Kant's System of Judicial Perspectives

by Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)

With this, then, I bring my entire critical undertaking to a close. [Kt7:170]

1. The Shift from the Practical to the Judicial Standpoint

Many commentators devote all their attention to Kant's 'two great Critiques' [O2:173] without ever acknowledging the role of the third Critique in Kant's System. One reason for this may be that the systems of both theoretical and practical perspectives are primarily concerned with establishing objective conclusions, whereas a system of judicial perspectives 'is only subjective' [Kt7:286]. Nevertheless, it is a serious misunderstanding of Kant, particularly for those concerned with the metaphysical implications of his System, to regard his dichotomy between theoretical and practical reason as implying there to be 'no "third" way' to interpret experience [S13:4.37]. For such an approach ignores Kant's attempt to synthesize system_t and system_p in system_j.

The faculty of judgment performed two distinct functions in system_t, each of which corresponds to one of its two functions here in system_j. On the one hand, judgment, with the help of imagination, synthesized sensibility and understanding [see Figure VII.1], and on the other hand, it served as the formal link between understanding and reason [see Figure VII.2]. In Part One of Kt7, as Kant explains in Kt7i:233, 'the faculty of judgment ... is concerned with how just two faculties-imagination and understanding-are related in a representation prior to [the emergence of] any concept' [Kt7i:233]. Examining the 'free play of imagination and understanding',[1] which results from subduing the dominance of understanding in system_t, is primarily the task of the critique of 'aesthetic judgment'.[2] The task of the critique of 'teleological judgment' in Part Two of Kt7 is, by contrast, 'to relate the understanding to the reason ... so as to clarify the status of objects as ends of nature' [Kt7i: 233]. In both of its forms judgment in system_j is primarily concerned not with theoretical cognition or practical desire, but with the subject's own feeling of pleasure and/or displeasure. Hence it is noncognitive: 'pleasure and displeasure, not being modes of cognition, cannot be defined in themselves; they can be felt, but not understood' [Kt7i:232]; 'judgment ... produces for itself no knowledge whatsoever' [242; see note IX.2].

Judgment in system_j is both free (as in system_p) and yet based on a sensible object (as in system_t): it 'contains a principle of subsumption, not of intuitions under concepts, but of the faculty of intuitions ... i.e. of the imagination, under the faculty of concepts, i.e. the understanding, so far as the former in its freedom accords with the latter in its conformity to law' [Kt7: 287; s.a. Kt7i:223]. This enables both types of judgment in system_j to function as 'a transition ... from the sensible substrate of [nature] to the intelligible one of [freedom]' [Kt7i:246; s.a. Kt7:178-9]. Thus, the term 'judgment' now refers neither to the determinate judgment in the third stage of system_t, which uses principles of pure understanding to establish empirical knowledge, nor to the practical judgment in the third stage of system_p, which uses moral principles to realize moral action; rather, it refers to 'reflective judgment', which is 'a principle to itself'-one which 'must serve as a mere subjective principle for the employment of our cognitive faculties in ... reflecting upon objects of a particular kind' [385]. At one point, Kant calls the employment of such a subjective principle 'heautonomy, since [reflective] judgment never legislates for nature or for freedom, but only for itself'.[3]

The common factor uniting aesthetic and teleological judgment under one principle is 'finality', or 'purposiveness', which Kant defines as 'conformity to law on the part of the contingent' [Kt7:403; Kt7i:217]. It is manifested subjectively in aesthetic judgment and objectively in teleological judgment. In both cases finality serves as 'a mediating concept between the mechanistic nature of the first Critique and the demand of moral freedom [in system_p]' [W10:131]. Even though system_j adopts the empirical perspective as its standpoint,[4] it is part of Kant's overall Transcendental Perspective because it reveals finality as an a priori principle, corresponding to the principles of pure understanding in step eight of system_t and to the imperatives of obligation in step eight of system_p [Kt7i:246]. However, despite the similarity in the way they function in Kant's System, aesthetic and teleological judgment deal with different types of experience, each with its own distinct type of object (the former yielding objects judged to be beautiful or sublime, and the latter, objects judged to contain within them an inherent organization or natural purpose). As a result, each type of judgment gives rise to its own version of system_j [but see Ap. IX.B].

