The Teleology of Reason

A Study of the Structure of Kant's Critical Philosophy

Courtney D. Fugate

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9783110367911
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Humanism in Philosophy

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

Part I: Preliminary Investigations

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Chapter 1

Motivations

Introduction

Kant’s descriptions of reason in the critical writings are replete with teleological formulations. As he explains, reason itself is subject to “needs,” “unquenchable desires,” “interests,” “aims” and “ends” (see, e. g., KrV A796/ B824). It is inexorably impelled by a “propensity of its nature” (KrV A797/B825), based “on the irresistible law of necessity” (Prol 04:368), to seek not only ends, but also an absolute systematic unity of ends under one supreme end, the final end of reason, which, most remarkably, pure reason provides for itself through its own practical function. In this respect, claims Kant, something called “metaphysics” – i. e. the implicit project of developing just such a rational and systematic doctrine of ends subservient to one final end – is already a reality contained within “the natural disposition of human reason,” like a seed that cannot fail to germinate, but which has hitherto failed to throw out a well-constructed and stable root-system.¹

This chapter presents what I believe to be powerful systematic, historical and scholarly reasons for undertaking a deeper investigation into the telic elements in Kant’s philosophy. The first section surveys the textual evidence supporting a teleological reading of the critical philosophy, and does so in a way that aims to make evident the main contours of its purposive structure. In particular, this general structure is treated in three related parts, namely, as it concerns the system of philosophy both theoretical and practical, as it concerns the system of transcendental critique, and finally as it concerns what might be called the systematic epigenesis of philosophical wisdom. Each part of this structure will be further examined in Parts II and III, which form the main body of this study.

The second section of the present chapter draws attention to the significance of Kant’s philosophy for the tradition of teleological thought by locating it at the boundary between two radically different manifestations of this tradition. To be specific, the critical turn itself is shown to be located at the dividing line between the telic worldview typical of previous German metaphysics, which locates its ultimate foundation in God’s will, and the telic worldview that is typical of the critical Kant and of most post-Kantian German thought, which sees teleology as a product of reason. To anticipate, three points make it evident that teleological motives must lie at the heart of Kant’s thought and, consequently, that they deserve to be studied in greater depth. First, Kant himself spent more than the first decade of his philosophical career seeking to better articulate the central teleological framework of traditional German metaphysics. Secondly, since it was Kant who first felt the need to turn away from this worldview to that of the critical philosophy, and since, furthermore, post-Kantian discussions of the telic structure of reason among figures like Fichte, Hegel and Schelling take the critical philosophy as their starting point, it can be said that he almost single-handedly effected this major turn in the tradition. Thirdly, and most obviously, Kant himself explicitly attributes both the possibility and the originality of his critical enterprise to its basis in a radically new formulation of the teleological conception of reason, as we will see further below.

The third and final section of this chapter surveys the secondary literature on Kant’s conception of teleology that is most relevant to my project. Specifically, it shows that although a wide variety of views is found in the literature, a few of which see teleology as at best peripheral to Kant’s philosophy, the general consensus is nevertheless that it is central to his conception of the structure of reason at the deepest of levels. Yet, despite this consensus, it finds that no sustained investigation has been made into the status or origin of such teleological “talk” in Kant’s writings and that there exists no detailed account of how it operates in and unifies the various parts of his philosophy. The present work attempts to fulfill both goals, while showing that Kant works consistently with a single teleology of reason throughout the critical period.

§. 1. Preliminary Sketch of the Telic Structure of Kant’s Systemof Philosophy

In an essay of 1788, entitled “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy” (hereafter ÜGTP), Kant writes,

Ends have a direct relation to reason, whether this reason be our own or one foreign to us. […] Now ends are either ends of nature or of freedom. That there are ends in nature, no person can see a priori; by comparison, one can quite well see a priori that there must be a connection of causes and effects in nature. Consequently, the use of the teleological principle in regard to nature is always empirically conditioned. It would be precisely the same story with the ends of freedom, if, prior to these, objects of the will had to be given by nature (in needs and inclinations) as determining grounds, in order for us to determine what to make our ends by the mere comparison of such objects with one another and with their totality. The Critique of Practical Reason shows, however, that there exist pure practical principles through which reason is determined a priori, and that these hence provide reason with an end a priori. If, therefore, the use of the teleological principle for the explanation of nature can never provide the origin of purposive conjunction in a way determined completely and for all ends, due to its being limited to empirical conditions: one must nevertheless expect such from a pure doctrine of ends (which can be no other than that of freedom), the principle of which contains a priori the relation of a reason in general to the whole of all ends and can only be practical. Because, however, a pure practical teleology, i. e. morality, is determined to make its own ends actual in the world: for this reason it may not neglect the possibility of such ends in the world, both as regards what concerns the final causes given therein and the suitability of the highest cause of the world to the whole of all ends as effect, hence natural teleology as well as the possibility of a nature in general, i.e. transcendental philosophy. For only in this way is it possible to secure the objective reality of practical reason in its exercise in regard to the possibility of the object, that is to say, of the end that it prescribes to be brought about in the world. (ÜGTP 08:182– 183; my translation)

As this passage clearly attests, Kant’s understanding of the telic structure of his philosophy is highly articulated, and comprises at least a theoretical and a practical teleology, which, although initially separate, are finally united within a larger framework of an equally purposive nature.

