KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

80 The Unconditioned and the Infinite Series
Thus, two aspects of the antinomies should be kept distinct: 1)
the question, whether the semblance is really transcendental, i.e.
whether the dialectics and illusion are really necessary, and 2) the
question, whether the critical technique of presenting basic positions
of metaphysics as contrary (or subcontrary) oppositions, which
appear to be contradictions, and the subsequent resolution of these
pseudo-contradictions is an appropriate instrument for explicating
and solving philosophical problems. For the purposes of this study,
it is the figure of argument used in the antinomies chapter that is of
importance, and not so much the question whether Kant in fact succeeds
in "logically" deriving the positions confronted from "the first
germs and dispositions in the human understanding" (B*91). In the
next section, I shall take up only very briefly Kant's reasons for
asserting the inevitability of the illusion.
2.3 The Unconditioned and the Infinite Series
The Systematic Locus
The questions and answers of rational cosmology are not presented
in the Critique of Pure Reason as contingent and historically
given but rather as systematically necessary. According to Kant
such problems develop inevitably from the germs and dispositions of
the human faculty of knowledge. I shall take this claim of Kant's
into account only insofar as to describe the systematic locus and the
thrust of the argumentation in order to introduce the concepts and
assertions necessary for an analysis of the resolution of the antinomies.
In this section I shall merely be describing Kant's itenary
and reporting his views; I shall not make any attempt to defend or
justify them except in terms of logical coherence with his system
and intersubjective intelligibility. For the purposes of this study it is
unimportant whether the illusion is really objective and whether
these particular antinomies are really unavoidable — I shall deal
with this sort of question in the next chapter on the antinomy of
judgment. The point here is merely to make transparent the struc-