The fact that Kant chooses to analyze two distinct kinds of experience in his treatment of system_j (or three, if the sublime is regarded as being distinct from the beautiful) typifies the generally unsystematic organization of Kt7, which is most evident in his failure to specify the elements involved in such experiences, as formally required by his architectonic plan.[5] (That Kant was aware of his neglect of the latter is evident from the fact that Kt7 is the only Critique in which the Analytics and Dialectics are not combined in an overall 'Doctrine of Elements'. Perhaps this was not simply an oversight!) In place of the sense of logical flow which characterizes the first two Critiques is a sometimes rambling and almost haphazard treatment of various topics. But Kant's difficulty here is due at least as much to the nature of his subject matter as to his own negligence. For the standpoint has shifted in system_j from the practical (position twelve on Figure III.6) to the judicial (position nine); and with this shift the priority of form in the first two systems gives way to a priority of matter.[6] Kant still devotes much of his attention to formal considerations, but does not specify precisely a complete set of universally valid 'elements', since these are bound to differ with different sorts of empirical content.[7] Instead, he expounds the basic principles (cf. step eight of system_t) governing various types of experience and describes the general relation between the faculties required for each type to take place.

With its emphasis on the noncognitive, system_j takes us the farthest distance from logic as such, in which formal considerations are so important as to exclude content altogether [see III.3]. (This opposition between the empirical and the logical is represented by the opposition between the -+ and +- components in Figure III.3 [cf. Figure III.8].) Although we must keep in mind the requirements of reason's architectonic form as we examine the theories Kant develops in Kt7, we should therefore not be too surprised if they do not fit exactly into the standard twelvefold pattern. Yet even without specifying the content of system_j as neatly as in system_t and system_p, we can still ascertain how Kant's doctrines of aesthetic and teleological judgment fit into our perspectival interpretation of his System. Doing so in IX.2 and IX.3, respectively, will yield an adequate account of how Kant intended to complete his Critical philosophy; in addition, it will supply some indispensable background for our discussion of its metaphysical implications in Part Four.

2. The Aesthetic Judgment of Subjective Finality

Most of Kant's discussion in Part One of Kt7 is governed by the general distinction between four types of aesthetic judgment (or ways of experiencing 'delight'): 'an object is to be counted either as agreeable, or beautiful, or sublime, or good (absolutely)' [Kt7:266]. He relates these to the four main categories in stage two of system_t, as well as alluding to the four main faculties: the agreeable relates primarily to the 'quantity' of a judgment, as it is revealed in 'sensation'; the beautiful also requires a 'quality' which 'permits ... of being understood'; the sublime posits a 'relation' between 'the sensible' and 'a possible supersensible perspective'; and the good consists in 'the modality of a necessity' requiring everyone to agree with the 'pure intellectual judgement' in question [266-7]. Moreover, he also groups these four into two types of 1LAR, which together suggest the following model:

Figure IX.1: The Four Types of Delight as a 2LAR

One 1LAR is explicitly stated by Kant: the agreeable and the beautiful are both predicates of a 'judgement of taste',[8] whereas the sublime and the good stem from 'a higher, intellectual feeling' [192], similar in some ways to respect in stage three of system_p [271] and to the highest good in stage four [208]. This corresponds to the +/- distinction in the second position of each component in Figure IX.1. The other 1LAR (corresponding to the first term in each component) is Kant's implicit distinction between the universal (+) forms of delight (the good and the beautiful) and the particular (-) forms (the agreeable and the sublime).

