KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

128 Antinomy of Judgment
An antinomy in Kant's system is a conflict of laws, and only a
faculty that gives itself laws, i.e. that is autonomous, can be involved
in an antinomy. Within certain limits, the faculty of judgment as
reflective judgment is autonomous. When the particular is given in
experience but the universal under which it is to be subsumed is
not, judgment prescribes itself a rule about how it is to seek the universal
(concept, law). But only in this limited area of concept formation
and hypothesis development in empirical research does
judgment have a legislative function, and even here it legislates only
for itself. Only in this area can an antinomy specific to judgment
arise. Wherever the universal is given by the understanding and the
faculty of judgment is only determinate and thus not autonomous
there can be no antinomy — at least no antinomy of judgment.
The antinomy of judgment is in principle a supplement to the
Critique of Pure Reason; it presupposes the results of the Critical
Philosophy. Organisms (particulars) are objects of experience and
are subject to the categories and the forms of intuition as are all
other phenomena. A problem arises only with the introduction of
the concept of natural purpose as the universal under which all
organisms are to be subsumed. Judgment gives itself the rule of
using this concept, and it seems that the concept might contain a
contradiction. In this case the autonomous faculty of reflective
judgment would have involved itself in a contradiction, which, if it
should turn out to be unavoidable, must be called an antinomy.
However, it should be remembered that Kant himself introduced the
concept of natural purpose on the basis of a philosophical position
achieved through the Critique of Pure Reason, and so he must bear
the consequences of any inconsistencies. If an antinomy or an
apparent contradiction nonetheless results, then it cannot be an
antinomy of pre-critical, dogmatic reason, but rather an antinomy
of a critically informed and circumspect faculty of judgment. The
concept of natural purpose, as we saw in Chapter 1, was barricaded
behind critical restrictions and reservations and almost buried in
subjunctives and 'as if' formulations. If a real antinomy is to arise,
that is, if the dialectical illusion is to be more than pure sophistry,
then it must arise on the basis of the Critical Philosophy, and the
mere reference to the distinction between appearance and things in
themselves or to other such truisms is of no avail. The unjustified
presupposition which leads to the antinomy cannot be the same as
the one exposed in the Critique of Pure Reason. The appearance of