KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

110 Antinomy of Freedom
How far the organization may go in a structured [gegliedert] body, only
experience can show; and even if this experience were not to arrive with certainty
at any inorganic part, still such parts must at least lie in the realm of
possible experience. (B*555)
The Kantian concept of the organic is not articulated further in the
Critique of Pure Reason, but it should be clear from what has been
said so far that the particular character of the organism cannot lie
in the kind of matter of which it is composed. At some level of division
everything is anorganic; and since this level is within the
range of possible experience, the problems that might arise in the
transition from anorganic to organic matter belong to empirical
science, not to metaphysics or transcendental philosophy.
2.5 The Antinomy of Freedom
For our discussion of the antinomy of judgment in the next
chapter it is necessary to analyze the Third Antinomy of the Critique
of Pure Reason for three reasons: 1) considered formally, the Third
Antinomy introduces the type of resolution used in all later antinomies
constructed by Kant; 2) in terms of content this particular
antinomy displays some parallels to the antinomy of judgment in as
much as it deals with the relation of causal determinism or natural
causality to moral-practical purposes (although not to technicalpractical
purposes); 3) historically speaking, most commentators on
the "Critique of Teleological Judgment" have viewed the antinomy of
judgment as a repetition or extension of this antinomy, so that, even
though (or precisely because) I shall dispute this opinion in the next
chapter, a presentation of the Third Antinomy is a prerequisite for
the discussion. I shall treat the Third Antinomy only insofar as it is
necessary to reveal the formal structure of the "subcontrary" antinomies
and to clarify what a "cosmological idea" of freedom is supposed
to be.
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant formulates the Third
Antinomy as follows:
terminological distinction between "organic" (infinitely structured) and "organized"
(finitely structured) which has no textual basis.