Zwecke an den Producten der Natur nicht vorbei zu gehen: weil es, wenn es gleich die Entstehungsart derselben uns eben nicht begreiflicher macht, doch ein heuristisches Princip ist, den besondern Gesetzen der Natur nachzuforschen; gesetzt auch, daß man davon keinen Gebrauch machen wollte, um die Natur selbst darnach zu erklären, indem man sie so lange, ob sie gleich absichtliche Zweckeinheit augenscheinlich darlegen, noch immer nur Naturzwecke nennt, d. i. ohne über die Natur hinaus den Grund der Möglichkeit derselben zu suchen. Weil es aber doch am Ende zur Frage wegen der letzteren kommen muß: so ist es eben so nothwendig für sie, eine besondere Art der Causalität, die sich nicht in der Natur vorfindet, zu denken, als die Mechanik der Naturursachen die ihrige hat, indem zu der Receptivität mehrerer und anderer Formen, als deren die Materie nach der letzteren fähig ist, noch eine Spontaneität einer A 356 Ursache (die also nicht Materie sein kann) hinzukommen muß, ohne welche von jenen Formen kein Grund angegeben werden kann. Zwar muß die Vernunft, ehe sie diesen Schritt thut, behutsam verfahren und nicht jede Technik der Natur, d. i. ein productives Vermögen derselben, welches Zweckmäßigkeit der Gestalt für unsere bloße Apprehension an sich zeigt (wie bei regulären Körpern), für teleologisch zu erklären suchen, sondern immer so lange für bloß mechanisch-möglich ansehen; allein darüber das teleologische Princip gar ausschließen und, wo die Zweckmäßigkeit für die Vernunftuntersuchung der Möglichkeit der Naturformen durch ihre Ursachen sich ganz unläugbar als Beziehung auf eine andere Art der Causalität zeigt, doch immer den bloßen Mechanism befolgen wollen, muß die Vernunft eben so phantastisch und unter Hirngespinsten von Naturvermögen, die sich gar nicht denken lassen, herumschweifend machen, als eine bloß teleologische Erklärungsart, die gar keine Rücksicht auf den Naturmechanism nimmt, sie schwärmerisch machte.
An einem und eben demselben Dinge der Natur lassen sich nicht beide Principien, als Grundsätze der Erklärung (Deduction) eines von dem andern, verknüpfen, d. i. als dogmatische und constitutive Principien der Natureinsicht für die bestimmende Urtheilskraft vereinigen. Wenn ich z. B. von einer Made annehme, sie sei als Product des bloßen Mechanismus der Materie (der neuen Bildung, die sie für sich selbst bewerkstelligt, A 357 wenn ihre Elemente durch Fäulniß in Freiheit gesetzt werden) anzusehen: so kann ich nun nicht von eben derselben Materie, als einer Causalität 412 nach Zwecken zu handeln, eben dasselbe Product ableiten. Umgekehrt, wenn ich dasselbe Product als Naturzweck annehme, kann ich nicht auf eine mechanische Erzeugungsart desselben rechnen und solche als constitutives Princip zur Beurtheilung desselben seiner Möglichkeit nach annehmen und so beide Principien vereinigen. Denn eine Erklärungsart schließt die andere aus; gesetzt auch, daß objectiv beide Gründe der Möglichkeit eines solchen Products auf einem einzigen beruhten, wir aber auf diesen nicht Rücksicht nähmen. Das Princip, welches die Vereinbarkeit beider in Beurtheilung der Natur nach denselben möglich machen soll, muß in dem, was außerhalb beiden (mithin auch außer der möglichen empirischen Naturvorstellung) liegt, von dieser aber doch den Grund enthält, d. i. im Übersinnlichen, gesetzt und eine jede beider Erklärungsarten darauf bezogen werden. Da wir nun von diesem nichts als den unbestimmten Begriff eines Grundes haben können, der die Beurtheilung der Natur nach empirischen Gesetzen möglich macht, übrigens aber ihn durch kein Prädicat näher bestimmen können: so folgt, daß die Vereinigung beider Principien nicht auf einem Grunde der Erklärung (Explication) der Möglichkeit eines Products nach gegebenen Gesetzen für die bestimmende, A 358 sondern nur auf einem Grunde der Erörterung (Exposition) derselben für die reflectirende Urtheilskraft beruhen könne. — Denn Erklären heißt von einem Princip ableiten, welches man also deutlich muß erkennen und angeben können. Nun müssen zwar das Princip des Mechanisms der Natur und das der Causalität derselben nach Zwecken an einem und eben demselben Naturproducte in einem einzigen oberen Princip zusammenhängen und daraus gemeinschaftlich abfließen, weil sie sonst in der Naturbetrachtung nicht neben einander bestehen könnten. Wenn aber dieses objectiv-gemeinschaftliche und also auch die Gemeinschaft der davon abhängenden Maxime der Naturforschung berechtigende Princip von der Art ist, daß es zwar angezeigt, nie aber bestimmt erkannt und für den Gebrauch in vorkommenden Fällen deutlich angegeben werden kann: so läßt sich aus einem solchen Princip keine Erklärung, d. i. deutliche und bestimmte Ableitung, der Möglichkeit eines nach jenen zwei heterogenen Principien möglichen Naturproducts ziehen. Nun ist aber das gemeinschaftliche Princip der mechanischen einerseits und der teleologischen Ableitung andrerseits das Übersinnliche, welches wir der Natur als Phänomen unterlegen müssen. Von diesem aber können wir uns in theoretischer Absicht nicht den mindesten bejahend bestimmten Begriff machen. Wie also nach 413 demselben, als Princip, die Natur (nach ihren besondern Gesetzen) für uns ein System ausmache, welches sowohl nach dem Princip der Erzeugung A 359 von physischen als dem der Endursachen als möglich erkannt werden könne: läßt sich keinesweges erklären; sondern nur, wenn es sich zuträgt, daß Gegenstände der Natur vorkommen, die nach dem Princip des Mechanisms (welches jederzeit an einem Naturwesen Anspruch hat) ihrer Möglichkeit nach, ohne uns auf teleologische Grundsätze zu stützen, von uns nicht können gedacht werden, voraussetzen, daß man nur getrost beiden gemäß den Naturgesetzen nachforschen dürfe (nachdem die Möglichkeit ihres Products aus einem oder dem andern Princip unserm Verstande erkennbar ist), ohne sich an den scheinbaren Widerstreit zu stoßen, der sich zwischen den Principien der Beurtheilung desselben hervorthut: weil wenigstens die Möglichkeit, daß beide auch objectiv in einem Princip vereinbar sein möchten (da sie Erscheinungen betreffen, die einen übersinnlichen Grund voraussetzen), gesichert ist.
Ob also gleich sowohl der Mechanism als der teleologische (absichtliche) Technicism der Natur in Ansehung ebendesselben Products und seiner Möglichkeit unter einem gemeinschaftlichen obern Princip der Natur nach besondern Gesetzen stehen mögen: so können wir doch, da dieses Princip transscendent ist, nach der Eingeschränktheit unseres Verstandes beide Principien in der Erklärung eben derselben Naturerzeugung alsdann nicht vereinigen, wenn selbst die innere Möglichkeit dieses Products nur durch eine Causalität nach Zwecken verständlich ist (wie organisirte A 360 Materien von der Art sind). Es bleibt also bei dem obigen Grundsatze der Teleologie: daß nach der Beschaffenheit des menschlichen Verstandes für die Möglichkeit organischer Wesen in der Natur keine andere als absichtlich wirkende Ursache könne angenommen werden, und der bloße Mechanism der Natur zur Erklärung dieser ihrer Producte gar nicht hinlänglich sein könne; ohne doch dadurch in Ansehung der Möglichkeit solcher Dinge selbst durch diesen Grundsatz entscheiden zu wollen.
Da nämlich dieser nur eine Maxime der reflectirenden, nicht der bestimmenden Urtheilskraft ist, daher nur subjectiv für uns, nicht objectiv für die Möglichkeit dieser Art Dinge selbst gilt (wo beiderlei Erzeugungsarten wohl in einem und demselben Grunde zusammenhängen könnten); da ferner ohne allen zu der teleologisch-gedachten Erzeugungsart hinzukommenden Begriff von einem dabei zugleich anzutreffenden Mechanism der Natur dergleichen Erzeugung gar nicht als Naturproduct beurtheilt 414 werden könnte: so führt obige Maxime zugleich die Nothwendigkeit einer Vereinigung beider Principien in der Beurtheilung der Dinge als Naturzwecke bei sich, aber nicht um eine ganz, oder in gewissen Stücken an die Stelle der andern zu setzen. Denn an die Stelle dessen, was (von uns wenigstens) nur als nach Absicht möglich gedacht wird, läßt sich kein Mechanism; und an die Stelle dessen, was nach diesem als nothwendig erkannt wird, läßt sich keine Zufälligkeit, die eines Zwecks zum Bestimmungsgrunde A 361 bedürfe, annehmen: sondern nur die eine (der Mechanism) der andern (dem absichtlichen Technicism) unterordnen, welches nach dem transscendentalen Princip der Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur ganz wohl geschehen darf.
Denn wo Zwecke als Gründe der Möglichkeit gewisser Dinge gedacht werden, da muß man auch Mittel annehmen, deren Wirkungsgesetz für sich nichts einen Zweck Voraussetzendes bedarf, mithin mechanisch und doch eine untergeordnete Ursache absichtlicher Wirkungen sein kann. Daher läßt sich selbst in organischen Producten der Natur, noch mehr aber, wenn wir, durch die unendliche Menge derselben veranlaßt, das Absichtliche in der Verbindung der Naturursachen nach besondern Gesetzen nun auch (wenigstens durch erlaubte Hypothese) zum allgemeinen Princip der reflectirenden Urtheilskraft für das Naturganze (die Welt) annehmen, eine große und sogar allgemeine Verbindung der mechanischen Gesetze mit den teleologischen in den Erzeugungen der Natur denken, ohne die Principien der Beurtheilung derselben zu verwechseln und eines an die Stelle des andern zu setzen: weil in einer teleologischen Beurtheilung die Materie, selbst wenn die Form, welche sie annimmt, nur als nach Absicht möglich beurtheilt wird, doch ihrer Natur nach mechanischen Gesetzen gemäß jenem vorgestellten Zwecke auch zum Mittel untergeordnet sein kann; wiewohl, A 362 da der Grund dieser Vereinbarkeit in demjenigen liegt, was weder das eine noch das andere (weder Mechanism, noch Zweckverbindung), sondern das übersinnliche Substrat der Natur ist, von dem wir nichts erkennen, für unsere (die menschliche) Vernunft beide Vorstellungsarten der Möglichkeit solcher Objecte nicht zusammenzuschmelzen sind, sondern wir sie nicht anders als nach der Verknüpfung der Endursachen auf einem obersten Verstande gegründet beurtheilen können, wodurch also der teleologischen Erklärungsart nichts benommen wird.
Weil nun aber ganz unbestimmt und für unsere Vernunft auch auf immer unbestimmbar ist, wieviel der Mechanism der Natur als Mittel zu 415 jeder Endabsicht in derselben thue; und wegen des oberwähnten intelligibelen Princips der Möglichkeit einer Natur überhaupt gar angenommen werden kann, daß sie durchgängig nach beiderlei allgemein zusammenstimmenden Gesetzen (den physischen und den der Endursachen) möglich sei, wiewohl wir die Art, wie dieses zugehe, gar nicht einsehen können: so wissen wir auch nicht, wie weit die für uns mögliche mechanische Erklärungsart gehe, sondern nur so viel gewiß: daß, so weit wir nur immer darin kommen mögen, sie doch allemal für Dinge, die wir einmal als Naturzwecke anerkennen, unzureichend sein und wir also nach der Beschaffenheit unseres Verstandes jene Gründe insgesammt einem teleologischen A 363 Princip unterordnen müssen.
Hierauf gründet sich nun die Befugniß und wegen der Wichtigkeit, welche das Naturstudium nach dem Princip des Mechanisms für unsern theoretischen Vernunftgebrauch hat, auch der Beruf: alle Producte und Ereignisse der Natur, selbst die zweckmäßigsten so weit mechanisch zu erklären, als es immer in unserm Vermögen (dessen Schranken wir innerhalb dieser Untersuchungsart nicht angeben können) steht, dabei aber niemals aus den Augen zu verlieren, daß wir die, welche wir allein unter dem Begriffe vom Zwecke der Vernunft zur Untersuchung selbst auch nur aufstellen können, der wesentlichen Beschaffenheit unserer Vernunft gemäß, jene mechanischen Ursachen ungeachtet, doch zuletzt der Causalität nach Zwecken unterordnen müssen.
28 Man sieht hieraus: daß in den meisten speculativen Dingen der reinen Vernunft, was die dogmatischen Behauptungen betrifft, die philosophischen Schulen gemeiniglich alle Auflösungen, die über eine gewisse Frage möglich sind, versucht haben. So hat man über die Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur bald entweder die leblose Materie, oder einen leblosen Gott, bald eine lebende Materie, oder auch einen lebendigen Gott zu diesem Behufe versucht. Für uns bleibt nichts übrig, als, wenn es Noth thun sollte, von allen diesen objectiven Behauptungen abzugehen und unser Urtheil bloß in Beziehung auf unsere Erkenntnißvermögen kritisch zu erwägen, um ihrem Princip eine, wo nicht dogmatische, doch zum sichern Vernunftgebrauch hinreichende Gültigkeit einer Maxime zu verschaffen.
