KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Chapter 2
The Antinomies of Pure Reason
2.1 Introduction
Concerning the "antinomy" of pure reason Kant wrote to
Garve in 1798: "It was this that first awakened me from my dogmatic
slumber and impelled me to the critique of reason itself, in
order to remove the scandal of an apparent contradiction of reason
with itself." 1 As a figure of argument the antinomy is the most
important critical instrument used in the Critique of Pure Reason to
dismantle modern metaphysics. Kant employs it in a critique of
"rational cosmology," where it even serves "indirectly to prove" the
correctness of his distinction between appearance and things in
themselves (B534). In the antinomies chapter of the Critique of Pure
Reason central theorems of empiricist and rationalist metaphysics
are confronted with one another. The conflicting assertions are each
proved in turn (apagogically, that is, each is proved by the refutation
of its opposite) so that both apparently contradictory propositions
must be acknowledged as simultaneously true (proven) and as
simultaneously false (refuted) — or rather would have to be so
recognized if we did not introduce the Kantian distinction between
appearances and things in themselves.
In this chapter I shall analyze this figure of argument as it is
presented in the section on "cosmological ideas" in the Critique of
Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena and as later reflected upon in
the so called "Essay on the Progress of Metaphysics." Furthermore,
two of the four antinomies in the Critique of Pure Reason whose con-
1 Letter to Garve, Sept. 21, 1798; Ak 12,257-8.