KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

134 Antinomy of Judgment
dialectic. If two conflicting maxims both have their basis in the nature of our
cognitive powers, then this dialectic may be called a natural one, an unavoidable
illusion that we must expose and resolve in the critique so that it will
not deceive us. (B312; CJ, 266)
Here Kant announces his intention to present an antinomy
between "necessary maxims of reflective judgment." In the presentation
of the antinomy itself we may thus expect 1) to find a conflict
between two maxims, 2) that these maxims belong to reflective
judgment, and 3) that both of them may in some reasonable sense be
said to be necessary, or at least to have "their basis" in the nature of
our cognitive powers. It should also be clear on general logical principles
that whatever it is that Kant is going to call a "maxim" has to
be expressible in the form of a proposition if it is to stand in contradiction
to another maxim.
The antinomy of judgment as formally presented in §70 reads:
[R1] The first maxim of judgment is the thesis: All production of material
things and their forms must be judged to be possible in terms of merely
mechanical laws.
[R2] The second maxim is the antithesis: Some products of material nature
cannot be judged to be possible in terms of merely mechanical laws.
(Judging them requires a quite different causal law — viz., that of final
causes.) (B314; CJ, 267)
These two propositions, called "maxims," are definitely
incompatible: it is asserted that all material things must "be judged
to be possible in terms of merely mechanical laws," and that some
such things cannot be so judged. This is the apparently analytical
opposition that must be shown by the critique to be merely dialectical.
This is the contradiction that seems to be contained in the concept
of natural purpose. 3
We are dealing here with an antinomy within that kind of
empirical natural science that is grounded in the critical philosophy.
However, this conflict is nonetheless similar to one rampant
in pre-Kantian science, which did not distinguish between regulative
and constitutive principles in Kant's sense. One can in fact
reconstruct some pre-Kantian conflicts if one transforms these
maxims into dogmatic postulates about reality — although the anti-
3 It should be noted here that the subject of the two propositions is actually not the
same: all production — some products. The difference is not made use of in the
resolution of the antinomy. It is also clear that the opposition is rather one of contrariety
than of contradiction in the strict sense.