Musean translation
A complete machine-assisted translation from the German text of the 1793 edition in the 1913 Academy printing, including Kant’s notes. The faculty table is given as lines.
Second Division. A 311 385 Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment.
69 What an Antinomy of the Power of Judgment Is.
The determining power of judgment has in itself no principles that ground concepts of objects. It is not autonomous, for it only subsumes under given laws or concepts as principles. For that very reason it is also exposed to no danger of an antinomy of its own and no conflict of its principles. Thus the transcendental power of judgment, which contained the conditions for subsuming under categories, was not in itself legislative; it merely specified the conditions of sensible intuition under which reality (application) can be given to a given concept as a law of the understanding. In this it could never fall into disagreement with itself, at least as regards principles.
But the reflective power of judgment is to subsume under a law A 312 that is not yet given, and is thus in fact only a principle of reflection on objects for which, objectively, we entirely lack a law, or a concept of the object sufficient as a principle for the cases that arise. Now since no use of the cognitive faculties may be allowed without principles, the reflective power of judgment must in such cases serve as its own principle. Because this principle is not objective and cannot supply a ground of cognition of the object sufficient for the purpose, it is to serve as a merely subjective principle for the purposive use of the cognitive faculties, namely for reflecting on a kind of object. Thus in relation to such cases the reflective power of judgment has its maxims, and indeed necessary ones, for the cognition of natural laws 386 in experience, so as to arrive through them at concepts, even if these should be concepts of reason, if it absolutely needs such concepts merely to become acquainted with nature according to its empirical laws.—Between these necessary maxims of the reflective power of judgment there can now be a conflict, and thus an antinomy, grounding a dialectic. If each of two conflicting maxims is grounded in the nature of the cognitive faculties, this can be called a natural dialectic and an A 313 unavoidable semblance, which must be exposed and resolved in the critique so that it does not deceive.
70 Presentation of This Antinomy.
Insofar as reason deals with nature as the sum of the objects of the outer senses, it can base itself on laws that the understanding partly prescribes to nature itself a priori, and partly can extend indefinitely through the empirical determinations occurring in experience. For applying laws of the first kind, namely the universal laws of material nature in general, the power of judgment needs no special principle of reflection; for here it is determining, because an objective principle is given to it by the understanding. But as regards particular laws, which can become known to us only through experience, there may be such great variety and heterogeneity among them that the power of judgment must serve as its own principle even to search for and discern a law in nature's appearances. It needs such a principle as a guiding thread if it is even to hope for a connected experiential cognition according to a thoroughgoing lawfulness of nature, a unity of nature according to empirical laws. With this contingent unity of particular laws, it may now happen that A 314 the power of judgment proceeds in its reflection from two maxims, one furnished a priori by the understanding alone, the other occasioned by particular experiences that bring reason into play in order to judge corporeal nature and its laws according to a special principle. It then happens that these two kinds of maxim seem unable to coexist 387, and thus a dialectic emerges that confuses the power of judgment in the principle of its reflection.
Its first maxim is the thesis: all production of material things and their forms must be judged as possible according to merely mechanical laws.
Its second maxim is the antithesis: some products of material nature cannot be judged as possible according to merely mechanical laws (judging them requires an entirely different law of causality, namely that of final causes).
If we were now to transform these regulative principles for inquiry into constitutive principles of the possibility of the objects themselves, they would read:
Thesis: all production of material things is possible according to merely mechanical laws.
Antithesis: some production of them is not possible according to merely mechanical A 315 laws.
In this latter capacity, as objective principles for the determining power of judgment, they would contradict one another, and thus one of the two propositions would necessarily be false. But although this would then be an antinomy, it would not be one of the power of judgment, but a conflict in reason's legislation. Reason, however, can prove neither of these principles, because we can have no determining a priori principle concerning the possibility of things according to merely empirical laws of nature.
By contrast, the maxim of a reflective power of judgment presented first contains in fact no contradiction at all. For when I say that I must judge all events in material nature, and thus also all forms as its products, with regard to their possibility according to merely mechanical laws, I do not thereby say that they are possible according to these alone, to the exclusion of every other kind of causality. Rather, this means only that I should always reflect on them according to the principle of the mere mechanism of nature, and thus investigate this as far as I can, since without laying it at the basis of inquiry there can be no cognition of nature proper at all. Now this does not hinder the second maxim, when occasion arises, from seeking out a principle for certain natural forms (and A 316, on their occasion, even for nature as a whole) and 388 reflecting on them according to it—a principle entirely different from explanation according to nature's mechanism, namely that of final causes. For reflection according to the first maxim is not thereby annulled; rather, we are commanded to pursue it as far as we can. Nor does this say that those forms would be impossible according to nature's mechanism. It asserts only that human reason, in following that maxim and proceeding in this way, will never be able to discover the slightest ground of what constitutes the specific character of a natural end, though it can discover other cognitions of natural laws. It remains undecided whether, in the inner ground of nature itself unknown to us, physical-mechanical connection and connection through ends in the same things might not be linked in one principle. Only, our reason is not capable of uniting them in such a principle, and the power of judgment, therefore, as reflective (from a subjective ground), not as determining (according to an objective principle of the possibility of things in themselves), is compelled to think, as the ground of the possibility of certain forms in nature, a principle other than that of nature's mechanism.
71 A 317 Preparation for Resolving the Above Antinomy.
We can in no way prove the impossibility of producing organized natural products through the mere mechanism of nature. For we cannot comprehend the infinite variety of particular natural laws, which are contingent for us because they are cognized only empirically, according to their first inner ground; and thus we can never reach the inner, thoroughly sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature, which lies in the supersensible. Whether, then, nature's productive capacity is not as sufficient for what we judge formed or connected according to the idea of ends as for what we believe requires merely a machinery of nature; and whether things as genuine natural ends (as we must necessarily judge them) actually rest on an entirely different kind of original causality that cannot be contained in material nature or its intelligible substrate, namely an architectonic understanding 389—on this our reason, very narrowly limited with regard to the concept of causality when it is to be specified a priori, can give no information whatever.—But it is equally and indubitably certain that, relative to our cognitive faculty, the mere mechanism of nature can furnish no ground for explaining the production A 318 of organized beings. For the reflective power of judgment, therefore, this is an entirely correct principle: for the so manifest connection of things according to final causes, we must think a causality distinct from mechanism, namely that of an (intelligent) cause of the world acting according to ends—however rash and unprovable this principle would be for the determining power of judgment. In the former case it is a mere maxim of the power of judgment, in which the concept of that causality is a mere idea to which we in no way undertake to concede reality, but which we use only as a guiding thread for reflection. This reflection always remains open to all mechanical grounds of explanation and does not lose itself beyond the world of sense. In the second case the principle would be an objective one prescribed by reason, to which the power of judgment would have to submit determinatively; but in doing so it loses itself beyond the world of sense in the transcendent, and is perhaps led astray.
Thus every appearance of an antinomy between the maxims of the properly physical (mechanical) and the teleological (technical) modes of explanation rests on confusing a principle of the reflective power of judgment with one of the determining power, and the autonomy of the former (which holds merely subjectively for our use of reason with regard to particular A 319 experiential laws) with the heteronomy of the latter, which must conform to the laws, universal or particular, given by the understanding.
72 On the Various Systems Concerning the Purposiveness of Nature.
No one has yet doubted the correctness of the principle that certain things in nature (organized beings) and their possibility must be judged according to the concept of final causes, even if we require only a guiding thread for learning their constitution through observation, without venturing as far as an investigation of their first origin 390. The question can therefore only be whether this principle is merely subjectively valid—that is, merely a maxim of our power of judgment—or an objective principle of nature, according to which nature possesses, beyond its mechanism (according to mere laws of motion), another kind of causality, namely that of final causes, under which the former causes (the motive forces) would stand only as intermediate causes.
Now we could leave this question or problem entirely undecided and unresolved for speculation, because, if we content ourselves in speculation with the bounds of mere cognition of nature, those maxims suffice for studying nature as far as human A 320 powers reach and tracing its most hidden secrets. It is therefore perhaps a certain intimation of our reason, or a hint nature has as it were given us, that through this concept of final causes we might even reach beyond nature and connect nature itself to the highest point in the series of causes, if we abandoned the investigation of nature (although we have not yet advanced far in it), or at least suspended it for a time, and first tried to discover where that stranger in natural science, the concept of natural ends, leads.
Here, admittedly, that undisputed maxim would have to pass into a problem opening a wide field of controversy: whether the connection of ends in nature proves a special kind of causality for nature; or whether, considered in itself and according to objective principles, this connection is not rather identical with nature's mechanism, or rests on one and the same ground. Only, since this ground is often hidden too deeply for our inquiry in certain natural products, we try a subjective principle, namely that of art, that is, causality according to ideas, to place beneath nature by analogy. This expedient succeeds in many cases, and seems to fail in some; but in no case does it entitle us to introduce into natural science a special mode of action distinct from A 321 causality according to merely mechanical laws of nature itself. Calling nature's procedure (its causality) a technique because of the resemblance to ends we find in its products, we shall divide this into intentional (technica intentionalis) and unintentional (technica naturalis). The first is to mean that nature's productive 391 capacity according to final causes must be held to be a special kind of causality; the second, that it is fundamentally quite identical with nature's mechanism, and that its accidental coincidence with our concepts of art and their rules, as merely subjective conditions for judging it, is falsely interpreted as a special kind of natural production.
When we now speak of systems for explaining nature with regard to final causes, we must note carefully that they all dispute dogmatically with one another, that is, about objective principles of the possibility of things, whether through intentionally acting causes or through wholly unintentionally acting ones, not about the subjective maxim for merely judging the cause of such purposive products. In the latter case disparate principles could still be reconciled, whereas in the former contradictorily opposed principles cancel one another A 322 and cannot coexist.
The systems concerning nature's technique, that is, its productive force according to the rule of ends, are twofold: the idealism or the realism of natural ends. The former asserts that all purposiveness of nature is unintentional; the latter, that some of it (in organized beings) is intentional. From this we could also draw the hypothetical consequence that nature's technique, even concerning all its other products in relation to nature as a whole, is intentional, that is, an end.
1) The idealism of purposiveness (by which I always mean objective purposiveness here) is either that of the chance or that of the fatality of nature's determination in the purposive form of its products. The former principle concerns the relation of matter to the physical ground of its form, namely the laws of motion; the latter concerns its hyperphysical ground and that of nature as a whole. Taken literally, the system of chance, attributed to Epicurus or Democritus, is so plainly absurd that it need not detain us. The system of fatality, however (of which Spinoza is made the author, although to all appearances it is much older), appeals to something supersensible, beyond the reach of our insight A 323, and is not so easily refuted, because its concept of the original being cannot be understood at all. This much, however, is clear: the connection of ends in the world must in this system be assumed as unintentional 392, since it is derived from an original being, but not from its understanding, and thus from no intention of that being, but from the necessity of its nature and the unity of the world stemming from it. Hence the fatalism of purposiveness is at the same time an idealism of it.
2) The realism of nature's purposiveness is likewise either physical or hyperphysical. The first grounds ends in nature on an analogue of a capacity acting intentionally: the life of matter (within it, or through an animating inner principle, a world soul), and is called hylozoism. The second derives them from the original ground of the universe as an intelligent being producing intentionally (originally living), and is theism.28
73 A 324 None of the Above Systems Accomplishes What It Claims.
What do all these systems intend? They intend to explain our teleological judgments about nature, and proceed in such a way that one side denies their truth, thus declaring them an idealism of nature (represented as art); the other recognizes them as true and promises to establish the possibility of a nature according to the idea of final causes.
1) The systems arguing for the idealism of final causes in nature do, on the one hand, admit in their principle a causality according to laws of motion (through which natural things exist purposively); but they deny its intentionality: 393 that it is intentionally determined to this purposive production, or, in other words, that an end is the cause. This is Epicurus's mode of explanation, which entirely denies the distinction between a technique of nature and mere mechanics, and assumes blind chance as the ground of explanation not only for the agreement of the products generated with our concepts of an A 325 end, and thus for the technique, but even for the determination of the causes of this generation according to laws of motion, and thus for their mechanics. Consequently it explains nothing, not even the semblance in our teleological judgment, and thus by no means establishes the alleged idealism in it.
On the other hand, Spinoza seeks to spare us all inquiry into the ground of the possibility of natural ends, and to deprive this idea of all reality, by treating them not as products at all but as accidents inhering in an original being. To this being, as the substrate of those natural things, he attributes not causality with regard to them, but mere subsistence. And because of its unconditional necessity, together with all natural things as accidents inhering in it, he does indeed secure for natural forms the unity of ground required for all purposiveness; but at the same time he takes away their contingency, without which no unity of ends can be thought, and with it everything intentional, just as he takes all understanding away from the primordial ground of natural things.
But Spinozism does not accomplish what it intends. It intends to provide a ground for explaining the connection of ends (which it does not deny) among things in nature, and merely names the unity of the subject in which they all inhere. But even if we grant him this manner of existence for beings in the world A 326, that ontological unity is not thereby immediately a unity of ends, and by no means makes the latter comprehensible. For the latter is an entirely special kind of unity, which does not follow at all from the connection of things (beings in the world) in one subject (the original being), but necessarily involves relation to a cause possessing understanding. Even if we united all these things in a simple subject, this would never present a relation of ends unless we thought them, first, as internal effects of the substance as a cause, and second, of that same substance as a cause through its understanding. Without these formal conditions, all unity is mere natural necessity, and if nevertheless attributed to things we 394 represent as external to one another, blind necessity. But if one wishes to call what the schools call the transcendental perfection of things (in relation to their own essence)—according to which all things have in themselves everything required to be such a thing and no other—the purposiveness of nature, this is a childish game with words instead of concepts. For if all things must be thought as ends, so that being a thing and being an end are identical, then fundamentally there is nothing that deserves to be represented particularly as an end.
