Teleological-evolutionary Kant: Critique of the Power of Judgment
Sections §79 to §83 present a methodology for employing teleology productively
Immanuel Kant wrote:
APPENDIX:
Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment
§ 79.
Whether teleology must be treated as part of the doctrine of nature.
Every science must have its determinate position in the encyclopedia of the sciences. If it is a philosophical science, then we must assign it its position in either its theoretical or its practical part, and, if it has its place in the former, we must assign it its place either in the doctrine of nature, insofar as it examines that which can be an object of experience … or in theology …
Now the question arises: Which position does teleology deserve? Does it belong to natural science (properly so called) or to theology? It must be one or the other, because no science can belong to the transition from one to the other, since that signifies only the articulation or organization of the system and not a place within it.
That it does not belong in theology, as one of its parts … is self-evident. For it has as its object natural productions and their cause, and although it refers to the latter as a ground lying outside of and beyond nature (a divine author), it does not do this for the determining power of judgment, but merely for the reflecting power of judgment in the consideration of nature (for the guidance of the judging of the things in the world by means of such an idea, appropriate to the human understanding, as a regulative principle).
But just as little does it seem to belong in natural science, which requires determining and not merely reflecting principles in order to provide objective grounds for natural effects. In fact, nothing is gained for the theory of nature or the mechanical explanation of its phenomena by its efficient causes when they are considered in light of the relation of ends to one another. Strictly speaking, positing ends of nature in its products, insofar as it constitutes a system in accordance with teleological concepts, belongs only to the description of nature, which is composed in accordance with a particular guideline, in which reason certainly plays a role that is magnificently instructive and purposive in many respects, but in which it provides no information at all about the origination and the inner possibility of these forms, although it is that with which theoretical natural science is properly concerned.
Teleology, as a science, thus does not belong to any doctrine at all, but only to critique, and indeed to that of a particular cognitive faculty, namely that of the power of judgment. But insofar as it contains a priori principles, it can and must provide the method for how nature must be judged in accordance with the principle of final causes; and thus its methodology has at least a negative influence on procedure in theoretical natural science, and also on the relation that this can have in metaphysics to teleology, as its propaedeutic [preliminary instruction].
§ 80.
On the necessary subordination of the principle of mechanism to the teleological principle in the explanation of a thing as a natural end.
The authorization to seek for a merely mechanical explanation of all natural products is in itself entirely unrestricted; but the capacity to get by with that alone is, given the constitution of our understanding insofar as it is concerned with things as natural ends, not only quite restricted, but also distinctly bounded, since by a principle of judgment that follows the first procedure alone nothing at all can be accomplished toward the explanation of such products, and hence our judging of them must always be subordinated to a teleological principle as well.
It is thus rational, indeed meritorious, to pursue the mechanism of nature, for the sake of an explanation of the products of nature, as far as can plausibly be done, and indeed not to give up this effort because it is impossible in itself to find the purposiveness of nature by this route, but only because it is impossible for us as humans – since for that an intuition other than sensible intuition and a determinate cognition of the intelligible substratum of nature, which could furnish the ground for the mechanism of the appearances in accordance with particular laws, would be necessary, and this is entirely beyond our capacity.
If, therefore, the investigator of nature is not to work entirely in vain, he must, in the judging of things whose concept as natural ends is indubitably established (organized beings), always base them on some original organization, which uses that mechanism itself in order to produce other organized forms or to develop its own into new configurations (which, however, always result from that end and in conformity with it).
It is commendable to go through the great creation of organized natures by means of a comparative anatomy in order to see whether there is not to be found therein something similar to a system, one, indeed, regarding the principle of their generation, without which we would have to settle for the mere principle of judging (which provides no insight into their production), and would have to give up all claim to insight into nature in this field. The agreement of so many genera of animals in a certain common schema, which seems to lie at the basis not only of their skeletal structure but also of the arrangement of their other parts, and by which a remarkable simplicity of basic design has been able to produce such a great variety of species by the shortening of one part and the elongation of another, by the involution of this part and the evolution of another, allows the mind at least a weak ray of hope that something may be accomplished here with the principle of the mechanism of nature, without which there can be no natural science at all. This analogy of forms, insofar as in spite of all the differences it seems to have been generated in accordance with a common prototype, strengthens the suspicion of a real kinship among them in their generation from a common proto-mother, through the gradual approach of one animal genus to the other, from that in which the principle of ends seems best confirmed, namely human beings, down to polyps, and from this even further to mosses and lichens, and finally to the lowest level of nature that we can observe, that of raw matter: from which, and from its forces governed by mechanical laws (like those which are at work in its production of crystals), the entire technique of nature, which is so incomprehensible to us in organized beings that we believe ourselves compelled to conceive of another principle for them, seems to derive.
