KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

104 Antinomy of Division
why it is an accident not of the body as a whole but of its parts is not
explained. The commentators agree with Kant on this in as much
as they find this relationship unproblematical. Bennett, for
instance, who seldom does not object to what Kant says, is in this
case in full agreement: "It is obviously true that a substance exists
independently of any facts about how it relates to anything else to
compose a larger whole ... " 60
In the Monadologia physica Kant had equated "divisible" with
"compounded" with regard to matter, as if only that which already
consists of parts is divisible. 61 This position (though with critical
restrictions) is still taken in the Critique of Pure Reason and the
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. For space, on the
other hand, the parts are not conditions of the whole; a space is not
composed of its parts. "Space should properly be called not compositum
but totum since its parts are possible only in the whole, not the
whole through the parts" (B466). 62 Kant makes no attempt in the
Critique of Pure Reason to justify the assertion that dividing up a
whole does not thereby create the parts in the first place, but rather
traces and displays the already existing dividedness (makes it an
object of experience).
I do not wish to problematize the relation of part and whole
any further at this point; it will be dealt with in great detail in the
next chapter. I want only to point out that Kant assumes his conception
of this relation without argument. And in case it really is supposed
to be self-evident, then it must at some point in time have
become evident. Aquinas, for instance, did not believe that the parts
were the condition for the whole. 63 Descartes considered extended
matter to be a continuum that was only divided up into bodies by
60 Bennett, Dialectic, p. 164.
61 Monadologia physica, propositions 2 and 4 W 1,522, 528; Ak 1,477, 1,479 Cf.
Adickes, Kant als Naturforscher, vol. 1, p. 149; Kemp Smith Commentary, p. 489;
Prolegomena §52b.
62 Although Kant does say (B211, B463) that a space consists of other spaces (and
not of points or simple parts), nonetheless, the subspaces are not conditions or
grounds of the space.
63 Aquinas sees the conditioning of the whole by the parts as a proof that the whole
in question is not a natural object. A number of houses may make up a city or the
composition of parts may make up a house; these however are not natural objects
but products of humans; cf.Summa contra gentiles, IV,35,3, §3731. A natural object
is constituted by form and matter, and the form depends on the position or place of
the object in nature. Cf. Werner, Thomas, vol. II, 201ff.