This arrangement might seem to suggest that these four types of delight constitute the four stages of aesthetic judgment. Kant sometimes makes statements which could be taken in this way, such as when he relates the agreeable to 'judgements of sense (material aesthetic judgements [= stage one])' and says judgments of the beautiful are '(as formal [= stage two]) alone judgements of taste proper' [Kt7:223]. In the end, however, he does not develop system_j along these lines. Instead, as we shall see, he relates the agreeable and the good more to the influence of system_t and system_p, respectively, than to system_j as such. He devotes relatively little attention to the agreeable or the good, presumably because the former is too mundane (it always concerns only 'what pleases immediately' [208]), and the latter too extraordinary, to require a thorough Critical analysis. The beautiful and the sublime, by contrast, both have unique combinations of sensible availability and mysterious rationality which give the Critical philosopher an intrinsic interest in them;[9] but they are experiences which differ too much to function together in a single system. Our discussion will begin, therefore, with a general examination of what Kant has to say about judgments of taste, regarded as 'the faculty of estimating the beautiful' [203n].

A. The Beautiful

Kant divides the 'Analytic of the Beautiful' into four 'moments', which, of course, correspond to the structure of the four categories. Because beauty is associated most closely with quality [Kt7:203n; cf. Figure IX.1], he begins his discussion with the 'moment of quality' [203], which stipulates that the 'delight' experienced in an object judged to be beautiful must be disinterested. Kant regards delight as the key to an aesthetic judgment's 'estimate of the object'; it enables him to distinguish the beautiful from the agreeable and the good by clarifying their varying manifestations of delight. 'The delight which we connect with the representation of the real existence of an object is called interest' [204]. The judgments which determine 'the agreeable and the good' are both 'invariably coupled with an interest in the object' [209]: the former depends on the existence of something 'which the senses find pleasing in sensation' [205], and the latter on the existence of something which 'reason recommends ... by its mere concept' [207]. By contrast, a pure judgment of taste 'relies on no interest', though it may produce one [205n]. One must therefore have 'complete indifference' as to 'the real existence of the thing ... in order to play the part of judge in matters of taste' [205]; for real existence is properly the concern of system_t [cf. 251].

Next Kant considers the quantity of judgments of taste, according to which the beautiful object 'pleases universally' [Kt7:219]. Since an aesthetic judgment as such is subjective, it has 'no bearing upon the Object' [215]; so this second characteristic refers to a special kind of 'subjective universality' [212e.a.]. Once again, this characteristic can best be understood by examining how the beautiful differs from the agreeable and the good as far as what it assumes about the delight others will have in the object. Judgments of the agreeable do not express a universal, but only a subjective, delight: 'Every one has his own taste (that of sense)' [Kt7:212]. Judgments of the good are universal and objective: 'the good is ... represented as an Object of universal delight by means of a concept' [213]. In judgments of the beautiful, by contrast, a person must regard delight in the object

as resting on what he may also presuppose in every other person; and therefore he must believe that he has reason for demanding a similar delight from every one. Accordingly he will speak of the beautiful as if beauty were a quality of the object and the judgement logical ... [211]

Unlike a logical judgment, a judgment of taste 'does not postulate the agreement of every one ...; it only imputes this agreement to every one' [216]. That is, it is 'only an idea' [216], according to which the subject treats the object 'as if' everyone would judge it in a certain way. This 'subjective universal communicability ... is ... the mental state present in the free play of imagination and understanding' [217-8]. Hence, even though its validity is 'merely subjective', a judgment of taste is regarded from the judicial standpoint as 'extend[ing] its claim to all Subjects, as unreservedly as it would if it were an objective judgement' [285].