Now here the archaeologist of nature is free to let that great family of creatures (for thus must one represent it if there is to be a basis for the thoroughly coherent kinship that has been mentioned) originate from the remaining traces of its oldest revolutions in accordance with any mechanism for it that is known to or conjectured by him. He can have the maternal womb of the earth, which has just emerged from a condition of chaos (just like a great animal), initially bear creatures of less purposive form, which in turn bear others that are formed more suitably for their place of origin and their relationships to one another, until this birth-mother itself, hardened and ossified, has restricted its offspring to determinate species that will degenerate no further, and the variety will remain as it turned out at the end of the operation of that fruitful formative power. – And yet ultimately he must attribute to this universal mother an organization purposively aimed at all these creatures, for otherwise the possibility of the purposive forma of the products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms cannot be conceived at all. In that case, however, he has merely put off the explanation, and cannot presume to have made the generation of those two kingdoms independent from the condition of final causes.
Even the alteration to which certain individuals in organized genera are contingently subjected, where one finds that their altered characteristic is heritable and has been taken up into the generative power, cannot be properly judged as other than an incidental development of a purposive predisposition to the self-preservation of the kind that was originally present in the species, because in the thoroughgoing internal purposiveness of an organized being the generating of its own kind is so closely connected with the condition that it incorporate nothing into its generative power that does not belong to one of the undeveloped original predispositions of such a system of ends. For if one departs from this principle, then one cannot know with any certainty whether several of the elements that are currently to be found in a species are not of contingent, purposeless origin, and the principle of teleology that in an organized being nothing that is preserved in its procreation should be judged to be nonpurposive would thereby turn out to be quite unreliable in application, and valid merely for the original stock (which, however, we no longer know). …
§ 81.
On the association of mechanism with the teleological principle in the explanation of a natural end as a product of nature.
Just as the mechanism of nature, according to the preceding section, is not by itself sufficient for conceiving of the possibility of an organized being, but must (at least given the constitution of our cognitive faculty) be subordinated to an intentionally acting cause, the mere teleological ground of such a being is equally inadequate for considering and judging it as a product of nature unless the mechanism of the latter is associated with the former, as if it were the tool of an intentionally acting cause to whose ends nature is subordinated, even in its mechanical laws. Our reason does not comprehend the possibility of a unification of two entirely different kinds of causality, that of nature in its universal lawfulness and that of an idea that limits the latter to a particular form for which nature does not contain any ground at all; it lies in the supersensible substrate of nature, about which we can determine nothing affirmative except that it is the being in itself of which we know merely the appearance. But the principle that everything that we assume to belong to this nature (phenomenon) and to be a product of it must also be able to be conceived as connected with it in accordance with mechanical laws nonetheless remains in force, since without this kind of causality organized beings, as ends of nature, would not be natural products. …
§ 82.
On the teleological system in the external relations of organized beings.
By external purposiveness I mean that in which one thing in nature serves another as the means to an end. Now things that have no internal purposiveness or presuppose none for their possibility, e.g., soils, air, water, etc., can nevertheless be quite purposive externally, i.e., in relation to other beings; but these must always be organized beings, i.e., natural ends, for otherwise the former could not be judged as means. Thus water, air, and soils cannot be regarded as means for piling up mountains, because the latter do not contain in themselves anything at all that requires a ground for their possibility according to ends, thus nothing in relation to which their cause could be represented under the predicate of a means (useful for that end).
External purposiveness is an entirely different concept from the concept of internal purposiveness, which is associated with the possibility of an object regardless of whether its reality is itself an end or not. In the case of an organized being, one can also ask, why does it exist? but one cannot readily ask this of things in which one recognizes merely the effect of the mechanism of nature. For in the former we already represent a causality according to ends for its internal possibility, a creative intelligence, and we relate this active faculty to its determining ground, the intention. There is only a single external purposiveness that is connected with the internal purposiveness of organization and is such that, without raising the question of for what end such an organized being must exist, nevertheless serves in the external relation of a means to an end. This is the organization of the two sexes in relation to one another for the propagation of their kind; for here one can always ask, just as in the case of an individual, why must such a pair have existed? The answer is that this is what here first constitutes an organizing whole, although not one that is organized in a single body.
