KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Regulative and Constitutive 159
occasion to the various misunderstandings dealt with in the last
section. The question however arises: If this second pair of opposites
cannot in fact be part of the antinomy, why then did Kant connect it
so closely to the formal presentation of the antinomy? The answer
lies, I believe, in Kant's attempt to integrate the various philosophical
positions about the organism expounded by his predecessors in
science and philosophy into the construction of the antinomy. In fact
in §§72-74 Kant reports and criticizes four different "systems about
the purposiveness of nature," which (compressed of course into two
conflicting basic positions) are supposed to cover the entire spectrum
of previous theories. These systems, which all propund
mechanistic theories, assert or deny on this background the purposiveness
of the organism and of nature as a whole. Each of these
positions presupposes in a pre-critical form one of the constitutive
principles (C1, C2). Since the opposition of the two maxims (R1, R2)
does not present an antinomy of pre-critical positions but rather one
that arises within the critical system itself, the pre-Kantian
positions can only be introduced as the transformation of critical
maxims into constitutive principles. In this manner the parallels of
content between pre- and post-critical positions can be made clear,
although the maxims (R1, R2) of the antinomy are not merely the
regulative reflections of these constitutive principles. The relation
between the two pairs is more complicated than it appears on first
sight.
Kant compresses four philosophical systems into two conflicting
basic positions: The so-called idealism of purposiveness
(Epicurean accident and Spinozist fatality) conceptualizes the purposiveness
of nature as unintentional; the so-called realism of purposiveness
(hylozoism and theism) comprehends the purposiveness
of nature as intentional. Using these two basic positions, Kant plays
through a kind of pseudo-antinomy: idealism is the assertion that
all purposiveness of nature is unintentional; realism asserts that
some purposiveness of nature is intentional. He then argues that
both sides cannot prove their assertions. As dogmatic or constitutive
assertions they cannot even guarantee the objective reality of the
purposiveness itself, which they maintain is intentional or unintentional.
This explains why all the systems that might be devised to treat dogmatic
ally the concept of natural purposes and the concept of nature as a whole
having coherence in terms of final causes cannot decide anything whatsoever
by way of either objective affirmation or objective negation. For if we