The third characteristic of judgments of taste, corresponding to the category of relation (of 'ends') [Kt7:219], requires the object of such a judgment to exhibit 'the form of finality ... apart from the representation of an end.'[10] In other words, Kant is arguing here that, in order for us to judge an object to be beautiful, we must see in it something which exhibits a kind of purposiveness, but which as such, has no real purpose. A judgment of taste 'is uninfluenced by charm or emotion (though these may be associated with the delight in the beautiful), and [its] determining ground, therefore, is simply finality of form' [223], not 'sensation' [226] or any other representation which might reveal an end. The subject estimates an object to be beautiful 'on the ground of a mere formal finality, i.e. a finality apart from an end' [226]. This means that, whereas delight in the agreeable or the good has a finality which points beyond itself to a real existing end (e.g., eating is agreeable because it satisfies hunger), delight in the beautiful has a finality which points only to itself, with the sole aim of 'preserving ... the state of the representation itself' [222].

The fourth and final characteristic of beauty, the 'moment' of modality, states that the object of a judgment of taste must produce 'a necessary delight' [Kt7:240]. Judgments of taste will always contain

a necessary reference ... to delight. However, this necessity ... is not a theoretical objective necessity ... Nor yet is it a practical necessity ... Rather..., it can only be termed exemplary.... Since an aesthetic judgement is not an objective or cognitive judgement, this necessity is not derivable from definite concepts, and so is not apodictic. [Kt7:236-7]

The universality which 'demands' that all subjects agree with a judgment of taste [212-3] is here revealed to be necessary only given the presupposition of 'the existence of a common sense', corresponding to the 'common understanding' of system_t [238]. This common sense is assumed by all but the most skeptical to be 'the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge', even in system_t; and so it can serve in system_j as an indeterminate 'ideal norm' on which to base judgments of taste.[11]

This means we must beware of interpreting the requirement of subjective universality too rigidly. For it does not actually exclude the possibility of two people reaching legitimate, but different, conclusions in their aesthetic judgment of a single object. In such a case, if both parties were truly judging aesthetically, 'both would ... be judging correctly' [Kt7:231], because the assumption made by judging subjects 'is not that every one will fall in with our judgement, but rather that one ought to agree with it' [239]. 'The ought in aesthetic judgements' is therefore 'only pronounced conditionally' [237]. To assert 'I think the object [is] beautiful' is, for Kant, to 'attribute that delight to every one as [subjectively] necessary' [289]. In other words, I must assume that the delight I now experience would come to anyone who experiences the object in the way I am now experiencing it, and that anyone who experiences such delight must regard that object as beautiful. This is what Kant means when he says 'we are justified in presupposing that the same subjective conditions of judgement which we find in ourselves are universally present in every man, and further that we have rightly subsumed the given Object under these conditions' [290].

In order to lend further support to his theory that a pure judgment of taste is based on a delight which is regarded as subjectively universal and necessary, Kant offers a Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments [Kt7:279f]. The method he employs is to 'demonstrate the universal validity of a singular judgement expressing the subjective finality of an empirical representation of the form of an object' [280-1]. Or, more simply, he shows how 'something can please in the mere formation of an estimate of it (without [reference to one's] sensation or concept [of it])' [281; cf. 286,306]. He does this by pointing out two 'logical peculiarities, which distinguish a judgement of taste from all cognitive judgements' [281]: first, 'it has universal validity a priori, yet without having a logical universality according to concepts'; and second 'it has a necessity ... which depends upon no a priori proofs' [281]-indeed there is not even any 'empirical ground of proof that can coerce anyone's judgement of taste' [284]. To attempt any such proof would be to treat an aesthetic judgment as a logical one: the former apply only to individual experiences, rather than to general types of experience [285]. As a result, the deduction of aesthetic judgments consists simply in clarifying their peculiarities, a task which relies heavily on the presentation of examples [283]. Thus Kant devotes a good deal of attention [291-336] to developing a number of examples of the ways in which 'singular judgements ... unite their predicate of delight, not to a concept, but to a given singular empirical representation' [289]-i.e., to an 'aesthetic idea'.[12]

