KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Intuitive vs. Discursive 171
powerful), then the comparison cannot give us any information
about the particular peculiarity of our understanding under discussion.
Thus, although the intuitive understanding in the Critique
of Pure Reason and in the Critique of Judgment bear the same
name — and fulfill much the same kind of function — there is no
justification for attributing the properties of the intuitive understanding
of the Critique of Pure Reason to that of the Critique of
Judgment. The fact that Kant in §77 also calls or seems to call this
intuitive understanding an "intellectus archetypus" has led many
commentators even to equate this understanding with the "law
giving reason" of the Critique of Pure Reason (B723), which was also
accorded the same Latin binomial nomenclature in parentheses. 26
Nevertheless the only thing this "intuitive," non-reductionistic
contrast understanding of the Critique of Judgment has in common
with God as a regulative idea of the systematic unity of nature as
characterized in the Critique of Pure Reason is the Latin binomial.
If one considers the contrast understanding in the Critique of
Judgment to be infinite, then it is in principle unclear whether it is
the quantitative limitation of our understanding or its qualitative
constitution that is being made responsible for the necessity of
teleological principles. 27
Let us now turn to the substantial point: the mechanistic constitution
of the understanding. In his argument justifying the
mechanistic peculiarity of our understanding Kant compares this
peculiarity to a peculiarity of our intuition which he dealt with in
the Critique of Pure Reason and claims that he can argue in a similar
manner in the Critique of Judgment with respect to the understanding
(§77, B345-6; CJ, 289). However, a new problem arises
because he has in fact already used such an analogous argument in
the Critique of Pure Reason to justify a constitutive principle. In §21
of the Transcendental Deduction (B145-6) Kant introduced a
"peculiarity of our understanding" to explain why there are twelve,
and only twelve, and precisely his twelve categories. In fact it was
precisely Kant's "Copernican turn" in philosophy to derive constraints
on the objects of experience from the faculty of knowledge of
the cognitive subject. The subjective peculiarities of the understanding
became constitutive for the objects of experience. Now Kant is
26 Cf. Löw, pp. 210f; Delekat, pp. 463f; Macmillan, pp. 276 and 280.
27 Düsing (p. 90n) ignores this distinction asserting that the "justification of the
concept of purpose is derived from the finitude of our understanding."