From this we can readily see that Spinoza, by tracing our concepts A 327 of the purposive in nature back to our consciousness of ourselves in an all-encompassing (yet at the same time simple) being, and seeking that form merely in the unity of this being, must have intended to assert not the realism but merely the idealism of nature's purposiveness. Yet even this he could not accomplish, since the mere representation of the unity of the substrate cannot produce even the idea of a purposiveness that is only unintentional.
2) Those who not merely assert the realism of natural ends but also think they can explain it believe themselves able to comprehend a special kind of causality, namely that of intentionally acting causes, at least in its possibility; otherwise they could not undertake to explain it. For even to be entitled to the boldest hypothesis, at least the possibility of what one assumes as a ground must be certain, and one must be able to secure the objective reality of its concept.
But the possibility of living matter (a concept containing a contradiction, since lifelessness, inertia, constitutes matter's essential character) cannot even be thought. The possibility of animated matter, and of nature as a whole as an animal, can be used only meagerly A 328 for a hypothesis of purposiveness in nature at large, insofar as it is revealed to us in experience in nature's organization on a small scale; it can by no means be comprehended a priori in its possibility. Thus one must reason in a circle in explaining if one wishes to derive nature's purposiveness in organized beings from the life of matter, yet in turn knows this life only in organized beings, and so without 395 such experience can form no concept of its possibility. Hylozoism therefore does not accomplish what it promises.
Finally, theism can no more establish dogmatically the possibility of natural ends as a key to teleology, although it has this advantage over all other grounds of explanation: through an understanding that it attributes to the original being, it best rescues nature's purposiveness from idealism and introduces an intentional causality for its production.
For we would first have to prove, sufficiently for the determining power of judgment, the impossibility of a unity of ends in matter through its mere mechanism, in order to be entitled to place its ground beyond nature in a determinate way. But we can establish no more than this: given the constitution and limits of our cognitive faculties (since we do not comprehend the first, inner ground even of this mechanism), we A 329 must in no way seek a principle of determinate relations of ends in matter; rather, for us no way of judging the production of its products as natural ends remains except through a supreme understanding as cause of the world. But this is only a ground for the reflective, not for the determining power of judgment, and can warrant no objective assertion whatever.
74 The Cause of the Impossibility of Treating the Concept of a Technique of Nature Dogmatically Is the Inexplicability of a Natural End.
We proceed dogmatically with a concept (even if it should be empirically conditioned) when we regard it as contained under another concept of the object constituting a principle of reason, and determine it accordingly. But we proceed with it merely critically when we consider it only in relation to our cognitive faculty, and thus to the subjective conditions for thinking it, without undertaking to decide anything about its object. Thus the dogmatic procedure with a concept is the one lawful for the determining power of judgment, the critical procedure the one lawful merely for the reflective power.
396 Now the concept of a thing as a natural end is a concept A 330 that subsumes nature under a causality thinkable only through reason, in order to judge according to this principle what is given of the object in experience. But to use it dogmatically for the determining power of judgment, we would first have to be assured of the objective reality of this concept, since otherwise we could subsume no natural thing under it. The concept of a thing as a natural end is indeed empirically conditioned—that is, possible only under certain conditions given in experience—but it cannot be abstracted from experience; rather, it is possible only according to a principle of reason in judging the object. Hence, as such a principle, it cannot at all be comprehended in its objective reality (that is, that an object is possible in accordance with it) or dogmatically established; and we do not know whether it is merely a reasoning and objectively empty concept (conceptus ratiocinans), or a concept of reason grounding cognition and confirmed by reason (conceptus ratiocinatus). Thus it cannot be treated dogmatically for the determining power of judgment: that is, not only can it not be established whether things in nature, considered as natural ends, require for their production a causality of an entirely special kind (according to intentions), or not; the question cannot even be asked, because the concept of a A 331 natural end is not provable by reason in its objective reality at all (that is, it is not constitutive for the determining power of judgment, but merely regulative for the reflective).
That it is not constitutive is clear because, as the concept of a natural product, it embraces natural necessity and yet at the same time a contingency of the object's form (in relation to mere laws of nature) in one and the same thing as an end. Consequently, if this is to contain no contradiction, it must contain a ground for the possibility of the thing in nature, yet also a ground for the possibility of this nature itself and its relation to something that is not empirically cognizable nature (something supersensible), and thus not cognizable by us at all, if the thing is to be judged according to a kind of causality other than nature's mechanism when we seek to establish its possibility. Since, therefore, the concept of a thing as a natural end is transcendent for the determining power of judgment when the object is considered through reason (although it may be immanent for the reflective power of judgment with regard to 397 objects of experience), and consequently cannot be furnished with objective reality for determining judgments, we can understand how all the systems one might devise for the dogmatic treatment of the concept of natural ends, and of nature as A 332 a whole connected through final causes, can decide nothing either objectively affirmatively or objectively negatively. For when things are subsumed under a concept that is merely problematic, its synthetic predicates (here, for example, whether the end of nature that we think for the production of things is intentional or unintentional) must yield equally problematic judgments about the object, whether affirmative or negative, since we do not know whether we are judging about something or nothing. The concept of causality through ends (of art) certainly has objective reality, and so does the concept of causality according to nature's mechanism. But the concept of a causality of nature according to the rule of ends, and still more that of a being that cannot be given to us in experience at all, namely such a being as the primordial ground of nature, can indeed be thought without contradiction, yet cannot serve for dogmatic determinations: since it can neither be drawn from experience nor is required for the possibility of experience, its objective reality can be secured through nothing. But even if this were done, how could I still count things explicitly declared products of divine art among the products of nature, whose inability to bring forth such things according to its A 333 laws was precisely what made the appeal to a cause distinct from it necessary?
75 The Concept of an Objective Purposiveness of Nature Is a Critical Principle of Reason for the Reflective Power of Judgment.
It is quite a different thing whether I say: the production of certain things in nature, or even of nature as a whole, is possible only through a cause that determines itself to act according to intentions; or: given the distinctive constitution of my cognitive faculties, I cannot judge the possibility of those things and their 398 production otherwise than by thinking for it a cause acting according to intentions, and thus a being productive by analogy with the causality of an understanding. In the first case I mean to establish something about the object and am obliged to demonstrate the objective reality of an assumed concept; in the second, reason determines only the use of my cognitive faculties in accordance with their distinctive character and the essential conditions both of their scope and of their limits. Thus the first principle is an objective principle for the determining power of judgment; the second a subjective principle merely for the reflective power, and hence a maxim A 334 that reason imposes on it.
For we indispensably need to place the concept of an intention beneath nature if we wish to investigate it through continued observation even only in its organized products; and this concept is therefore already an absolutely necessary maxim for the experiential use of our reason. Clearly, once such a guiding thread for studying nature has been adopted and found reliable, we must at least also try this maxim of the power of judgment on nature as a whole, because according to it we might discover further laws of nature that would otherwise remain hidden from us because of the limits of our insight into the inner workings of its mechanism. But with regard to this latter use, that maxim of the power of judgment is indeed useful, though not indispensable, because nature as a whole is not given to us as organized (in the strictest sense of the word stated above). By contrast, with regard to those products of nature that must be judged as intentionally formed in this way and no other, if we are even to gain experiential cognition of their inner constitution, that maxim of the reflective power of judgment is essentially necessary. For even the thought of them as organized things is impossible without connecting with it the thought of production with A 335 intention.
Now the concept of a thing whose existence or form we represent as possible under the condition of an end is inseparably connected with the concept of its contingency (according to natural laws). Hence natural things that we find possible only as ends constitute the foremost proof of the contingency of the world as a whole, and are the only ground of proof valid for common understanding 399 as well as for the philosopher of its dependence upon, and origin from, a being existing outside the world and indeed, on account of that purposive form, an intelligent being. Thus teleology finds no complete conclusion to the explanation sought in its inquiries except in a theology.
But what, in the end, does even the most complete teleology prove? Does it perhaps prove that such an intelligent being exists? No; nothing more than that, given the constitution of our cognitive faculties, and thus in connecting experience with the highest principles of reason, we can form absolutely no concept of the possibility of such a world except by thinking a supreme cause of it that acts intentionally. Objectively, therefore, we cannot establish the proposition that there is an intelligent original being; we can establish it only subjectively for the use of our power of judgment in its reflection on the ends A 336 in nature, which cannot be thought according to any principle other than that of an intentional causality of a highest cause.
If we wished to establish the above proposition dogmatically, on teleological grounds, we would be caught in difficulties from which we could not disentangle ourselves. For these inferences would have to rest on the proposition that organized beings in the world are possible only through an intentionally acting cause. But we would then unavoidably have to assert that, because we can trace these things in their causal connection and cognize this connection in its lawfulness only under the idea of ends, we are also entitled to presuppose this same condition as necessary for every thinking and cognizing being, and thus as attaching to the object and not merely to our subject. Yet we cannot sustain such an assertion. For we do not actually observe ends in nature as intentional, but only think this concept into our reflection on its products as a guiding thread for the power of judgment; thus they are not given to us through the object. Indeed, a priori it is impossible even for us to justify such a concept as admissible in its objective reality. The proposition therefore remains one resting solely on subjective conditions A 337, namely the power of judgment reflecting in a manner suited to our cognitive faculties. If expressed as objectively and dogmatically valid, it would read: there is a God. But for 400 us human beings it now permits only the restricted formula: we cannot think or make comprehensible the purposiveness that must underlie even our cognition of the inner possibility of many natural things otherwise than by representing it, and the world in general, as a product of an intelligent cause (a God).
Now if this proposition, founded on an inescapably necessary maxim of our power of judgment, fully satisfies every speculative as well as practical use of our reason for every human purpose, I should like to know what we lose by being unable to prove it valid also for higher beings, namely from purely objective grounds (which, unfortunately, surpass our capacity). For it is entirely certain that we cannot even become sufficiently acquainted with organized beings and their inner possibility according to merely mechanical principles of nature, much less explain them; indeed, so certain that we can boldly say: it is absurd for human beings even to conceive such a plan, or to A 338 hope that perhaps another Newton might someday arise who would make comprehensible even the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws ordered by no intention. Rather, we must absolutely deny human beings this insight. But to judge that in nature itself, if we could penetrate to its principle in the specification of its universal laws known to us, there could not possibly lie hidden a sufficient ground of the possibility of organized beings without placing an intention beneath their production (and thus in nature's mere mechanism), would in turn be presumptuous of us; for how could we know this? Probabilities have no place at all here, where judgments of pure reason are at issue.—Thus we cannot judge objectively at all, either affirmatively or negatively, whether a being acting according to intentions as cause of the world (and hence as its author) underlies what we rightly call natural ends. Only this much is certain: if we are nevertheless to judge at least according to what our own nature permits us to comprehend (according to the conditions and limits of our reason), we can place nothing other than an intelligent being at the basis of the possibility of those natural ends. This alone accords with the maxim of our reflective power of judgment, and thus with a subjective A 339 401 ground that nevertheless clings inescapably to the human species.
76 Remark.
This consideration, which very much deserves detailed development in transcendental philosophy, may enter here only as an aside for elucidation, not as a proof of what has been presented here.
Reason is a faculty of principles, and in its utmost demand seeks the unconditioned; understanding, by contrast, serves it always only under a certain condition that must be given. But without concepts of the understanding, to which objective reality must be given, reason cannot judge objectively (synthetically) at all, and as theoretical reason contains in itself absolutely no constitutive, but merely regulative principles. We soon become aware that where understanding cannot follow, reason becomes transcendent and manifests itself in ideas that are indeed well grounded (as regulative principles), but not in objectively valid concepts. Understanding, however, which cannot keep pace with reason yet would be necessary for validity with regard to objects, restricts the validity of those ideas of reason to the subject, though universally for all subjects of this kind. That is, it restricts them to the condition that, according to the nature of our (human) cognitive faculty, or indeed according to the concept we can form of the faculty of a finite rational being in general, we can and must think in this way and no other—without, however, asserting that the ground of such a judgment A 340 lies in the object. We shall give examples that are admittedly too important and too difficult to press upon the reader here at once as proven propositions, but can give him material for reflection and serve to elucidate our particular business here.
