KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

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Introduction 131
The remark above about the peculiarity of my interpretation of
Kant actually refers just as much to a peculiarity of traditional Kant
scholarship with regard to the antinomy of judgment, a peculiarity
that will be reflected in the structure of this chapter. With respect to
this literature my assertion that, for instance, the section §71 with
the title "Preliminary to the Solution of the Above Antinomy" was
intended as a preliminary to a solution and not as a mere addend
u m to an already completed solution, constitutes a radical
departure from almost all previous interpretations. Even my view
that Section §76 "Comment" contains what is basically a footnote to
the subject matter of §75 finds little support. And I have yet to find a
commentator who looks with favor on the suggestive thesis that the
final resolution of the antinomy is probably to be found in the final
sections of the antinomy discussion. Furthermore, no commentator
seems to have found it worth mentioning that the antinomy of
judgment, unlike all other antinomies in Kant's system, is neither
called, nor can (for systematic reasons) be called, an antinomy of
reason. The various interpretations of the antinomy of judgment
will be dealt with extensively in Section 3.3 below, but a few general
remarks are called for at this point in as much as the shortcomings
of these interpretations have materially influenced the structure of
my presentation.
At present no even halfway satisfactory analysis of the
Dialectic of teleological judgment is available, nor has a plausible
explanation been given even of what Kant may have intended to say.
Even such first rate commentators as Cassirer and Adickes have
been unable to provide a serious interpretation of the text; and
Adickes, as we shall see below, literally argues himself ad absurdum.
Kant's "Critique of Teleological Judgment" especially the
Dialectic has driven otherwise reasonable commentators to devices
which would under other circumstances have been rejected out of
hand as abstruse. The dominant approach has been that of
Schopenhauer, who considers the text to be an architectonic misconstruction,
a baroque structure, in which all windows are false: A
Critique must have an Analytic and a Dialectic, and a Dialectic