KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Three Approaches 143
but also recurs today in a neo-Thomistic variant. A good example
from the days of neovitalism is given by Wilhelm Ernst: 10
The tendency of the concept of causality to sink down from its originally
constitutive, categorial dignity to a regulative principle is then brought to its
conclusion in the doctrine of the antinomy of the Critique of Judgment. [...]
It is not so much the concept of purpose that approaches the categories, but
rather the categories that approach in dignity the concept of purpose.
Since the publication of Kant's so-called opus posthumum, it
has become possible to follow further the supposed transformation of
the category of causality. Some recent interpretations see the
Critique of Judgment not as the end of a development but as a way
station along the path to an unreserved teleology thought to be
demonstrable in the opus posthumum. Whereas the neovitalists had
looked for preliminary stages of the rejection of mechanistic thought
within the Critique of Pure Reason, their Thomist or neo-Aristotelian
successors have tended rather to emphasize precisely the
break with the position of the Critique of Pure Reason. Reinhard
Löw, for instance, tries to show "that not only a development
transpired in Kant's thinking on the problem of teleology but even a
conversion"; he claims to have found an "Aristotelian turn" in the
Critique of Judgment which Kant is supposed to have pursued further
in the opus posthumum. 1 1 Although taking the opus posthumum
into consideration increases the size of the pool of quotations,
it does not fundamentally increase the plausibility of this
interpretation. This manuscript material is in fact only relevant to
the question if the purported transitional phase can already be
demonstrated in the "Critique of Teleological Judgment"; 12 and this
demonstration has not been provided. It is merely shown that some
10 Ernst, pp. 64-68; Ungerer, p. 100, agrees with Ernst and cites Driesch and
Frost.
11 Löw, pp. 12 and 138. The fundamental flaw in Löw's analysis is that he fails to
provide the argument that supposedly convinced Kant to abandon mechanism and
that thus might be able to convince contemporary mechanists to do the same.
12 Kant's opus posthumum is not an coherent work that can be interpreted independent
of positions taken and argued for in other writings. These manuscript
fragments can only be made accessible on the basis of an already well founded
interpretation of Kant's philosophy. If an "Aristotelian turn" cannot be demonstrated
in Kant's published writings, then there can be no justification for interpreting
these incomplete pieces so that they are inconsistent with the Critique of
Pure Reason.