It is inescapably necessary for human understanding to distinguish the possibility of things from their actuality. The ground of this lies in the subject and the nature of its cognitive faculties. For if their exercise did not require two entirely heterogeneous elements—understanding for concepts, and sensible intuition for objects corresponding to them—there would be no such distinction 402 between the possible and the actual. If, namely, our understanding were intuitive, it would have no objects but the actual. Concepts (which concern merely the possibility of an object) and sensible intuitions (which give us something without thereby letting us cognize it as an object) would both disappear. But our entire distinction of the merely possible from the actual rests on this: the former signifies only the positing of the representation of a thing relative to our concept and our capacity to think in general; the latter, however, the positing of the thing in itself, outside this concept. Thus the distinction of possible things from actual ones is a distinction valid merely subjectively for human understanding: we can still have something in thought although it does not exist, or represent something as given although we do not yet have a concept of it. The propositions that things can be possible without being actual, and that consequently actuality cannot be inferred at all from mere possibility, therefore hold entirely correctly for human A 341 reason, without thereby proving that this distinction lies in the things themselves. For that this cannot be inferred from them, and consequently that these propositions do indeed hold also of objects insofar as our cognitive faculty, as sensibly conditioned, deals with objects of the senses, but not of things in general, is clear from reason's unceasing demand to assume something (the primordial ground) as existing with unconditional necessity, in which possibility and actuality are no longer to be distinguished at all. For this idea our understanding has absolutely no concept: that is, it can discover no way to represent such a thing and its manner of existence. For if it thinks it (however it may think it), the thing is represented merely as possible. If understanding is conscious of it as given in intuition, it is actual, without any thought here of possibility. Thus the concept of an absolutely necessary being is indeed an indispensable idea of reason, but a problematic concept unattainable by human understanding. Yet it holds for the use of our cognitive faculties according to their distinctive constitution, and thus not of the object and thereby for every cognizing being; for I cannot presuppose in every such being thought and intuition as two different conditions of the exercise of its cognitive faculties, and hence of the possibility and actuality of things 403. For an understanding in which this distinction did not occur, the proposition would read: all objects I cognize are (exist); and the possibility of some that nevertheless did not exist—that is, their contingency if they do exist, and thus also necessity as distinct from this—could not enter the representation of such a being at all A 342. What makes it so difficult for our understanding to match reason here with its concepts is merely that, for it as human understanding, what reason nevertheless makes a principle as belonging to the object is transcendent—that is, impossible under the subjective conditions of its cognition.—Here, then, the maxim always holds that wherever cognition of objects surpasses the understanding's capacity, we think all such objects according to the subjective conditions necessarily attaching to our (that is, human) nature in the exercise of its faculties. And if judgments made in this way cannot be constitutive principles determining the object as it is constituted—as indeed cannot be otherwise with transcendent concepts—they will nevertheless remain regulative principles, immanent and secure in their exercise, and suited to human purposes.
Just as reason, in its theoretical consideration of nature, must assume the idea of an unconditional necessity of nature's primordial ground, so in its practical consideration it also presupposes its own causality as unconditioned with regard to nature, that is, freedom, insofar as it is conscious of its moral command. But here the objective necessity of an action as duty is opposed to the necessity it would have as an event if its ground lay in nature and not in freedom (that is, in reason's causality); and the morally absolutely necessary action is regarded physically as entirely contingent (that is, what necessarily ought to happen often nevertheless does not happen). Thus it is clear that only the subjective constitution of our practical faculty accounts for moral laws having to be represented as commands (and actions conforming to them A 343 as duties), and for reason's expressing this necessity not through a being (happening), but through an ought-to-be. This would not occur if reason were considered without sensibility (as the subjective condition of its application to objects of nature) with regard to its causality, and thus as cause in an intelligible 404 world agreeing throughout with the moral law. There would be no distinction there between ought and deed, between a practical law of what is possible through us and a theoretical law of what is actual through us. Now although an intelligible world, in which everything would be actual merely because it is possible (as something good), and even freedom as its formal condition, is for us a transcendent concept unfit to serve as a constitutive principle for determining an object and its objective reality, freedom nevertheless serves, according to the constitution of our partly sensible nature and faculty, as a universal regulative principle for us and for all rational beings connected with the world of sense, insofar as we can represent them according to the constitution of our reason. This principle does not objectively determine the constitution of freedom as a form of causality, but makes the rule of actions according to that idea into commands for everyone, with no less validity than if it did.
Likewise, in the case before us, we can concede that we would find no distinction between nature's mechanism and its technique, that is, its connection of ends, if our understanding were not of a kind that must proceed from the universal to the particular, so that the power of judgment can cognize no A 344 purposiveness in the particular, and thus make no determining judgments, without having a universal law under which to subsume it. But the particular as such contains something contingent in relation to the universal, while reason nevertheless also requires unity, and thus lawfulness, in the connection of particular natural laws (this lawfulness of the contingent is called purposiveness); and deriving particular laws from universal ones, with regard to what they contain contingently, is impossible a priori through determining the concept of the object. Hence the concept of nature's purposiveness in its products will be a concept necessary for the human power of judgment with regard to nature, but not concerning the determination of objects themselves; thus a subjective principle of reason for the power of judgment, which, as regulative (not constitutive), holds for our human power of judgment just as necessarily as if it were an objective principle.
77 405 On the Distinctive Character of Human Understanding Through Which the Concept of a Natural End Becomes Possible for Us.
In the remark we cited peculiarities of our cognitive faculty, even the higher faculty, which we are easily led to transfer to the things themselves as objective predicates. But these concerned ideas for which no adequate object can be given in experience A 345, and which could therefore serve only as regulative principles in pursuing experience. With the concept of a natural end the same indeed holds as regards the cause of the possibility of such a predicate, which can lie only in the idea; but the consequence corresponding to it (the product itself) is nevertheless given in nature, and the concept of nature's causality as a being acting according to ends seems to make the idea of a natural end into a constitutive principle of the product. In this it has something distinguishing it from all other ideas.
But this distinction consists in the fact that the idea in question is a principle of reason not for the understanding but for the power of judgment, and thus concerns solely the application of an understanding in general to possible objects of experience: specifically where the judgment can be not determining but merely reflective, and consequently where the object is indeed given in experience, but no determinate judgment about it in accordance with the idea (much less a fully adequate one) can be made at all; we can only reflect upon it.
Thus it concerns a peculiarity of our (human) understanding with regard to the power of judgment in its reflection on things in nature. If this is so, however, the idea of another possible understanding than the human must underlie it A 346 (just as in the Critique of Pure Reason we had to have another possible intuition in mind if ours was to be regarded as a particular kind, namely one for which objects count only as appearances). We can then say: given the particular constitution of our understanding, certain natural products must be regarded by us, with regard to their possibility, as produced intentionally and as ends, without thereby demanding that there actually be a special 406 cause whose determining ground is the representation of an end; hence without denying that another (higher) understanding than the human might find the ground of the possibility of such natural products even in nature's mechanism—that is, in a causal connection for which an understanding is not exclusively assumed as cause.
What matters here, then, is the relation of our understanding to the power of judgment: we seek in this relation a certain contingency in the constitution of our understanding, so as to mark its peculiarity in distinction from other possible understandings.
This contingency is found quite naturally in the particular that the power of judgment is to bring under the universal of concepts of the understanding. For the particular is not determined through the universal of our (human) understanding; and it is contingent in how many A 347 ways different things, nevertheless agreeing in a common characteristic, can occur to our perception. Our understanding is a faculty of concepts, that is, a discursive understanding, for which it must indeed be contingent what kind, and how very different, the particular may be that can be given to it in nature and brought under its concepts. But since intuition also belongs to cognition, and a faculty of complete spontaneity of intuition would be a cognitive faculty distinct from sensibility and entirely independent of it, and thus understanding in the most general sense, we can also think an intuitive understanding (negatively, namely merely as not discursive). It does not proceed from the universal to the particular and so to the singular through concepts, and for it there is no such contingency of nature's agreement, in its products according to particular laws, with the understanding—a contingency that makes it so difficult for ours to bring nature's manifold into the unity of cognition. Our understanding can accomplish this task only through a very contingent agreement of natural characteristics with our faculty of concepts, which an intuitive understanding does not require.
Thus our understanding has this distinctive character for the power of judgment: in A 348 cognition through it, the particular is not determined by the universal, and therefore cannot be derived from the universal alone; yet this particular in nature's manifoldness 407 must agree with the universal (through concepts and laws) in order to be subsumed under it. Under such circumstances this agreement must be very contingent and without a determinate principle for the power of judgment.
Now, in order nevertheless to be able at least to think the possibility of such an agreement of natural things with the power of judgment (which we represent as contingent, and thus as possible only through an end directed toward it), we must at the same time think another understanding. In relation to this understanding, and indeed prior to any end attributed to it, we can represent as necessary that agreement of natural laws with our power of judgment which, for our understanding, is thinkable only through the connecting means of ends.
Our understanding has the property that in its cognition—for example, of the cause of a product—it must proceed from the analytically universal (from concepts) to the particular (the given empirical intuition). In doing so it determines nothing with regard to the manifoldness of the latter, but must await this determination for the power of judgment A 349 from the subsumption of empirical intuition (if the object is a natural product) under the concept. But we can also think an understanding that, because it is not discursive like ours but intuitive, proceeds from the synthetically universal (the intuition of a whole as such) to the particular, that is, from the whole to the parts. Such an understanding, and its representation of the whole, therefore does not contain the contingency of the connection of the parts in making a determinate form of the whole possible—a contingency required by our understanding, which must proceed from parts as universally thought grounds to various possible forms to be subsumed under them as consequences. According to the constitution of our understanding, by contrast, a real whole of nature is to be regarded only as an effect of the jointly acting motive forces of the parts. If, therefore, we wish to represent not the possibility of the whole as dependent on the parts, as accords with our discursive understanding, but, after the model of the intuitive (archetypal) understanding, the possibility of the parts (in their constitution and connection) as dependent on the whole, this, given that same peculiarity of our understanding, cannot be done by making the whole contain the ground of the possibility of the connection of the parts (which would be a contradiction in the discursive mode of cognition), but only by making the 408 representation of a whole contain the ground of the possibility of its form A 350 and of the connection of the parts belonging to it. But since the whole would then be an effect, a product, whose representation is regarded as the cause of its possibility, and the product of a cause whose determining ground is merely the representation of its effect is called an end, it follows that our representing natural products as possible according to a different kind of causality from that of the natural laws of matter—namely only according to the causality of ends and final causes—is merely a consequence of the particular constitution of our understanding. This principle concerns not the possibility of such things themselves (even considered as phenomena) according to this mode of production, but only the judging of them possible for our understanding. At the same time we see why, in natural science, we are far from satisfied with an explanation of natural products through causality according to ends: in such an explanation we ask for natural production to be judged in a way adequate merely to our faculty of judging it, that is, the reflective power of judgment, and not to the things themselves for the determining power of judgment. Nor is it at all necessary here to prove that such an intellectus archetypus, an archetypal understanding, is possible; only that, in contrasting our discursive understanding, which requires images (intellectus ectypus), and the A 351 contingency of such a constitution, we are led to that idea of an intellectus archetypus, and that this idea contains no contradiction.
Now if we consider a material whole in its form as a product of the parts and of their forces and capacities to combine of themselves (adding in thought other materials that they supply to one another), we represent to ourselves a mechanical mode of its production. But in this way no concept emerges of a whole as an end, whose inner possibility necessarily presupposes the idea of a whole on which even the constitution and manner of action of the parts depend, as we must nevertheless represent an organized body. Yet, as has just been shown, it does not follow that the mechanical production of such a body is impossible; for this would amount to saying that it is impossible (that is, contradictory) for every understanding to represent such a unity in the connection of the manifold without the idea of this unity being at the same time its productive cause—that is, without intentional production. Nevertheless, this 409 would indeed follow if we were entitled to regard material beings as things in themselves. For then the unity constituting the ground of the possibility of natural formations would be solely the unity of space, which, however, is no real ground of productions, but A 352 only their formal condition. It does bear some resemblance to the real ground we seek, in that no part in it can be determined except in relation to the whole, the representation of which thus underlies the possibility of the parts. But since it is at least possible to regard the material world as mere appearance and to think something as a thing in itself (which is not appearance) as its substrate, and to place beneath this a corresponding intellectual intuition (even if it is not ours), there would be a supersensible real ground of nature, though unknowable to us. We ourselves belong to this nature, and thus in it we would consider what is necessary in it as an object of the senses according to mechanical laws, but at the same time consider the agreement and unity of the particular laws and the forms according to them—which we must judge contingent in relation to those mechanical laws—in nature as an object of reason (indeed, the whole of nature as a system) according to teleological laws. We would judge nature according to two kinds of principle, without the mechanical mode of explanation being excluded by the teleological as though they contradicted one another.
From this we can also comprehend what could otherwise readily be conjectured but scarcely asserted and proved with certainty A 353: although the principle of a mechanical derivation of purposive natural products could coexist with the teleological principle, it could by no means make the latter dispensable. That is, in a thing we must judge as a natural end (an organized being), we may indeed try all the known laws of mechanical production and those still to be discovered, and may hope to make good progress with them; but we can never be spared the appeal, for the possibility of such a product, to a ground of production entirely different from them, namely causality through ends. And absolutely no human reason (nor any finite reason qualitatively similar to ours, however greatly it might surpass it in degree) can hope to understand the production even of a little blade of grass from merely mechanical causes. For if the teleological connection of causes and 410 effects is wholly indispensable to the power of judgment for the possibility of such an object, even merely to study it by the guiding thread of experience; and if for external objects as appearances a sufficient ground referring to ends cannot be found at all, but this ground, which also lies in nature, must nevertheless be sought only in its supersensible substrate, from which every possible insight is barred to us, then it is utterly impossible for us to draw grounds of explanation for A 354 connections of ends from nature itself. Given the constitution of the human cognitive faculty, it is necessary to seek their highest ground in an original understanding as cause of the world.
78 On the Union of the Principle of the Universal Mechanism of Matter with the Teleological Principle in the Technique of Nature.
It matters infinitely to reason not to abandon nature's mechanism in its productions, or pass over it in explaining them, because without it no insight into the nature of things can be attained. Even if we are granted that a supreme architect immediately created the forms of nature as they have always existed, or predetermined those that continually form themselves in nature's course according to the same pattern, our cognition of nature is not advanced in the least thereby. For we do not know that being's manner of acting at all, or its ideas, which are supposed to contain the principles of the possibility of natural beings, and cannot explain nature from that being as from above downward (a priori). But if, starting from the forms of objects of experience, and thus from below upward (a posteriori), we appeal to a cause acting according to ends A 355 to explain the purposiveness we believe we find in them, our explanation would be wholly tautological, deceiving reason with words. This is without even mentioning that where we lose ourselves through this mode of explanation in the transcendent, where cognition of nature cannot follow us, reason is led to indulge in fanciful enthusiasm—the prevention of which is precisely its foremost vocation.