In the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment Kant relates the experience of beauty to the concept of 'moral goodness'. In Kt7:352 he declares: 'All intuitions by which a priori concepts are given a foothold are ... either schemata or symbols.' Unlike schemata, symbols 'express concepts without employing a direct intuition for the purpose, but only drawing upon an analogy with one' [352]. Given this sense of 'symbol', Kant proposes that 'the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good'.[13] By this he does not mean that a judgment of beauty in system_j depends in any way on the notion of moral goodness in system_p, but only that the experience of beauty is analogous to the experience of moral goodness, and that, just as respect for the moral law gives moral goodness a foothold in the will, so this analogy can give this moral concept a foothold in nature itself. The analogy is between particular intuitions of beauty and rational, moral ideas, both of which extend the subject's view beyond mere sensibility to something 'intelligible' [353]: aesthetic ideas 'strain after something lying out beyond the confines of experience' [314]. They 'point to a higher ground of nature, which can be partially symbolised in nature but finally lies completely beyond it' [W10:134]. For 'the indeterminate idea of the supersensible within us' is 'the unique key to the riddle of this faculty [of taste]' [Kt7:341]. So 'taste is, in the ultimate analysis, a critical faculty that judges of the rendering of moral ideas in terms of sense' [356]. By means of this analogy judgments of taste can be regarded as uniting system_t with system_p in a single experience.

B. The Sublime

Having completed our discussion of Kant's view of beauty (leaving aside a number of interesting, but secondary issues into which his exposition ventures), let us now discuss the other type of delight which is uniquely manifested in aesthetic judgments, and which serves to synthesize system_t and system_p: delight in the sublime. Kant defines the sublime as 'an object (of nature) the representation of which determines the mind to regard the elevation of nature beyond our reach as equivalent to a presentation of ideas' [Kt7:268]. Or, more simply, it is 'that ... in comparison with which all else is small' [250]. Like beauty, its ultimate source 'is not to be looked for in the things of nature, but only in our own ideas' [250]. The difference is in their 'subjective grounds': beauty is closely associated with the 'sensibility' of system_t, whereas sublimity is associated more with the 'practical reason' of system_p [267]. 'The beautiful in nature is a question of the form of the object, and this consists in limitation, whereas the sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves ... a representation of limitlessness' [244]. As a result, the former 'pleases in the mere estimate formed of it', while the latter 'pleases immediately by reason of its opposition to the interest of sense' [267].

The sublime is opposed to the interest of sense inasmuch as it arouses a feeling of fear which is counterbalanced by an idea of salvation. 'The feeling of the sublime', Kant holds, depends on both 'a displeasure that makes us alive to the feeling of the supersensible side of our being ... and consequently a pleasure, to find every standard of sensibility falling short of the ideas of reason' [Kt7:257-8]. In judging an object to be sublime, 'the aesthetic estimation of magnitude' gives us 'at once a feeling of the effort towards a comprehension that exceeds the faculty of imagination for mentally grasping the progressive apprehension in a whole of intuition, and, with it, a perception of the inadequacy of this faculty' [255]. In so doing,

just as the aesthetic judgement in its estimate of the beautiful refers the imagination in its free play to the understanding ...: so in its estimate of a thing as sublime it refers that faculty to reason ... [256; cf. 266].

For just as in the estimate of the beautiful imagination and understanding by their concert generate subjective finality of the mental faculties, so imagination and reason do so here by their conflict. [258]

The fear aroused by the imagination thus takes refuge in the salvation offered by the ideas of reason.

Kant explains 'the delight in the sublime' in terms of its four categories: 'just like that in the beautiful', it 'must in its Quantity be shown to be universally valid, in its Quality independent of interest, in its Relation subjective finality, and the latter, in its Modality, necessary' [Kt7:247]. The 'universal validity' of sublimity is, however, even more tentative than that of beauty [279]. In fact, at one point Kant says 'there is absolutely no authority for my presupposing that others will ... take a delight in' what I regard as sublime; but he immediately adds that, if we assume its 'moral birthright, we may still demand that delight from every one' [292]. The essential difference here is that 'the object is ... put to a subjectively-final use, but it is not estimated as subjectively-final on its own account' [280]-i.e., on account of its form, as is beauty. Or, as Weber puts it in W14:255: 'Beauty dwells in the form; the sublime, in the disproportion between the form and the content.'