Now if one asks why a thing exists, the answer is either that its existence and its generation have no relation at all to a cause acting according to intentions, and in that case one always understands its origin to be in the mechanism of nature; or there is some intentional ground of its existence (as a contingent natural being), and this thought is difficult to separate from the concept of an organized being: for once we have had to base its internal possibility in a causality of final causes and an idea that underlies this, we also cannot conceive of the existence of this product otherwise than as an end. For the represented effect, the representation of which is at the same time the determining ground of its production in an intelligently acting cause, is called an end. In this case, therefore, one can either say that the end of the existence of such a natural being is in itself, i.e., it is not merely an end, but also a final end; or it is outside of it in another natural being, i.e., it exists purposively not as a final end, but necessarily at the same time as a means.
But if we go through the whole of nature, we do not find in it, as nature, any being that can claim the privilege of being the final end of creation; and one can even prove a priori that whatever could be an ultimate end for nature could never, no matter with what conceivable determinations and properties it might be equipped, be, as a natural thing, a final end.
If one looks at the vegetable kingdom, one could initially be led by the immeasurable fertility by which it spreads itself over practically every terrain to think of it as a mere product of the mechanism of nature that is displayed in the formations of the mineral kingdom. But a close acquaintance with the indescribably wise organization of the former does not allow us to stop with this thought, but rather leads to the question: Why do these creatures exist? If one answers: For the animal kingdom, which is nourished by it so that it is able to spread itself over the earth in so many genera, then the question arises again: Why do these herbivorous animals exist? Perhaps the answer would be: For the carnivores, which can only be nourished by what lives.
But in the end the question is: For what are these, together with all the proceeding natural kingdoms, good? For the human being, for the diverse uses which his understanding teaches him to make of all these creatures; and he is the ultimate end of the creation here on earth, because he is the only being on earth who forms a concept of ends for himself and who by means of his reason can make a system of ends out of an aggregate of purposively formed things.
One could also … take the apparently opposite path and say that the plant-eating animals exist in order to moderate the excessive growth of the plant kingdom, by which many of its species would be choked; the carnivores exist in order to set bounds to the voraciousness of the plant-eaters; finally, humankind exists in order to establish a certain balance among the productive and destructive powers of nature by hunting and reducing the number of the latter. And thus the human being, however much he might be valued as an end in a certain relation, would in another relation in turn have only the rank of a means.
If one makes an objective purposiveness of the multiplicity of the genera of earthly species and their external relations to one another, as beings understood as purposive, into a principle, then it is rational to think in turn that there is in this relation a certain organization and a system of all the kingdoms of nature in accordance with final causes. But here experience seems clearly to contradict the maxim of reason, especially in what concerns an ultimate end of nature, which is nevertheless requisite for such a system, and which we cannot place anywhere but in the human being; for in regard to the latter, as one among the many genera of animals, nature has not made the least exception to its generative as well as destructive powers, but has rather subjected him to its mechanism without any end.
The first thing that would have to be intentionally established in an order for a purposive whole of natural beings on the earth would have to be their habitat, the ground and the element on and in which they should thrive. But a more precise knowledge of the constitution of this foundation of all organic generating gives no indication of anything except a cause that acts quite unintentionally, indeed one which is rather destructive of than favorable to the generation of causes of order and ends. The land and the sea do not merely contain monuments of ancient, powerful devastations, that have affected them and every creature on and in them; their entire construction, the strata of the land and the boundaries of the sea, have every appearance of the products of wild, all-powerful forces of a nature working in a chaotic state. However purposively arranged the configuration, the structure, and the slope of the land may now appear for the reception of water from the air, for the channels of springs between different layers of the earth (for various products), and the course of the streams, still a closer investigation of them proves that they have come about merely as the effect of eruptions both fiery and watery, or even of upheavals of the ocean, as far as concerns the first generation of this configuration as well as especially its subsequent reconfiguration together with the destruction of its first organic productions.*
[FOOTNOTE] * If the name natural history that has been adopted for the description of nature is to remain in use, then one can call that which it literally means, namely a representation of the ancient condition of the earth – about which, even though there is no hope for certainty, there is reasonable ground for making conjectures – the archaeology of nature, in contrast to that of art. To the former belong fossils, just as to the latter belong carved stones, etc. For since we are really constantly if also, as is fitting, slowly working on such an archaeology (under the name of a theory of the earth), this name would not be given to a merely imaginary branch of research into nature, but to one to which nature itself invites and summons us.
Now if the habitat, the maternal soil (the land) and the maternal womb (the sea) for all these creatures yields no signs of anything except an entirely unintentional mechanism for their generation, how and with what right could we demand and assert another origin for those products? Even if the human being was not included in these revolutions, as the most meticulous examination of the remains of those natural devastations seems to prove … still he is so dependent on the other creatures that if a mechanism of nature reigning over all the others is conceded, then he too must be included beneath that, even if his understanding was able to save him (at least for the most part) from its devastations.
