KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Three Approaches 139
ims need not contradict one another is dealt with here in two relatively
clear sentences. Kant did not need to write half a book simply
to repeat this. In any case it seems to me not to be a very sensible
strategy of interpretation to read the Dialectic of teleological judgement
as a somewhat unclear and self-contradictory repetition of a
triviality. The concept of antinomy itself, as we have seen in the
previous chapter, excludes the possibility of puffing up such simple
mistakes into antinomies. In such cases we would be dealing with a
"mere artificial illusion."
However, the third and most important objection to this interpretation
lies in the fact that the two maxims (R1 and R2), into
which the antinomy is supposed to have been resolved, are not at all
in "harmony" with one another. They are formulated as a direct
contradiction. Even if it be admitted that some of Kant's later utterances
about the antinomy allow or even call for Cassirer's interpretation,
there still remains one fundamental problem: the contradiction
involved in the formal statement of the antinomy by no means
disappears simply because Kant can be interpreted as reporting that
it is gone. The alleged assertion by Kant of the absence of a contradiction
is hardly a solution to the antinomy. He may not simply
assure us that the difficulties involved with the concept of natural
purpose have disappeared. If this interpretation correctly expresses
Kant's views, then Kant himself is wrong and the antinomy that he
has actually presented is not at all resolved.
Hegel — not the first, but certainly one of the most important
proponents of this sort of interpretation — saw the problem I have
sketched above quite clearly and drew precisely the same conclusion,
namely, that it would be wrong to think that Kant had resolved
the antinomy. He assumed, however, that Kant had not noticed that
the maxims were every bit as contradictory as the constitutive principles.
In the Science of Logic Hegel writes about thesis and antithesis
of the antinomy: 6
The Kantian solution to this antinomy is ... that therefore both must be
regarded not as objective propositions but as subjective maxims; that I
should on the one hand always reflect upon all natural events according to
the principle of mere mechanism, but that this does not prevent me, on
given occasions, from investigating some natural forms according to
another principle, namely according to the principle of final causes, — as if
these two maxims, which by the way are supposed to be necessary for
6 Hegel, Logik, II,442-3 (pt. 2, sect. 2, chap. 3). The earliest such interpretation
seems to be that of Lazarus Bendavid (1796, pp. 147-152).