Interpreting the experience of the sublime in terms of a system of judicial perspectives provides another way of uniting system_t and system_p. This time, however, the analogy is not based on a supersensible 'ground external to ourselves', manifested in the form of a beautiful object, but on 'one merely in ourselves', quickened by the formlessness of a sublime object [Kt7:246]. For the person who experiences the sublime must possess 'a native capacity for the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e. for moral feeling', because 'without the development of moral ideas, that which ... we call sublime, merely strikes the untutored man as terrifying' [265]. This revelation of the intelligible nature of our own being is, as in the case of beauty, analogous to the intelligibility presupposed by and revealed in moral activity. Both inspire 'admiration and respect' in their object [245]. Since the object experienced as sublime is a natural object, it unites from the judicial standpoint elements which otherwise belong separately to the theoretical and the practical.

Whether finality is grounded in the beauty we experience in an object which delights us, or in the rational pleasure we derive from experiencing an object which refuses to conform to the empirical limitations of our senses, it is in both cases an experience of subjective finality-i.e., finality which arises primarily as a result of the standpoint adopted by the subject. Both 'should, in strictness, be attributed merely to the attitude of thought, or, rather, to that which serves as basis for this in human nature' [Kt7:280]-viz., the reflective standpoint of the subject in system_j. We do experience another kind of purposiveness, however, which is objective, and which is therefore judged to be immanent in the object in a way quite foreign to aesthetic judgment. To this version of system_j we shall now turn our attention.

3. The Teleological Judgment of Objective Finality

A. Physical Ends

In the Analytic of Teleological Judgment, at the beginning of Part Two of Kt7, Kant is primarily concerned to examine 'finality in nature', as it is found in 'physical ends' [Kt7:366,369]. He defines 'objective finality' as an object's 'adaptability for all sorts of ends, i.e. an infinite manifold of ends.'[14] The teleological judgment of such finality in system_j produces knowledge, viz., 'teleological knowledge ... of nature',[15] just as the aesthetic judgment of subjective finality produces the experience of beauty and sublimity. The former is closer to system_t (which describes the elements of empirical knowledge), and the latter to system_p (which describes the elements of moral action). But teleological judgment is also related to system_p: the main requirement for an object to have objective finality 'is that its form is not possible on purely natural laws [i.e., those given in system_t] ... but that, on the contrary, even to know it empirically in respect of its cause and effect presupposes conceptions of reason', as given by the 'will' in system_p [370]. One of Kant's clearest explanations of the relationship between teleology and system_p comes in Kt5:436n:

Teleology [in system_j] considers nature as a realm of ends; morals [in stage four of system_p] regards a possible realm of ends as a realm of nature. In the former the realm of ends is a theoretical idea for the explanation of what actually is [cf. system_t]. In the latter it is a practical idea for bringing about that which is not actually real but which can become real through conduct ...

An object which has objective finality is either 'a product of nature' or 'a product of art' [Kt7:370]. Kant confines his discussion to the former insofar as 'that great artist, nature',[16] manifests itself as 'a physical end', i.e., an end which is 'both cause and effect of itself' [Kt7:370-1]. His own description of a physical end is relatively straightforward:

Now the first requisite of a thing, considered as a physical end, is that its parts, both as to their existence and form, are only possible by their relation to the whole.... [The] second requisite is ... that the parts of the thing combine of themselves into the unity of a whole by being reciprocally cause and effect of their form.... [That is,] the part must be an organ producing the other parts-each, consequently, reciprocally producing the others.... For a machine has solely motive power, whereas an organized being possesses inherent formative power ... [373-4; cf. Kt7i:235-6]