411 On the other hand, it is an equally necessary maxim of reason not to overlook the principle of ends in nature’s products. For even if it makes their manner of originating no more comprehensible to us, it is still a heuristic principle for investigating nature’s particular laws—even supposing we did not wish to use it to explain nature itself accordingly, since we continue to call these products merely natural ends, however visibly they display an intentional unity of purpose, that is, without seeking the ground of their possibility beyond nature. Yet since the question of this possibility must ultimately arise, reason must just as necessarily conceive a distinct kind of causality, not found in nature, as the mechanism of natural causes has its own kind. For to the receptivity for more and different forms than matter is capable of under the latter, there must be added the spontaneity of a A 356 cause—which therefore cannot be matter—without which no ground for those forms can be given. Before taking this step, reason must indeed proceed cautiously. It must not seek to explain every technique of nature teleologically, that is, every productive capacity displaying a purposiveness of shape for our mere apprehension, as with regular solids, but must continue to regard it as possible through mechanism alone. Yet to exclude the teleological principle altogether on this account, and to insist on following mere mechanism even where purposiveness, in reason’s investigation of the possibility of natural forms through their causes, undeniably reveals a relation to another kind of causality, must make reason just as fanciful, wandering among imagined natural powers that cannot be conceived at all, as a merely teleological mode of explanation, paying no heed to natural mechanism, would make it extravagant.
In one and the same natural thing, the two principles cannot be joined as principles for explaining—deducing—one from the other; that is, they cannot be united as dogmatic and constitutive principles of insight into nature for determining judgment. If, for example, I assume that a maggot is to be regarded as a product of the mere mechanism of matter—of the new formation that matter accomplishes by itself A 357 when its elements are freed by putrefaction—I cannot then derive precisely the same product from that same matter as a causality 412 acting according to ends. Conversely, if I assume the same product to be a natural end, I cannot count on its being generated mechanically, take this as a constitutive principle for judging its possibility, and thus unite both principles. For one mode of explanation excludes the other, even supposing that, objectively, both grounds of the possibility of such a product rested on a single ground, but that we took no account of it. The principle that is to make the two compatible in judging nature according to them must be placed in what lies outside both—and therefore also outside any possible empirical representation of nature—yet contains nature’s ground: that is, in the supersensible; and each mode of explanation must be referred to it. Now we can have nothing of this but the indeterminate concept of a ground that makes it possible to judge nature according to empirical laws, without being able to determine it more closely through any predicate. It follows that the union of the two principles cannot rest on a ground for explaining (explication) the possibility of a product according to given laws for determining A 358 judgment, but only on a ground for elucidating (exposition) it for reflective judgment.—For to explain is to derive from a principle, which one must therefore be able to know distinctly and specify. Now the principle of nature’s mechanism and that of its causality according to ends must indeed converge, in one and the same natural product, in a single higher principle and flow jointly from it; otherwise they could not coexist in the study of nature. But if this objectively common principle—which therefore also warrants the conjunction of the maxims of natural inquiry dependent on it—is of such a kind that it can indeed be indicated but never determinately known or distinctly specified for use in particular cases, then no explanation, that is, no distinct and determinate derivation of the possibility of a natural product possible according to those two heterogeneous principles, can be drawn from it. Yet the common principle of mechanical derivation on the one hand and teleological derivation on the other is the supersensible, which we must place beneath nature as appearance. Of this, however, we cannot form the least positively determinate concept for theoretical purposes. How, then, according 413 to this principle, nature in its particular laws constitutes for us a system that can be known as possible both through the principle of generation A 359 by physical causes and through that of final causes cannot in any way be explained. We can only presuppose that, when natural objects occur whose possibility we cannot conceive according to the principle of mechanism—which always has a claim on a natural being—without relying on teleological principles, we may confidently investigate natural laws in accordance with both, according as the possibility of their product is cognizable to our understanding through one principle or the other. We need not be troubled by the apparent conflict that emerges between the principles for judging it, since at least the possibility that both might also be objectively united in one principle is secured, as they concern appearances that presuppose a supersensible ground.
Thus, although both mechanism and nature’s teleological, intentional technique may, with regard to the very same product and its possibility, stand under a common higher principle of nature according to particular laws, we cannot, given the limits of our understanding, unite both principles in explaining the very same natural generation when the inner possibility of this product is itself intelligible only through a causality according to ends—as is the case with organized A 360 matter—because that principle is transcendent. The foregoing principle of teleology therefore remains: given the character of the human understanding, no cause other than one acting intentionally can be assumed for the possibility of organic beings in nature, and nature’s mere mechanism can in no way suffice to explain these products of it. Yet this is not to decide, through that principle, anything about the possibility of such things themselves.
For this is only a maxim of reflective, not determining judgment, and therefore holds only subjectively for us, not objectively for the possibility of things of this kind themselves, where both modes of generation might well converge in one and the same ground. Moreover, without adding to the concept of a teleologically conceived mode of generation that of a natural mechanism also present within it, such generation could not be judged a natural product 414 at all. The foregoing maxim therefore also brings with it the necessity of uniting both principles in judging things as natural ends, but not of substituting one for the other, either wholly or in certain parts. For no mechanism can be substituted for what we, at least, can conceive as possible only through intention; nor can what is recognized as necessary according to mechanism be replaced by a contingency requiring an end as its determining ground A 361. Rather, the one—mechanism—can only be subordinated to the other—intentional technique—and this is entirely permissible according to the transcendental principle of nature’s purposiveness.
For where ends are conceived as grounds of the possibility of certain things, means must also be assumed whose law of operation in itself requires nothing that presupposes an end, and which may therefore be mechanical while still serving as a subordinate cause of intentional effects. Hence even in nature’s organic products—and still more if, prompted by their infinite multitude, we also assume intention in the conjunction of natural causes according to particular laws, at least as a permissible hypothesis, as the universal principle of reflective judgment for nature as a whole, the world—we can conceive an extensive and even universal conjunction of mechanical and teleological laws in nature’s generations without confusing the principles for judging them or substituting one for the other. For in a teleological judgment, even if the form assumed by matter is judged possible only through intention, matter may nevertheless, by its nature and in accordance with mechanical laws, be subordinated as a means to that represented end. Yet A 362 because the ground of this compatibility lies in what is neither the one nor the other—neither mechanism nor a combination of ends—but the supersensible substrate of nature, of which we know nothing, the two ways of representing the possibility of such objects cannot be fused for our human reason. We can judge them only as grounded, through the connection of final causes, in a supreme understanding; and thus nothing is taken away from the teleological mode of explanation.
But how much nature’s mechanism contributes as a means to 415 each final intention within it is wholly undetermined, and forever indeterminable for our reason. Moreover, in view of the intelligible principle mentioned above, which makes a nature in general possible, we may even assume that nature is possible throughout according to both kinds of universally harmonious laws—physical laws and those of final causes—although we cannot at all understand how this happens. Thus we also do not know how far the mechanical mode of explanation possible for us extends. We know with certainty only this: however far we may advance in it, it must always remain insufficient for things we have once recognized as natural ends; and so, given the character of our understanding, we must subordinate all those grounds to a teleological A 363 principle.
On this rests our right—and, because of the importance that studying nature according to the principle of mechanism has for our theoretical use of reason, also our calling—to explain all nature’s products and events, even the most purposive, mechanically as far as our capacity allows, a capacity whose limits we cannot specify within this mode of inquiry. Yet we must never lose sight of this: those products that we can so much as present to reason for investigation only under the concept of an end must, in keeping with the essential character of our reason, ultimately be subordinated to causality according to ends, notwithstanding those mechanical causes.
28 We see from this that, in most speculative matters of pure reason, philosophical schools have generally tried every possible solution to a given question, so far as dogmatic assertions are concerned. Thus, to account for nature’s purposiveness, people have tried either lifeless matter or a lifeless God, at other times living matter or a living God. Nothing remains for us but, if necessary, to abandon all these objective assertions and consider our judgment critically, solely in relation to our cognitive faculties, so as to secure for its principle the validity of a maxim: if not dogmatic validity, then one sufficient for the safe use of reason.
Plain English translation
A complete, independent machine-assisted translation from the German text of the 1793 edition in the 1913 Academy printing, including Kant’s notes. The faculty table is given as lines.
Second Division. A 311 385 Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment.
69 What an Antinomy of the Power of Judgment Is.
The determining power of judgment has no principles of its own grounding concepts of objects. It is not autonomous, since it merely subsumes under given laws or concepts as principles. For that very reason it is not exposed to any danger of an antinomy of its own, or any conflict between its principles. Thus the transcendental power of judgment, which contained the conditions for subsuming under categories, did not itself give laws. It merely stated the conditions of sensory intuition under which a given concept, as a law of the understanding, can be given reality or application. About these it could never disagree with itself, at least in principle.
But the reflective power of judgment is to subsume under a law A 312 not yet given. This is therefore really only a principle for reflecting on objects for which, objectively, we entirely lack a law, or a concept of the object sufficient as a principle for the cases that occur. Now no use of the cognitive faculties can be permitted without principles. In such cases reflective judgment must therefore serve as its own principle. Since this principle is not objective and cannot supply a ground for cognizing the object sufficient for the purpose, it is to serve as a merely subjective principle for the purposive use of the cognitive faculties: for reflecting on a kind of object. Reflective judgment therefore has its maxims regarding such cases, and indeed necessary ones for cognizing natural laws 386 in experience, in order to reach concepts through them. These may even be concepts of reason, if it absolutely needs them merely to become acquainted with nature according to its empirical laws.—A conflict, and thus an antinomy, can arise between these necessary maxims of reflective judgment. This grounds a dialectic which, if each of two opposing maxims is grounded in the nature of the cognitive faculties, can be called a natural dialectic: an A 313 unavoidable illusion that the critique must expose and resolve so that it does not deceive us.
70 Presentation of This Antinomy.
Insofar as reason deals with nature as the totality of objects of the outer senses, it can rest on laws that the understanding partly prescribes to nature itself a priori, and can partly extend without limit through empirical determinations occurring in experience. To apply the first kind, the universal laws of material nature in general, judgment needs no special principle of reflection. Here it determines, because the understanding has given it an objective principle. But the particular laws known to us only through experience may exhibit such great variety and heterogeneity that judgment must serve as its own principle even to investigate and discover a law in natural appearances. It needs such a principle as a guide if it is even to hope for connected empirical cognition according to a thoroughgoing lawfulness of nature: nature's unity under empirical laws. Given this contingent unity of particular laws, it may happen that A 314 judgment begins its reflection from two maxims. Mere understanding supplies one a priori; particular experiences prompt the other, bringing reason into play to judge bodily nature and its laws by a special principle. These two kinds of maxim then seem unable to coexist, 387 and a dialectic emerges that confuses judgment in the principle of its reflection.
Its first maxim is the proposition: all production of material things and their forms must be judged possible according to merely mechanical laws.
The second maxim is the counterproposition: some products of material nature cannot be judged possible according to merely mechanical laws. Judging them requires an entirely different law of causality, namely that of final causes.
If we now turned these regulative principles for investigation into constitutive principles of the possibility of the objects themselves, they would read:
Proposition: all production of material things is possible according to merely mechanical laws.
Counterproposition: some production of them is not possible according to merely mechanical A 315 laws.
In this latter capacity, as objective principles for determining judgment, they would contradict each other, and one of the two propositions would necessarily be false. This would be an antinomy, but not of judgment; it would be a conflict in reason's legislation. Yet reason can prove neither principle, because we can have no a priori determining principle for the possibility of things according to merely empirical natural laws.
By contrast, the maxim of reflective judgment stated first actually contains no contradiction at all. If I say that I must judge all events in material nature, and thus all forms as its products, as possible according to merely mechanical laws, I do not say that they are possible through these alone, excluding every other kind of causality. It means only this: I should always reflect on them according to the principle of nature's mere mechanism and investigate them by it as far as I can. Unless mechanism underlies inquiry, no proper cognition of nature is possible. This does not prevent the second maxim from being used on occasion: namely, in the case of certain natural forms, and A 316 through them even nature as a whole, to seek a principle and 388 reflect on them in a way entirely different from explanation through natural mechanism, according to the principle of final causes. Reflection according to the first maxim is not canceled by this; rather, we are commanded to pursue it as far as we can. Nor does this say that those forms could not be possible through nature's mechanism. It asserts only that human reason, by following that maxim in this way, can never find the slightest ground for what is distinctive in a natural end, though it can discover other knowledge of natural laws. It remains undecided whether, in nature's inner ground unknown to us, the physical-mechanical connection and the purposive connection in the same things might unite in one principle. Our reason, however, cannot unite them in such a principle. Thus judgment, as reflective on a subjective ground, not as determining according to an objective principle of the possibility of things in themselves, is compelled to think a principle other than natural mechanism as the ground of the possibility of certain natural forms.
