KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

64 Antinomies of Reason
described; the key concepts of the "unconditioned" and the "infinite
series" will be explicated on the example of the First Antinomy, and
an important discrepancy between the two parts (space and time) of
this antinomy will be pointed out. Section 2.4 will take up the
relation of part and whole dealt with by the Second Antinomy and
expose an unreflected presupposition of Kant's about the nature of
this relation. In Section 2.5 I shall analyze on the example of the
antinomy of freedom and determinism the somewhat different way
in which the dynamical antinomies are resolved — the so called
"subcontrary" type of resolution, which is supposed also to hold for
the later antinomies in the Critique of Practical Reason and in the
Critique of Judgment. Section 2.6 will examine Kant's system of
antinomies as presented at the end of the "Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment" in order to clarify the peculiar position of the antinomy
of judgment. Finally (Section 2.7), the most important results of the
analysis of the antinomies as a figure of argument will summed up.
2.2 Kant's Logic and the Antinomies
Contrary and Subcontrary Oppositions
In one of his drafts for an answer to the Academy prize question
on the progress made in metaphysics since Leibniz and Wolff,
in which he reflects on his own contribution to the progress of metaphysics,
Kant compares the apparent contradictions of the First and
Second Antinomies to contrary oppositions in logic. The Third and
Fourth Antinomies he compares to subcontrary oppositions. The
thesis of the First Antinomy maintains, for instance, that the world
is finite; the antithesis maintains that it is infinite. On the opposition
of these two propositions Kant writes: 15
The conflict of these propositions is not merely logical, not one of ana
lytical opposition (contradictorie oppositorum), i.e., a mere contradiction;
15 "Progress of Metaphysics," Ak 20,290; W 3,627; see also Ak 20,327-29;
W 3,669-71.