Objects which 'are only possible as physical ends' possess 'intrinsic natural perfection', and 'are therefore called organisms' [Kt7:375]: 'organisms ... first afford objective reality to the conception of an end that is an end of nature and not a practical end' [375-6]. 'Man', who is himself 'the final end of creation' [435], differs from other earthly organisms in that he 'is able ... to construct by the aid of his reason a system of ends' [427]. Thus 'the teleological estimate of nature, supported by the physical ends actually presented to us in organic beings, [entitles] us to form the idea of a vast system of natural ends' [380], which Kant sometimes calls a 'causal nexus' [e.g., 372,384]. This refers to nature, regarded here from the standpoint of system_j; as such, objective finality 'offers us a bridge between a natural world where everything is mechanical and a moral world where everything is free' [P3:191]. In other words, teleological judgment synthesizes system_t and system_p by reading our will into nature through the idea of a physical end [cf. Kt7i:220n].

The fact that a physical end is 'given in nature ... seems to convert our idea of it into a constitutive teleological principle' [Kt7:405; s.a. Kt7i:219-20]. But Kant warns that

the idea in question is a principle of reason for the use, not of the understanding [in system_t], but of judgement [in system_j] ... Consequently, while the object may certainly be given in experience, it cannot even be judged definitely ... in accordance with the idea, but can only be made an object of reflection. [Kt7:405]

Since the concept of a physical end is an idea presented to reflective judgment by reason, not by the understanding, it 'falls completely outside the scope of the faculty of judgment, taken by itself' [Kt7i:233]. As such, it is inexplicable in the context of system_t [Kt7:395]:

The conception of a causality through ends ... has certainly objective reality ... But the conception of a physical causality following the rule of ends ..., while it may no doubt be thought without self-contradiction, is nevertheless useless for the purpose of dogmatic definitive assertions. [397]

Nevertheless, 'certain natural products must, from the particular constitution of our understanding, be considered by us-if we are to conceive of the possibility of their production as having been produced designedly and as ends' [406]. The need, therefore, is for a nontheoretical standpoint from which we can adequately represent such natural products in this way.

Although the concept of a physical end, or organism[17] is not constitutive of an object, 'yet it may be used by reflective judgement as a regulative conception for guiding our investigation of objects of this kind by a remote analogy with our own causality ..., and as a basis of reflection upon their supreme source' [Kt7:375]. The result of 'confusing a principle of the reflective with one of the determinant judgement' is an 'antinomy between the maxims of the strictly physical, or mechanical, mode of explanation and the teleological, or technical [mode]' [389]-i.e., between system_t and system_j. But when viewed properly, in light of the principle of perspective, both modes of explanation are equally valid [409]. For 'mechanical laws' assume 'nature as an object of sense', while 'teleological laws' assume 'nature as an object of reason, and, indeed, nature in its entirety as a system' [409]. As far as primacy is concerned, the principle of teleological law is superior to that of mechanical law: although 'we are ignorant how far the mechanical mode of explanation ... may penetrate', we must nevertheless 'subordinate such mechanical grounds, one and all, to a teleological principle' [415].

Kant believes the principles of determinant and reflective judgment (i.e., the mechanical and the teleological principles) can be conceived as united in a single principle:[18]

The principle which is to make possible the compatibility of the above pair of principles ... must be placed in what lies beyond both ... [i.e.] in the supersensible, and to this each of the two modes of explanation must be referred.... [F]or if this were not so they could not both enter consistently into the same survey of nature. [Kt7:412]

If they were not grounded in the supersensible, then either one mode of explanation would be invalid, or else nature itself would be irrational. In this way Kant's teleology points our attention directly to the concept of God.