71 A 317 Preparation for Resolving the Above Antinomy.
We can by no means prove that organized natural products cannot be produced through nature's mere mechanism. For we do not understand the first inner ground of the infinite variety of particular natural laws. These are contingent for us because we know them only empirically. We therefore cannot possibly reach the inner, thoroughly sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature, which lies in the supersensible. So does nature's productive capacity suffice just as well for what we judge as formed or connected according to the idea of ends as for what we think needs only nature's machinery? And do things as genuine natural ends, as we must necessarily judge them, actually rest on an entirely different kind of original causality, an architectonic understanding, that cannot be contained in material nature or its intelligible substrate? 389 Our reason can give absolutely no answer. It is very narrowly limited regarding the concept of causality when that concept is to be specified a priori.—But it is equally certain beyond doubt that, relative to our cognitive faculty, nature's mere mechanism cannot provide a ground for explaining the production A 318 of organized beings. For reflective judgment, therefore, this is an entirely correct principle: to account for the quite evident connection of things according to final causes, we must think a causality different from mechanism, namely that of an intelligent world-cause acting according to ends. Yet for determining judgment the same principle would be hasty and unprovable. In the first case it is a mere maxim of judgment. The concept of that causality is a mere idea, to which we make no attempt to grant reality. We use it only as a guide for reflection, which remains open to all mechanical grounds of explanation and does not stray beyond the sensible world. In the second case the principle would be an objective principle prescribed by reason, to which judgment would have to submit in determining objects. But in doing so it would stray beyond the sensible world into the transcendent and might be misled.
The entire appearance of an antinomy between the maxims of properly physical, mechanical explanation and teleological, technical explanation therefore rests on a confusion. We confuse a principle of reflective judgment with one of determining judgment, and the former's autonomy, which holds only subjectively for our use of reason regarding particular A 319 empirical laws, with the latter's heteronomy, which must follow the universal or particular laws given by the understanding.
72 On the Various Systems Concerning Nature's Purposiveness.
No one has yet doubted the correctness of the principle that certain natural things, organized beings, and their possibility must be judged according to the concept of final causes. This holds even when we want only a guide for learning their constitution through observation, without venturing into investigation of their first origin. 390 The question can therefore only be whether this principle is merely subjectively valid, merely a maxim of our judgment, or is an objective principle of nature. On the latter account nature would have, besides its mechanism under mere laws of motion, another kind of causality: that of final causes, under which the moving forces would stand only as intermediate causes.
We could leave this speculative question or problem entirely undecided and unresolved. If we keep speculation within the boundaries of mere knowledge of nature, those maxims suffice for studying nature as far as human A 320 powers reach and searching out its most hidden secrets. So it is probably a certain presentiment of our reason, or a hint seemingly given us by nature, that prompts us to leave natural investigation, in which we have not yet gone far, or at least suspend it for a time. We try first to discover where this stranger in natural science, the concept of natural ends, might lead. Perhaps through this concept of final causes we could even reach beyond nature and connect nature itself with the highest point in the series of causes.
Here, of course, the undisputed maxim would turn into a problem opening a wide field of controversy. Does the purposive connection in nature prove a special kind of causality for nature? Or, considered in itself and according to objective principles, is it rather identical with natural mechanism or based on the same ground? In some natural products this ground often lies too deeply hidden for our investigation. We therefore try a subjective principle, that of art, or causality according to ideas, and apply it to nature by analogy. This expedient succeeds in many cases and seems to fail in some. But in no case does it entitle us to introduce into natural science a special way of operating distinct from A 321 nature's own causality according to merely mechanical laws. Let us call nature's procedure, its causality, technique because of the end-like character we find in its products. We will divide this into intentional technique (technica intentionalis) and unintentional technique (technica naturalis). The first means that nature's productive 391 capacity according to final causes must be regarded as a special kind of causality. The second means that it is fundamentally identical with nature's mechanism. Its accidental agreement with our concepts of art and their rules, which are merely subjective conditions for judging it, is then falsely interpreted as a special kind of natural production.
In discussing systems for explaining nature in terms of final causes, we must note that all their disputes are dogmatic. They concern objective principles of the possibility of things, whether through intentionally or entirely unintentionally acting causes. They do not concern a subjective maxim merely for judging the cause of such purposive products. In the latter case disparate principles could still be reconciled; in the former, contradictorily opposed principles cancel one another and cannot A 322 coexist.
There are two kinds of system concerning nature's technique, its productive power according to the rule of ends: idealism and realism about natural ends. The former asserts that all purposiveness in nature is unintentional; the latter, that some of it, in organized beings, is intentional. From the latter we could also draw the hypothetically grounded conclusion that nature's technique is intentional, and thus an end, even regarding all its other products in relation to nature as a whole.
1) Idealism about purposiveness, by which I always mean objective purposiveness here, is either an idealism of chance or of fate in nature's determination of its products' purposive forms. The first principle concerns matter's relation to the physical ground of its form, the laws of motion; the second its relation to its own and all nature's hyperphysical ground. Taken literally, the system of chance attributed to Epicurus or Democritus is so plainly absurd that it need not detain us. The system of fate, whose originator is said to be Spinoza although it appears much older, appeals to something supersensible, beyond our insight, A 323 and is not so easy to refute, because its concept of the original being is entirely incomprehensible. But this much is clear: within it the purposive connection in the world must be assumed unintentional. 392 It is derived from an original being, but not from its understanding or therefore its intention. Instead, it is derived from the necessity of its nature and the world's unity arising from it. Fatalism about purposiveness is therefore also idealism about it.
2) Realism about nature's purposiveness is likewise either physical or hyperphysical. The first grounds ends in nature on an analogue of an intentionally acting capacity: the life of matter, either within matter itself or through an animating internal principle, a world-soul. This is called hylozoism. The second derives them from the original ground of the universe as an intelligent being producing intentionally and originally living. This is theism.28
73 A 324 None of the Above Systems Accomplishes What It Claims.
What do all these systems want? They want to explain our teleological judgments about nature. One group proceeds by denying their truth, thus declaring them an idealism about nature represented as art. The other accepts them as true and promises to establish the possibility of a nature according to the idea of final causes.
1) The systems defending idealism about final causes in nature admit, on the one hand, a causality according to laws of motion in their principle, through which natural things exist purposively. But they deny its intentionality: 393 that it is intentionally determined to produce things purposively, or, in other words, that an end is the cause. This is Epicurus's explanation. It entirely denies any distinction between nature's technique and mere mechanics. Blind chance is assumed as the ground of explanation not only for the agreement of the products with our concepts of A 325 ends, and thus for technique, but even for the determination of the causes of this production according to laws of motion, and thus for mechanics. Consequently nothing is explained, not even the appearance in our teleological judgment, and its alleged idealism is by no means established.
On the other hand, Spinoza wants to relieve us of all inquiry into the ground of the possibility of natural ends and deprive this idea of all reality. He treats them not as products at all but as accidents inhering in an original being. To this being, as the substrate of those natural things, he attributes not causality regarding them but merely subsistence. Because this being, together with all natural things as its inherent accidents, is unconditionally necessary, he secures for natural forms the unity of ground required for all purposiveness. But at the same time he removes their contingency, without which no purposive unity can be thought. With it he removes everything intentional, just as he removes all understanding from the original ground of natural things.
But Spinozism does not accomplish what it wants. It wants to explain the purposive connection of natural things, which it does not deny, but merely names the unity of the subject in which they all inhere. Even if we grant it this way of existing for beings in the world, A 326 that ontological unity is not immediately purposive unity and by no means makes the latter understandable. Purposive unity is a quite special kind of unity. It does not follow from the connection of things, worldly beings, in one subject, the original being. It necessarily involves a relation to a cause possessing understanding. Even if we united all these things in a simple subject, this would never present a purposive relation unless we thought them, first, as internal effects of substance as a cause, and second, of that same substance as a cause through its understanding. Without these formal conditions all unity is mere natural necessity. If nonetheless attributed to things we 394 represent as external to one another, it is blind necessity. Suppose, however, we call what the schools name the transcendental perfection of things, in relation to their own essence, nature's purposiveness. According to that perfection, all things contain everything required to be that thing and no other. This is childish play with words instead of concepts. If all things must be thought as ends, so that being a thing and being an end are the same, then fundamentally nothing deserves to be represented specifically as an end.
From this we can see Spinoza's intention. By tracing our concepts A 327 of purposiveness in nature back to our consciousness of ourselves within an all-encompassing yet simple being, and seeking that form merely in this being's unity, he must have meant to assert not realism but only idealism about nature's purposiveness. Yet he could not establish even that, because the mere representation of the unity of the substrate cannot produce even the idea of unintentional purposiveness.
2) Those who not only assert realism about natural ends but also think they can explain it believe they can understand, at least as possible, a special kind of causality: intentionally acting causes. Otherwise they could not undertake to explain those ends. For even the boldest hypothesis requires that the possibility of what we assume as a ground be certain, and that we can secure objective reality for its concept.
But we cannot even think the possibility of living matter. Its concept contains a contradiction, since lifelessness, inertia, constitutes matter's essential character. The possibility of animated matter, and of the whole of nature as an animal, can be used only inadequately A 328 for a hypothesis about nature's purposiveness on the large scale, insofar as experience reveals it to us in nature's organization on the small scale. We cannot understand its possibility a priori. So we must reason in a circle if we try to derive nature's purposiveness in organized beings from the life of matter, while knowing this life itself only in organized beings, and thus being unable 395 to form any concept of its possibility without such experience. Hylozoism therefore does not accomplish what it promises.
Finally, theism can no more establish dogmatically the possibility of natural ends as a key to teleology. It does have an advantage over all other grounds of explanation: by attributing an understanding to the original being, it best rescues nature's purposiveness from idealism and introduces an intentional causality for producing it.
But to be entitled to place the ground of purposive unity definitely beyond nature, we would first have to prove, sufficiently for determining judgment, that such unity in matter is impossible through its mere mechanism. Yet we can establish only this: given the constitution and limits of our cognitive faculties, since we do not understand the first inner ground even of this mechanism, we A 329 must not seek a principle of definite purposive relations in matter in any way. No other way remains for us to judge the production of its products as natural ends than through a supreme understanding as world-cause. But this is a ground only for reflective, not determining, judgment, and can justify absolutely no objective assertion.
74 The Reason We Cannot Treat the Concept of a Technique of Nature Dogmatically Is That a Natural End Cannot Be Explained.
We treat a concept dogmatically, even if it is empirically conditioned, when we regard it as contained under another concept of the object that constitutes a principle of reason, and determine it accordingly. We treat it merely critically when we consider it only in relation to our cognitive faculty, and thus to the subjective conditions for thinking it, without undertaking to decide anything about its object. Dogmatic treatment of a concept is therefore lawful for determining judgment; critical treatment is lawful only for reflective judgment.
396 Now the concept of a thing as a natural end is a concept A 330 that subsumes nature under a causality thinkable only through reason, in order to judge by this principle what experience gives us of the object. But to use it dogmatically for determining judgment, we would first have to be assured of this concept's objective reality, since otherwise we could subsume no natural thing under it. The concept of a thing as a natural end is indeed empirically conditioned: possible only under certain conditions given in experience. Yet it cannot be abstracted from experience, but is possible only in judging the object according to a principle of reason. As such a principle, therefore, it cannot be understood or dogmatically established in its objective reality, that is, as regards whether an object conforming to it is possible. We do not know whether it is a merely reasoning and objectively empty concept (conceptus ratiocinans), or a concept of reason that grounds cognition and is confirmed by reason (conceptus ratiocinatus). So it cannot be treated dogmatically for determining judgment. That is, we cannot decide whether natural things considered as natural ends require a quite special kind of causality, according to intentions, for their production. We cannot even ask that question, because reason cannot prove the objective reality of the concept of a A 331 natural end. The concept is not constitutive for determining judgment, but merely regulative for reflective judgment.
That it is not constitutive is clear from this: as the concept of a natural product, it includes natural necessity, yet also the contingency of the object's form in relation to mere natural laws, in the very same thing as an end. To avoid contradiction, it must therefore contain both a ground of the thing's possibility in nature and a ground of the possibility of this nature itself and its relation to something that is not empirically knowable nature. This something is supersensible and thus entirely unknowable to us. The concept must contain these grounds if the thing is to be judged according to a kind of causality other than natural mechanism when we seek to establish its possibility. Thus the concept of a thing as a natural end is transcendent for determining judgment when we consider the object through reason, although it may be immanent for reflective judgment concerning 397 objects of experience. Objective reality therefore cannot be secured for it for determining judgments. From this we can understand why every system we might devise for dogmatically treating the concept of natural ends and of nature as A 332 a whole connected through final causes can decide nothing, either by objectively affirming or by objectively denying. When things are subsumed under a merely problematic concept, its synthetic predicates must yield equally problematic judgments about the object, whether affirmative or negative. Here, for example, the predicate concerns whether the end we think nature has in producing things is intentional or unintentional. We do not know whether we are judging something or nothing. The concept of causality through ends, that of art, certainly has objective reality, as does causality according to nature's mechanism. But the concept of nature's causality according to the rule of ends, and still more that of a being that cannot be given to us in experience at all as nature's original ground, can be thought without contradiction yet cannot serve for dogmatic determinations. Its objective reality can be secured by nothing, since it cannot be drawn from experience and is not required for the possibility of experience either. Even if it could, how could I still count as natural products things explicitly declared products of divine art, when nature's inability to produce such things under its A 333 laws is precisely what required appeal to a cause distinct from it?
75 The Concept of Nature's Objective Purposiveness Is a Critical Principle of Reason for Reflective Judgment.
There is a great difference between saying that certain natural things, or even all of nature, can be produced only by a cause that determines itself to act according to intentions, and saying this: given the distinctive constitution of my cognitive faculties, I can judge the possibility of those things and their 398 production only by thinking, as the cause of this production, an intentionally acting cause, a being productive by analogy with the causality of an understanding. In the first case I seek to establish something about the object and am obliged to demonstrate the objective reality of an assumed concept. In the second, reason determines only the use of my cognitive faculties in keeping with their distinctive character and the essential conditions of both their range and their limits. The first principle is therefore an objective principle for determining judgment; the second is a subjective principle only for reflective judgment, and thus a maxim A 334 that reason imposes on it.
