KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Architectonic Psychopath 147
serious philosophical problem is dealt with there. While such parts
of Kant's writings may have been written by the person, Kant, they
do not really belong to his philosophy, and thus need not be taken
into consideration. The thesis on systematics gives a psychological
explanation of why Kant could have written something without any
philosophical content. However, at least for Adickes, it presupposes
that a demonstration of the philosophical emptiness of the passages
in question has in fact been given. On the dialectic of teleological
judgment Adickes poses the rhetorical question: 16
If one then, as is natural and fair, excludes whatever owes its existence only
to systematics, since the history of its origin contains at the same time its
judgment of condemnation, what still remains?
It is in fact "natural and fair" to exclude whatever was introduced
only because of systematics, because the criterion for its being
exclusively due to systematics is that no plausible philosophical reason
for the passage can be found, and thus it must be excluded anyway.
This thesis must however have devastating effects if it is taken
as a presupposition of an interpretation of Kant. In such a case the
attempt to find a philosophical problem may not even be made, or
may quickly be abandoned, since the notion is rather widespread
that Kant often wrote things without actually wanting to say anything.
An explanation is always available for passages that are difficult
to explain: the architectonic. With some commentators the perfunctory
employment of Kant's purported psychological quirks leads
to abandoning all requirements of consistency for the interpretations,
the justification being that Kant was really as self-inconsistent
as are the interpretations.
Nonetheless, on the background of the interpretations of the
antinomy of judgment analyzed in the preceding section, the conclusions
drawn by Adickes are not really so unreasonable; in fact if
there is no alternative to these interpretations, it is hard to see how
one can avoid such conclusions. For, if it is true that there is nothing
of philosophical interest in the book, then the reference to Kant's
architectonic idiosyncracies at least gives a plausible explanation as
to why the book exists at all and why we can safely ignore it.
However, of its very nature, the thesis of the system-building systematics
can only be applied, if we are unable otherwise to make
sense of the text.
16 Adickes, Systematik, p. 171.