B. Teleology and Theology

The bulk of Part Two of Kt7 is devoted to a Dialectic, an Appendix, and a General Remark,[19] all of which are concerned, in part, with relating teleology to the wider context of Kant's System of Perspectives, and especially to his conception of God. I will discuss these passages in detail in Pq20 [s.a. Pq15 and X.2]. At this point we shall therefore focus our attention on how Kant uses the idea of God in the service of system_j as such.

In Kt7:398 Kant sets out a 'subjective principle for the use merely of the reflective judgement'. Although it is subjective, it is an 'essentially necessary' condition for the teleological version of system_j:

By the peculiar constitution of my cognitive faculties the only way I can judge of the possibility of those things [evincing 'objective finality'] and of their production is by conceiving for that purpose a cause working designedly, and, consequently, a being whose productivity is analogous to the causality of an understanding.... For the very notion that [such 'natural products'] are organized things is itself impossible unless we associate with it the notion of a production by design. [397-8]

This notion of teleological causality implies the common concept of God:

Those natural things which we consider to be only possible as ends constitute ... the only valid argument for [the universe's] dependence upon and its origin from an extramundane Being, and from one, moreover, that the above final form shows to be intelligent. Thus they indicate that teleology must look to a theology for a complete answer to its inquiries. [398-9e.a.]

Kant puts the same point in the form of a question in Kt60:25: 'Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?'

Kant is careful, however, to insist this conclusion should be accepted only from the standpoint of system_j. For of the supersensible 'we are unable from a theoretical standpoint to form the slightest positive determinate conception' [Kt7:412]. What this argument proves, then, is not 'that such an intelligent Being really exists', but only that we must assume so in system_j because of 'the constitution of our cognitive faculties' [399]. 'For, strictly speaking', Kant reminds us, 'we do not observe the ends in nature as designed. We only read this conception into the facts as a guide to judgement in its reflection upon the products of nature. Hence these ends are not given to us by the Object' [399].

In spite of such warnings, Kant still holds the argument that objective finality requires 'an intelligent cause-in short, a God' to be 'perfectly satisfactory from every human standpoint and for any use to which we can put our reason' [Kt7:400]. We must be careful, though, not to infer on this account that the nature and characteristics which God might have from his own (as it were, 'perspectiveless') standpoint are thereby revealed to us. For Kant again warns in Kt7:410:

Even the concession that a supreme Architect has directly created the forms of nature ... does not further our knowledge of nature one whit. The reason is that we are wholly ignorant of the manner in which the supreme Being acts and of his ideas ..., and so cannot explain nature from Him by moving downwards, that is a priori.

The validity of these and Kant's other views on God will be discussed more thoroughly in Chapter X and in Pq20. It is sufficient at this point to summarize his teleological version of system_j by recalling that the finality we come to know in our apprehension of natural organisms, and the order according to which they are connected, constitute an empirical (i.e., judicial) synthesis of system_t with system_p, and that this synthesis points beyond all our perspectives to a transcendent cause of the structure of nature.

4. Kant's Threefold Synthesis of Systems

The foregoing account of Kant's development of system_j in terms of subjective and objective finality has only scratched the surface of his intricate theories. Numerous ambiguities and side-issues have gone untouched, as has the question of whether or not those views we have discussed are actually true. For our present purposes, however, such matters are of little concern, so long as the general way Kant conceived system_j to operate is now sufficiently understood. Moreover, as mentioned in IX.1, the actual elements of system_j, if any, are not so readily systematized as were those discussed in Chapters VII and VIII; for Kant did not attempt to apply his architectonic plan so thoroughly in this case.[20]

By forming an analogy between 'moral certainty' and the contemplation of the beauty and order of nature,[21] both aesthetic and teleological judgment effect a judicial synthesis between system_p and system_t. The key to this synthesis is in both cases an analogy based on 'the idea of the supersensible within us', which constitutes 'the point of union of all our faculties a priori'; for only by assuming it are we able 'to bring reason into harmony with itself.'[22] By means of this