We indispensably need to place the concept of an intention beneath nature if we are to investigate even its organized products through continued observation. So this concept is already an absolutely necessary maxim for our reason's empirical use. Clearly, once such a guide for studying nature has been adopted and found reliable, we must at least try this maxim of judgment on nature as a whole. It may enable us to discover further laws that would otherwise remain hidden because our insight into the inner workings of nature's mechanism is limited. In this latter use, however, the maxim is useful but not indispensable, because nature as a whole is not given to us as organized in the strict sense stated above. By contrast, this maxim of reflective judgment is essentially necessary for those natural products that must be judged as intentionally formed this way and no other even to gain empirical knowledge of their internal constitution. For the very thought of them as organized things is impossible without connecting it with the thought of intentional A 335 production.
Now the concept of a thing whose existence or form we represent as possible on condition of an end is inseparably connected with the concept of its contingency under natural laws. Natural things that we find possible only as ends therefore provide the chief proof of the contingency of the world as a whole. They are the only ground of proof valid equally for ordinary understanding 399 and for the philosopher that the world depends on and originates from a being existing outside it, and indeed, because of that purposive form, an intelligent being. Thus teleology finds a complete answer to its inquiries only in a theology.
But what does even the most complete teleology ultimately prove? Does it prove that such an intelligent being exists? No. It proves only that, given the constitution of our cognitive faculties, and thus by connecting experience with reason's highest principles, we can form no concept of the possibility of such a world except by thinking a supreme intentionally acting cause of it. Objectively, then, we cannot establish the proposition that an intelligent original being exists. We can establish it only subjectively for the use of our judgment in reflecting on the ends A 336 in nature, which can be thought according to no principle other than the intentional causality of a highest cause.
If we sought to establish that highest proposition dogmatically on teleological grounds, we would become entangled in difficulties from which we could not escape. Such inferences would have to rest on the proposition that organized beings in the world are possible only through an intentionally acting cause. We would inevitably have to assert that, because we can trace these things in their causal connection and cognize its lawfulness only under the idea of ends, we are entitled to presuppose this for every thinking and cognizing being as a necessary condition belonging to the object, not merely to our subject. But we cannot sustain such an assertion. We do not actually observe nature's ends as intentional. We merely add in thought this concept as a guide for judgment when reflecting on its products. So they are not given to us by the object. It is even impossible for us a priori to justify accepting such a concept in its objective reality. Thus the proposition remains entirely based only on subjective conditions, A 337 namely reflective judgment suited to our cognitive faculties. Expressed as objectively and dogmatically valid, it would read: there is a God. But for 400 us human beings only this limited formula is permitted: we cannot think or make understandable the purposiveness that must underlie even our cognition of the internal possibility of many natural things except by representing it, and the world in general, as a product of an intelligent cause, a God.
Now if this proposition, grounded on an unavoidably necessary maxim of our judgment, fully satisfies every speculative and practical use of our reason for every human purpose, I would like to know what we lose by being unable to prove it valid for higher beings as well, from purely objective grounds that unfortunately exceed our capacity. It is quite certain that we cannot even adequately know organized beings and their internal possibility through merely mechanical principles of nature, much less explain them. This is so certain that we can boldly say it is absurd for human beings even to conceive such a plan, or to A 338 hope that a Newton might someday arise who could make understandable even the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws arranged by no intention. We must absolutely deny human beings this insight. But it would also be presumptuous to judge that nature, if we could penetrate to its principle for specifying its known universal laws, could not conceal a sufficient ground for the possibility of organized beings without an intention underlying their production, and thus in its mere mechanism. How could we know that? Probabilities have no place here, where judgments of pure reason are concerned.—So we cannot judge objectively, either affirmatively or negatively, whether an intentionally acting being as world-cause, and thus as author, underlies what we rightly call natural ends. Only this much is certain: if we are to judge at least according to what our own nature permits us to understand, under the conditions and limits of our reason, we can place nothing but an intelligent being beneath the possibility of those natural ends. This alone agrees with the maxim of our reflective judgment, and thus with a subjective ground A 339 401 inseparably attached to the human species.
76 Remark.
The following consideration very much deserves detailed development in transcendental philosophy. Here it may enter only as a digression to clarify, not to prove, what has been presented.
Reason is a faculty of principles, and its ultimate demand aims at the unconditioned. The understanding, by contrast, always serves it only under a certain condition that must be given. But without concepts of the understanding, to which objective reality must be given, reason cannot judge objectively or synthetically at all. As theoretical reason it contains by itself absolutely no constitutive principles, only regulative ones. We soon realize that where the understanding cannot follow, reason becomes transcendent. It puts forward well-grounded ideas as regulative principles, but not objectively valid concepts. The understanding cannot keep pace with it, yet would be needed for validity regarding objects. It therefore restricts the validity of reason's ideas to the subject, though universally to all subjects of that kind. That is, it restricts them to this condition: given the nature of our human cognitive faculty, or even the concept we can form of the faculty of a finite rational being in general, we can and must think only in this way. Yet this does not assert that the ground of such a judgment A 340 lies in the object. We will give examples. They are too important and difficult to press on the reader here as already proved propositions, but they can provide material for thought and help clarify our particular task here.
The human understanding unavoidably needs to distinguish the possibility of things from their actuality. The ground lies in the subject and in the nature of its cognitive faculties. If their exercise did not require two entirely heterogeneous elements—understanding for concepts and sensory intuition for objects corresponding to them—there would be no such distinction 402 between the possible and the actual. If our understanding were intuitive, it would have no objects except the actual. Both concepts, which concern only the possibility of an object, and sensory intuitions, which give us something without thereby letting us cognize it as an object, would disappear. Now our entire distinction between the merely possible and the actual rests on this: the former means only positing the representation of a thing relative to our concept and to our faculty of thought in general; the latter means positing the thing in itself, outside that concept. Thus the distinction between possible and actual things holds merely subjectively for the human understanding. We can still have something in thought although it does not exist, or represent something as given although we have no concept of it yet. So the propositions that things can be possible without being actual, and that actuality therefore cannot be inferred from mere possibility, hold entirely correctly for human A 341 reason without proving that this distinction lies in things themselves. That we cannot draw this inference, and that those propositions therefore hold for objects insofar as our sensory-conditioned cognitive faculty deals with objects of sense, but not for things in general, is clear from reason's unceasing demand. It requires us to assume something, the original ground, as existing unconditionally necessarily, in which possibility and actuality are no longer to be distinguished. Our understanding has absolutely no concept for this idea: it can discover no way to represent such a thing and its way of existing. For if it thinks the thing, however it may think it, the thing is represented merely as possible. If it is conscious of the thing as given in intuition, the thing is actual, without the understanding thinking anything about possibility in doing so. The concept of an absolutely necessary being is therefore an indispensable idea of reason but a problematic concept beyond the human understanding's reach. It nevertheless holds for the use of our cognitive faculties according to their distinctive constitution, but not of the object and thus for every cognizing being. I cannot presuppose in every such being thought and intuition as two different conditions for exercising its cognitive faculties, and thus for the possibility and actuality of things. 403 For an understanding in which this distinction did not occur, the statement would be: all objects I cognize are, or exist. The possibility of some that nevertheless did not exist—and thus their contingency if they do exist, as well as the necessity distinguished from that contingency—could not enter the representation of such a being at all. A 342 What makes it so difficult for our understanding to match reason here with its concepts is only this: for it as a human understanding, what reason makes a principle as belonging to the object is transcendent, that is, impossible under the subjective conditions of its cognition.—Here the maxim always holds that wherever cognition of objects exceeds the understanding's capacity, we think them according to the subjective conditions for exercising our faculties necessarily attached to our human nature. If judgments made this way cannot be constitutive principles determining the object as it is constituted—and with transcendent concepts they cannot be—then they still remain regulative principles, immanent and reliable in use, and suited to human purposes.
Just as reason, in considering nature theoretically, must assume the idea of the unconditioned necessity of nature's original ground, so in practical matters it presupposes its own causality as unconditioned in relation to nature: freedom. It does so in being conscious of its moral command. Here, however, an action's objective necessity as a duty is opposed to the necessity it would have as an event if its ground lay in nature rather than freedom, the causality of reason. An action absolutely necessary morally is regarded physically as entirely contingent: what necessarily ought to happen often does not happen. So it is clear that only the subjective constitution of our practical faculty requires us to represent moral laws as commands, and actions conforming to them A 343 as duties. This is why reason expresses their necessity not as a being or happening but as an ought-to-be. This would not occur if reason were considered, in its causality, without sensibility as a subjective condition of its application to natural objects: as a cause in an intelligible 404 world agreeing throughout with the moral law. There would then be no difference between ought and action, between a practical law of what is possible through us and a theoretical law of what is actual through us. Such an intelligible world, where everything would be actual merely because it is possible as something good, and even freedom as its formal condition, are transcendent concepts for us. They cannot serve as a constitutive principle for determining an object and its objective reality. Nevertheless, given our partly sensory nature and capacity, freedom serves as a universal regulative principle for us and for all rational beings connected with the sensible world, insofar as we can represent them according to the constitution of our reason. This principle does not objectively determine the constitution of freedom as a form of causality. Rather, with no less validity than if it did, it makes the rule of actions according to that idea into commands for everyone.
Similarly, in the present case we can grant that we would find no distinction between natural mechanism and nature's technique, its purposive connection, if our understanding were not of a kind that must proceed from the universal to the particular. Judgment therefore cannot cognize any A 344 purposiveness in the particular, and thus cannot make determining judgments, without a universal law under which to subsume it. But the particular as such contains something contingent in relation to the universal. Yet reason also requires unity, and thus lawfulness, in the connection of particular natural laws; this lawfulness of the contingent is called purposiveness. And it is impossible a priori to derive particular laws from universal ones, as regards their contingent content, by determining the concept of the object. Thus the concept of nature's purposiveness in its products is necessary for human judgment regarding nature, but does not concern the determination of the objects themselves. It is therefore a subjective principle of reason for judgment. As regulative, not constitutive, it holds just as necessarily for our human judgment as if it were an objective principle.
77 405 On the Distinctive Character of the Human Understanding That Makes the Concept of a Natural End Possible for Us.
In the remark we cited distinctive features of our cognitive faculty, even its higher part, which we are easily tempted to transfer to things themselves as objective predicates. But these concern ideas for which no adequate object can be given in experience A 345 and which could then serve only as regulative principles in pursuing experience. The concept of a natural end is similar as regards the cause making such a predicate possible, which can lie only in the idea. But the consequence conforming to it, the product itself, is nevertheless given in nature. The concept of nature's causality as that of a being acting according to ends seems to make the idea of a natural end into a constitutive principle of that product. In this it differs from all other ideas.
But the difference consists in this: the idea is a principle of reason not for the understanding but for judgment. It therefore concerns only the application of an understanding in general to possible objects of experience, specifically where judgment can be not determining but merely reflective. The object is indeed given in experience, but we cannot make even a determinate judgment about it according to the idea, much less a fully adequate one; we can only reflect on it.
So this concerns a distinctive feature of our human understanding in relation to judgment as it reflects on natural things. If so, the idea of another possible understanding than the human must underlie it. A 346 Similarly, in the Critique of Pure Reason we had to think of another possible intuition if ours was to count as a particular kind, namely one for which objects count only as appearances. This enables us to say: given the particular constitution of our understanding, certain natural products must be regarded by us, in their possibility, as produced intentionally and as ends. Yet we do not thereby require that a special 406 cause actually exists whose determining ground is the representation of an end. Nor do we deny that another, higher understanding than the human might find the ground of the possibility of such natural products even in nature's mechanism: in a causal connection for which an understanding is not exclusively assumed as cause.
What matters here, then, is the relation of our understanding to judgment. We seek a certain contingency in our understanding's constitution in order to mark its distinctive character as opposed to other possible understandings.
This contingency is found quite naturally in the particular that judgment is to bring under the universal in concepts of the understanding. The particular is not determined by the universal of our human understanding. It is contingent in how many A 347 different ways things that agree in a common characteristic can appear in our perception. Our understanding is a faculty of concepts, a discursive understanding. For it, therefore, the kind and great variety of the particular that may be given to it in nature and brought under its concepts must be contingent. But cognition also requires intuition. A faculty of complete spontaneity of intuition would be a cognitive faculty distinct from sensibility and entirely independent of it, and thus understanding in the most general sense. So we can also think an intuitive understanding, negatively, merely as nondiscursive. It would not proceed from the universal to the particular and then to the individual through concepts. For it there would be none of that contingency in nature's agreement in its products under particular laws with the understanding which makes it so difficult for ours to bring nature's manifold into the unity of cognition. Our understanding can accomplish this only through the highly contingent agreement of natural characteristics with our faculty of concepts. An intuitive understanding does not need this.
Our understanding thus has this distinctive feature in relation to judgment: in A 348 cognition through it, the particular is not determined by the universal and cannot therefore be derived from the universal alone. Yet this particular in nature's manifold 407 is to agree with the universal through concepts and laws so that it can be subsumed under it. Under these circumstances this agreement must be highly contingent and without a definite principle for judgment.
To be able at least to think the possibility of such an agreement of natural things with judgment—an agreement we represent as contingent, and thus possible only through an end directed toward it—we must also think another understanding. In relation to this understanding, and before attributing any end to it, we can represent as necessary that agreement of natural laws with our judgment which our understanding can think only through the connecting means of ends.