This argument, however, seems to prove more than it was intended to, namely, not merely that the human being is not an ultimate end of nature and, for the same reason, that the aggregate of organized natural things on earth cannot be a system of ends, but rather that even the products of nature that we previously held to be natural ends can have no other origin than that in the mechanism of nature.
But in the solution given above for the antinomy of the principles of the mechanical and teleological explanation of organic natural beings we have seen that since these principles are, with regard to their particular laws (the key to the systematic coherence of which, however, we lack) of formative nature, merely principles of the reflecting power of judgment, which in themselves determine nothing about the origin of these beings, but say only that given the nature of our understanding and our reason we cannot conceive of them except in accordance with final causes, the greatest possible effort, indeed boldness, in attempting to explain them mechanically is not merely allowed, but we are also summoned to it by reason, even though we know that we can never be successful in this attempt because of subjective reasons in the particular manner and limitation of our understanding (and not, say, because the mechanism of generation itself contradicts an origin in accordance with ends); and, finally, we have also seen that even the unifiability of the two ways of representing the possibility of nature may well lie in the supersensible principle of nature (outside of as well as inside us), since the representation of it according to final causes is only a subjective condition of the use of our reason when reason would not judge the objects merely as appearances, but rather demands that these appearances themselves, together with their principles, be related to the supersensible substratum in order to find possible certain laws of their unity, which cannot be represented except by means of ends (of which reason too has ones that are supersensible).
§ 83.
On the ultimate end of nature as a teleological system.
In the preceding we have shown that we have sufficient cause to judge the human being not merely, like any organized being, as a natural end, but also as the ultimate end of nature here on earth, in relation to which all other natural things constitute a system of ends in accordance with fundamental principles of reason, not, to be sure, for the determining power of judgment, yet for the reflecting power of judgment. Now if that which is to be promoted as an end through the human being’s connection to nature is to be found within the human being himself, then it must be either the kind of end that can be satisfied by the beneficence of nature itself, or it is the aptitude and skill for all sorts of ends for which he can use nature (external and internal). The first end of nature would be the happiness, the second the culture of the human being.
The concept of happiness is not one that the human being has, say, abstracted from his instincts and thus derived from the animality in himself; rather, it is a mere idea of a state to which he would make his instincts adequate under merely empirical conditions (which is impossible). He outlines this idea himself, and indeed, thanks to the involvement of his understanding with his imagination and his senses, in so many ways and with such frequent changes that even if nature were to be completely subjected to his will it could still assume no determinate universal and fixed law at all by means of which to correspond with this unstable concept and thus with the end that each arbitrarily sets for himself.
But even if we sought either to reduce this concept to the genuine natural need concerning which our species is in thoroughgoing self-consensus, or, alternatively, to increase as much as possible the skill for fulfilling ends that have been thought up, what the human being understands by happiness and what is in fact his own ultimate natural end (not an end of freedom) would still never be attained by him; for his nature is not of the sort to call a halt anywhere in possession and enjoyment and to be satisfied. And further, it is so far from being the case that nature has made the human being its special favorite and favored him with beneficence above all other animals, that it has rather spared him just as little as any other animal from its destructive effects, whether of pestilence, hunger, danger of flood, cold, attacks by other animals great and small, etc.; even more, the conflict in the natural predispositions of the human being, reduces himself and others of his own species, by means of plagues that he invents for himself, such as the oppression of domination, the barbarism of war, etc., to such need, and he works so hard for the destruction of his own species, that even if the most beneficent nature outside of us had made the happiness of our species its end, that end would not be attained in a system of nature upon the earth, because the nature inside of us is not receptive to that.
The human being is thus always only a link in the chain of natural ends; a principle, to be sure, with regard to many ends which nature seems to have determined for him in its predispositions, since he himself makes those his ends; yet also a means for the preservation of the purposiveness in the mechanism of the other members. As the sole being on earth who has reason, and thus a capacity to set voluntary ends for himself, he is certainly the titular lord of nature, and, if nature is regarded as a teleological system, then it is his vocation to be the ultimate end of nature; but always only conditionally, that is, subject to the condition that he has the understanding and the will to give to nature and to himself a relation to an end that can be sufficient for itself independently of nature, which can thus be a final end, which, however, must not be sought in nature at all.