§. 1.1. The Teleology of Theoretical Reason

Now, that Kant should speak in this passage of a teleology specifically of theoretical reason, i. e. of reason in its role of cognizing physical nature, is not particularly surprising. In the KrV, Kant had already traced reason’s interest in producing systematic unity in its cognitions, as well as the epistemic limitations that destine it to never fully reach this goal – and thus to remain perpetually striving towards it – to the essential conditions or limits of all theoretical knowledge. These were found generally to lie in the understanding’s dependency on the giv-eness of its matter in the form of a sensible manifold, coupled with the requirement that these materials be actively synthesized so that they are capable of being brought under the transcendental unity of apperception. Theoretical reason, it was thus shown, is essentially structured towards the goal of actively producing an absolute unity of experience, a unity that nevertheless can never be completely achieved even in principle.

Indeed, if we look more deeply into the primary texts, as we will in Part II, then it turns out that this teleology of theoretical reason itself has at least three related parts. The first is found in the Analytic of the KrV where the very possibility of the understanding and of its application to an object in general are shown to be rooted in several even more basic telic functions. Most of the details of this must be postponed until Part II, but two of these functions can be mentioned here. One consists in the systematic structure of the understanding itself, whose categories, as functions of unity in thought, “must hang together according to a concept or idea” (KrV A67/B92), which defines the function or goal (Zweck) of all the understanding’s activities. According to Kant, this teleology underlies the metaphysical deduction of the categories in which these are derived as the formal means of synthesis necessary and sufficient for the realization of the goal of judgment (i. e. the determination of an object) (KrV A67/B92). Another of note comes into view in Kant’s attempt to prove specifically that perceptions in spatiotemporal form must be determinable under the synthetic principles a priori by means of which alone their objective unity, i. e. relation to an object in general, is rendered possible. The purposiveness here, I will argue, lies in a justified demand for unity in all the understanding’s cognition of experience and it characterizes the internal structure making possible the faculty of determinative theoretical judgment. As we will see, so far from meaning that the object of the understanding must be telically structured, this purposiveness, as one for the sake of the employment of judgment itself, in fact has as a necessary consequence that its object be merely mechanical, i. e. not characterized by its own internal end. Still other teleological features that make possible theoretical cognition, such as the unique unity of space and time as forms of intuition, as well as the fitness of this unique unity for the subsuming of objects with spatiotemporal form under the unity of understanding, will be the topic of Part II.

The teleology of this first part thus specifically concerns the inner structure of the understanding in general and its formative synthetic role in bringing perceptions under concepts. It is not directly mentioned in the passage from ÜGTP quoted above, but it very much provides the basis for Kant’s claim there that “one can quite well see a priori that there must be a connection of causes and effects in nature.” We can see this a priori, precisely because on Kant’s view the understanding literally makes or constitutes experience after the form that it requires for its own functioning, and thus teleically. Notably, it also provides the basis for the teleology of theoretical reason that is specifically mentioned in this passage, i. e. the one that concerns the purposiveness of nature itself. How these two telic structures are related is clarified in Kant’s explanation in the KrV that the first subjective purpose of theoretical reason, i. e. the unification of experience under concepts, can and must be furthered by the adoption of the transcendental principle that there are objective purposes in nature, since the “highest formal unity” or “perfection in the absolute sense” is nothing other than the “purposive unity of things” (KrV A686/B714; A694/B722). Kant thus holds, for reasons that at this moment are still unclear, that the ultimate form of the unity within an manifold generally speaking, and thus also in experience, is precisely teleological unity, or the unity that makes possible the directedness of objects themselves to ends.

In fact, not only is the subjective purpose of reason itself benefitted by the idea of a natural teleology, but indeed Kant goes even further to remark that “the proper vocation of this supreme faculty of cognition is to employ all its methods and principles only in order to penetrate into the deepest inwardness of nature in accordance with all possible principles of unity, of which the unity of ends is the most prominent” (KrV A702/B730). As Kant explains further in the KrV,

The regulative principle demands that systematic unity as unity of nature be absolutely presupposed, which is known not merely empirically, but rather a priori (albeit still as indeterminate), and hence as following from the essences of things. […] The greatest systematic unity, hence also purposive unity, is the school and very foundation of the possibility of the greatest use of human reason. The idea of it is therefore inseparably bound up with the essence of our reason. This very idea is therefore legislative for us, and thus it is very natural to assume a legislative reason (intellectus archetypus) corresponding to it, from which is to be derived all systematic unity of nature as the object of our reason (KrV A693 – 695/B721– 722; emphasis added).

In its highest extension then, reason as a theoretical faculty rests on the indeterminate, but nevertheless legislative, idea of a transcendental teleology, i. e. a teleology grounded in the essences of all objects of reason, which comprises both the basic purposive unity constituting nature as mechanical (as a system of perceptions formally constituted by the understanding for the understanding) and the possible purposive unity of the objects of nature themselves (as a systematic unity of mechanisms, i. e. as a teleological system or as an organism).

Nevertheless, as Kant’s comments in the quoted passage from ÜGTP indicate, this latter teleology of nature only really furthers the subjective teleology of reason, if it is limited to providing a means for furthering the understanding’s most essential function, i. e. the bringing of perceptions under laws in an experience. That is to say, its teleology is only purposive for theoretical reason as a whole insofar as it guides us to the further discovery of nature’s specifically mechanical /dynamical constitution. Concepts of individual ends, however, have no such immediate function. Indeed, Kant maintains that it is not even possible to discover the concept of an end objectively in nature, since such a concept is not only not required for...

Table of contents

• The Teleology of Reason
• Kantstudien-Ergänzungshefte
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations and the Use of Translations
• Part I: Preliminary Investigations
• Part II: The Teleology of Human Knowledge
• Part III: The Teleology of Freedom
• Bibliography
• Register