Our understanding has the characteristic that in its cognition, for example of a product's cause, it must proceed from the analytically universal, from concepts, to the particular, the given empirical intuition. In doing so it determines nothing about the latter's manifold content. It must instead await this determination for judgment A 349 from subsuming the empirical intuition under the concept, when the object is a natural product. But we can also think an understanding that, being intuitive rather than discursive like ours, proceeds from the synthetically universal, the intuition of a whole as such, to the particular: from the whole to the parts. Such an understanding and its representation of the whole would not contain the contingency of the parts' connection in making a definite form of the whole possible. Our understanding needs this contingency, since it must proceed from the parts as universally conceived grounds to different possible forms, to be subsumed under them as consequences. Given our understanding's constitution, however, a real whole of nature can be regarded only as the effect of the combined moving forces of its parts. Suppose, then, we wish to represent not the possibility of the whole as dependent on the parts, as suits our discursive understanding, but the possibility of the parts, in their constitution and connection, as dependent on the whole, after the manner of an intuitive, archetypal understanding. Given this same distinctive character of our understanding, this cannot mean that the whole contains the ground making the parts' connection possible, which would contradict the discursive mode of cognition. It can mean only that the 408 representation of a whole contains the ground making its form A 350 and the connection of parts belonging to it possible. The whole would then be an effect, a product, whose representation is regarded as the cause of its possibility. But a product of a cause whose determining ground is merely the representation of its effect is called an end. It follows that it is merely a consequence of our understanding's particular constitution that we represent natural products as possible only through a kind of causality other than that of matter's natural laws: the causality of ends and final causes. This principle concerns not the possibility of such things themselves through this mode of production, even considered as phenomena, but only the way of judging them possible for our understanding. We can also see why, in natural science, an explanation of natural products through causality according to ends leaves us far from satisfied. For in such an explanation we ask to judge natural production merely in a way suited to our faculty for judging it—that is, reflective judgment—not to the things themselves for determining judgment. Nor need we prove that such an intellectus archetypus, an archetypal understanding, is possible. We need show only that contrasting our discursive understanding, which needs images—intellectus ectypus—and the A 351 contingency of its constitution leads us to that idea of an intellectus archetypus, and that this idea contains no contradiction.
Now if we consider a material whole, in its form, as a product of its parts and their forces and capacities for combining on their own, adding in thought other materials they supply to one another, we represent a mechanical mode of producing it. But in this way we obtain no concept of a whole as an end whose internal possibility necessarily presupposes the idea of a whole, on which even the constitution and operation of the parts depend. Yet this is how we must represent an organized body. As just shown, it does not follow that the mechanical production of such a body is impossible. That would mean that every understanding would find it impossible, or contradictory, to represent such unity in the connection of the manifold unless the idea of this unity were also its producing cause: unless it were intentionally produced. This 409 would indeed follow if we were entitled to regard material beings as things in themselves. Then the unity grounding the possibility of natural formations would be solely the unity of space. But space is not a real ground of production, A 352 only its formal condition. It does have some resemblance to the real ground we seek, since no part in it can be determined except in relation to the whole, whose representation therefore underlies the possibility of the parts. Yet it is at least possible to regard the material world as mere appearance and to think something as a thing in itself, which is not appearance, as its substrate, and to supply this with a corresponding intellectual intuition, even if not our own. There would then be a supersensible real ground for nature, though unknowable to us. We ourselves belong to this nature. We would therefore consider what is necessary in nature as an object of sense under mechanical laws. At the same time we would consider the agreement and unity of its particular laws and the forms under them—which we must judge contingent in relation to those mechanical laws—in nature as an object of reason, indeed in all nature as a system, under teleological laws. We would judge nature by two principles without teleological explanation excluding mechanical explanation as if they contradicted each other.
From this we can also understand something that otherwise we might easily suspect but could hardly assert and prove with certainty: A 353 a principle for mechanically deriving purposive natural products can coexist with the teleological principle, but can never make the latter dispensable. In a thing we must judge as a natural end, an organized being, we can try all known laws of mechanical production and those still to be discovered. We may hope to make good progress with them. Yet we can never dispense with appeal to a wholly different ground of production, causality through ends, for the possibility of such a product. No human reason, nor any finite reason qualitatively like ours however much greater in degree, can ever hope to understand the production of even a blade of grass from merely mechanical causes. For the teleological connection of causes and 410 effects is entirely indispensable to judgment for the possibility of such an object, even merely to study it with experience as a guide. A sufficient ground relating to ends cannot be found for external objects as appearances. This ground, though also lying in nature, must be sought only in nature's supersensible substrate, into which all possible insight is barred to us. Thus we cannot possibly draw grounds for explaining A 354 purposive connections from nature itself. Given the constitution of the human cognitive faculty, we must seek their highest ground in an original understanding as world-cause.
78 On Uniting the Principle of Matter's Universal Mechanism with the Teleological Principle in Nature's Technique.
It matters immensely to reason not to abandon nature's mechanism in its productions or pass over it in explaining them, because without it we can gain no insight into the nature of things. Even if we are granted that a highest architect directly created natural forms as they have always existed, or predetermined those that continually develop in nature's course according to the same pattern, this does not advance our knowledge of nature in the least. We do not know that being's way of acting or its ideas, which are supposed to contain the principles making natural beings possible. We cannot explain nature from that being from above downward, a priori. But suppose we begin from the forms of objects of experience, from below upward, a posteriori. Because we believe we find purposiveness in them, we appeal to a cause acting according to ends A 355 to explain it. Our explanation would then be entirely tautological, deceiving reason with words. Moreover, where we stray with this explanation into the transcendent, beyond where natural knowledge can follow, reason is tempted into poetic fantasy. Preventing that is precisely its foremost task.
411 On the other hand, it is an equally necessary maxim of reason not to overlook the principle of ends in nature's products. Even if this principle does not make the way they originate any more understandable to us, it is still a guiding principle for investigating nature's particular laws. This remains true even if we do not want to use it to explain nature itself. For the time being, although these products plainly display an intentional unity of ends, we still call them only natural ends. That is, we do not look beyond nature for the ground of their possibility. But since reason must eventually ask about this possibility, it must think of a special kind of causality, different from the one belonging to the mechanics of natural causes and not found in nature. For alongside matter's receptivity to more and different forms than natural mechanics allows it, we must add the spontaneity of a A 356 cause—which therefore cannot be matter. Without this, no ground for those forms can be given. Before taking this step, reason must certainly proceed carefully. It must not try to explain every instance of nature's technique teleologically: that is, every productive capacity of nature that displays a purposive shape merely for our apprehension, as regular bodies do. Instead, it must continue to regard this as mechanically possible for as long as it can. But completely excluding the teleological principle on that account would be just as fanciful. When reason investigates how natural forms are possible through their causes, and their purposiveness undeniably points to another kind of causality, insisting on mere mechanism would send reason wandering among imaginary natural powers that cannot even be thought. An exclusively teleological explanation that disregarded natural mechanism altogether would lead it into an equally extravagant enthusiasm.
We cannot combine the two principles in one and the same natural thing as principles for explaining, or deducing, one from the other. That is, we cannot unite them as dogmatic and constitutive principles of insight into nature for determining judgment. Suppose, for example, I assume that a maggot is a product of matter's mere mechanism: of the new formation matter carries out by itself A 357 when its elements are freed through decay. I cannot then derive that same product from the very same matter as a causality 412 acting according to ends. Conversely, if I take that product to be a natural end, I cannot count on a mechanical way of producing it, adopt that as a constitutive principle for judging its possibility, and thus unite the two principles. One kind of explanation excludes the other. This holds even if, objectively, both grounds for the possibility of such a product rested on a single ground, but we took no account of it. The principle that is to make the two compatible in judging nature by them must be placed in something outside both—and therefore outside any possible empirical representation of nature—yet containing nature's ground. In other words, it must be placed in the supersensible, and each kind of explanation must be referred to this. Now we can have only an indeterminate concept of this ground, as something that makes it possible to judge nature according to empirical laws. We cannot determine it more closely through any predicate. It follows that the two principles can be united, not on a ground for explaining the possibility of a product according to given laws for determining A 358 judgment, but only on a ground for setting out that possibility for reflective judgment.—For to explain means to derive from a principle, which we must therefore be able to know and state clearly. Certainly, the principle of nature's mechanism and that of its causality according to ends must be connected in one higher principle, and flow together from it, in one and the same natural product. Otherwise they could not coexist in our study of nature. But suppose that this objectively shared principle, which also justifies combining the maxims of natural inquiry that depend on it, is of such a kind that we can point to it but can never know it determinately or state it clearly for use in particular cases. We could then draw no explanation from it: no clear and determinate derivation of the possibility of a natural product possible according to those two different kinds of principle. Now the shared principle of mechanical derivation on the one hand and teleological derivation on the other is the supersensible that we must place beneath nature as appearance. But for theoretical purposes we cannot form even the slightest positively determined concept of it. So there is no way to explain how, 413 on this principle, nature in its particular laws forms a system for us that we can recognize as possible both according to the principle of production A 359 by physical causes and according to that of final causes. We can only make a presupposition when we encounter natural objects whose possibility we cannot think through the principle of mechanism without relying on teleological principles, even though mechanism always has a claim on any natural being. We may then confidently investigate natural laws according to both principles, depending on whether our understanding can recognize the possibility of their product from one or the other. We need not be troubled by the apparent conflict between the principles for judging it. For at least the possibility that the two might also be objectively compatible in one principle is assured, since they concern appearances that presuppose a supersensible ground.
Thus both nature's mechanism and its teleological, intentional technique may fall under a shared higher principle of nature according to particular laws, as regards the very same product and its possibility. Yet because this principle is transcendent, the limits of our understanding prevent us from combining the two principles in explaining that same natural production when even the product's inner possibility is understandable only through a causality according to ends, as is the case with organized A 360 matter. The above principle of teleology therefore remains: given the character of the human understanding, we can assume no cause for the possibility of organic beings in nature except a cause acting intentionally. Nature's mere mechanism cannot adequately explain these products. But this principle is not meant to decide anything about the possibility of such things in themselves.
For this principle is only a maxim of reflective judgment, not determining judgment. It therefore holds only subjectively for us, not objectively for the possibility of these kinds of things themselves, where both ways of producing them might well be connected in one and the same ground. Moreover, unless we add to the teleologically conceived way of producing them some concept of a mechanism of nature also operating in it, we could not judge such a production to be a natural product 414 at all. The maxim above therefore also requires us to unite the two principles when judging things as natural ends. But this is not so that one can wholly or partly replace the other. No mechanism can take the place of what we, at least, can think as possible only through intention. And no contingency requiring an end as its determining ground A 361 can take the place of what we recognize as necessary through mechanism. We can only subordinate the one—mechanism—to the other—intentional technique. The transcendental principle of nature's purposiveness fully permits this.
For wherever ends are thought as grounds of the possibility of certain things, we must also assume means whose law of operation by itself requires nothing that presupposes an end. Such a law can therefore be mechanical and still be a subordinate cause of intentional effects. Thus, even in nature's organic products, we can think of an extensive, indeed universal, connection between mechanical and teleological laws in nature's productions. This is even more possible if their infinite multitude leads us to adopt intentionality in the connection of natural causes according to particular laws as a universal principle of reflective judgment for nature as a whole—the world—at least as a permissible hypothesis. We can do this without confusing the principles for judging these products or replacing one with the other. For in a teleological judgment, even when we judge the form matter takes to be possible only through intention, matter can still, by its nature and according to mechanical laws, be subordinated as a means to the end we represent. Still, A 362 the ground of this compatibility lies in something that is neither one nor the other—neither mechanism nor a connection of ends—but is nature's supersensible substrate, of which we have no knowledge. For our human reason, therefore, the two ways of representing the possibility of such objects cannot merge. We can judge them only through a connection of final causes grounded in a supreme understanding. This takes nothing away from the teleological kind of explanation.
But just how much nature's mechanism does as a means to 415 every final intention in nature is wholly undetermined and will always remain beyond our reason's power to determine. Because of the intelligible principle of the possibility of nature in general mentioned above, we can even assume that nature is possible throughout according to both kinds of universally harmonious laws: physical laws and laws of final causes. Yet we cannot understand at all how this happens. So we also do not know how far the mechanical explanation available to us can go. We know only this much for certain: however far we may get with it, it will always be inadequate for things we have once recognized as natural ends. Given the character of our understanding, we must therefore subordinate all those grounds to a teleological A 363 principle.
This gives us the right—and, because studying nature by the principle of mechanism is important for our theoretical use of reason, also the obligation—to explain all nature's products and events mechanically, even the most purposive ones, as far as we possibly can. Within this kind of investigation, we cannot specify the limits of our power to do so. But we must never lose sight of this: some products can be put before reason for investigation at all only under the concept of an end. In keeping with the essential character of our reason, despite those mechanical causes, we must ultimately subordinate these products to causality according to ends.
28 This shows that, in most speculative matters of pure reason, philosophical schools have generally tried every possible solution to a given question, as far as dogmatic assertions are concerned. To account for nature's purposiveness, people have tried either lifeless matter or a lifeless God, and then either living matter or a living God. All that remains for us, if necessary, is to leave behind all these objective assertions and consider our judgment critically, solely in relation to our cognitive powers. In this way we can secure for its principle the validity of a maxim: a validity that, if not dogmatic, is still sufficient for a reliable use of reason.
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Part II — Dialectic of Teleological Judgment is part of Critique of Judgment by Immanuel Kant. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is part 19 of 21 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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