In order, however, to discover where in the human being we are at least to posit that ultimate end of nature, we must seek out that which nature is capable of doing in order to prepare him for what he must himself do in order to be a final end, and separate this from all those ends the possibility of which depends upon conditions which can be expected only from nature. Of the latter sort is earthly happiness, by which is meant the sum of all the ends that are possible through nature outside and inside of the human being; that is the matter of all of his ends on earth, which, if he makes them into his whole end, make him incapable of setting a final end for his own existence and of agreeing with that end. Thus among all his ends in nature there remains only the formal, subjective condition, namely the aptitude for setting himself ends at all and (independent from nature in his determination of ends) using nature as a means appropriate to the maxims of his free ends in general, as that which nature can accomplish with a view to the final end that lies outside of it and which can therefore be regarded as its ultimate end. The production of the aptitude of a rational being for any ends in general (thus those of his freedom) is culture. Thus only culture can be the ultimate end that one has cause to ascribe to nature in regard to the human species (not its own earthly happiness or even merely being the foremost instrument for establishing order and consensus in irrational nature outside him).
But not every kind of culture is adequate for this ultimate end of nature. The culture of skill is certainly the foremost subjective condition of aptitude for the promotion of ends in general; but it is still not sufficient for promoting the will in the determination and choice of its ends, which however is essential for an aptitude for ends. The latter condition of aptitude, which could be named the culture of training (discipline), is negative, and consists in the liberation of the will from the despotism of desires, by which we are made, attached as we are to certain things of nature, incapable of choosing for ourselves, while we turn into fetters the drives that nature has given us merely for guidance in order not to neglect or even injure the determination of the animality in us, while yet we are free enough to tighten or loosen them, to lengthen or shorten them, as the ends of reason require.
Skill cannot very well be developed in the human race except by means of inequality among people; for the majority provides the necessities of life as it were mechanically, without requiring any special art for that, for the comfort and ease of others, who cultivate the less necessary elements of culture, science and art, and are maintained by the latter in a state of oppression, bitter work and little enjoyment, although much of the culture of the higher class gradually spreads to this class. But with the progress of this culture (the height of which, when the tendency to what is dispensable begins to destroy what is indispensable, is called luxury) calamities grow equally great on both sides, on the one side because of violence imposed from without, on the other because of dissatisfaction from within; yet this splendid misery is bound up with the development of the natural predispositions in the human race, and the end of nature itself, even if it is not our end, is hereby attained.
The formal condition under which alone nature can attain this its final aim is that constitution in the relations of human beings with one another in which the abuse of reciprocally conflicting freedom is opposed by lawful power in a whole, which is called civil society; for only in this can the greatest development of the natural predispositions occur.
For this, however, even if humans were clever enough to discover it and wise enough to subject themselves willingly to its coercion, a cosmopolitan whole, i.e., a system of all states that are at risk of detrimentally affecting each other, is required. In its absence, and given the obstacles that ambition, love of power, and greed, especially on the part of those who are in power, oppose to even the possibility of such a design, war (partly of the kind in which states split apart and divide themselves into smaller ones, partly of the kind in which smaller ones unite with each other and strive to form a larger whole) is inevitable, which, even though it is an unintentional effort of humans (aroused by unbridled passions), is a deeply hidden but perhaps intentional effort of supreme wisdom if not to establish then at least to prepare the way for the lawfulness together with the freedom of the states and by means of that the unity of a morally grounded system of them, and which, in spite of the most horrible tribulations which it inflicts upon the human race, is nevertheless one more incentive (while the hope for a peaceful state of happiness among nations recedes ever further) for developing to their highest degree all the talents that serve for culture.
As far as the discipline of the inclinations is concerned, for which the natural predisposition in respect to our vocation as an animal species is quite purposive but which make the development of humanity very difficult, nature still displays even in regard to this second requisite for culture a purposive effort at an education to make us receptive to higher ends than nature itself can afford. There is no denying the preponderance of the evil showered upon us by the refinement of taste to the point of its idealization, and even by indulgence in the sciences as nourishment for vanity, because of the insatiable host of inclinations that are thereby aroused: however, there is also no mistaking nature’s end of prevailing ever more over the crudeness and vehemence of those inclinations, which belong more to our animality and are most opposed to our education for our higher vocation (the inclinations of enjoyment), and of making room for the development of humanity. Beautiful arts and sciences, which by means of a universally communicable pleasure and an elegance and refinement make human beings, if not morally better, at least better mannered for society, very much reduce the tyranny of sensible tendencies, and prepare humans for a sovereignty in which reason alone shall have power; while the evil that is visited upon us partly by nature, partly by the intolerant selfishness of human beings, at the same time calls forth, strengthens, and steels the powers of the soul not to be subjected to those, and thus allows us to feel an aptitude for higher ends, which lies hidden in us.
The Source:
Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, edited and translated by Paul Guyer, Cambridge University Press 2000
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.