𝔎𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔦𝔨 𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔘𝔯𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔦𝔩𝔰𝔨𝔯𝔞𝔣𝔱 41 - The answer is No

READ FOR NEXT TIME

Paragraphs 5:430 - 5:447
Pages 297 - 313 in the Guyer/Wood translation

§83 - Nature's ultimate end
§84 - Final end of creation
§85 - Physicotheology
§86 - Ethicotheology

01/25/26 - Session 41: The Ultimate Cheeseburger
02/08/26 - Session 42: physical teleology and theology
02/22;26 - Session 43: ethical teleology and theology

NEXT TIME

If nature isn't here for us humans, then what is nature trying to accomplish?

THIS IS WHAT WE JUST COVERED

§81 - Is fate or God or some ourside intelligence guiding our every move?
Previous attempts to reconcile mechanism and teleogy

1. Occasionalism: Every organism is directly created by a supreme cause (God) at each moment. Kant rejects this because it eliminates nature entirely and is philosophically unhelpful.

2. Prestabilism/Preformation: Organisms come from preformed matter, either as miniature educts (individual preformation or "evolution”) or as products whose development is guided by preformed capacities (epigenesis/generic preformation). Kant critiques preformationists for needing countless supernatural interventions, struggling to explain hybrids and inconsistently attributing purposive power.

Epigenesis is the better of two preformation options. It attributes the development of organisms largely to nature itself, leaving the least possible role for supernatural intervention while still accounting for purposive organization.

§82 - Do plants and animals exist for our consumption or do they exist just for themselves? What about human beings?

We can judge nature as purposive in multiple ways, but these judgments are always perspectival and limited and do not reveal final ends inherent in nature itself.

1. Internal purposiveness - an organized being has parts that exist as means toward its internal end. External purposiveness, where a being serves as a means in relation to other beings.

2. Limits of teleological explanation – While we can see systems in nature (plants, animals) as serving purposes relative to one another, there is no natural entity that can claim to be the final end of creation. Attempts to make humans the ultimate end fail because nature treats humans just like any other species in terms of generative and destructive forces.

3. Reflecting on nature’s organization – Observing the interrelations of species can encourage thinking about a systemic order, but Kant emphasizes that any ultimate purposiveness remains inaccessible to us; the judgment of ends is a product of our reflective reason, not a statement about nature itself.

4. Epistemic takeaway – Nature may appear internally and externally purposive depending on perspective, but we cannot definitively answer “why nature?” Teleology is a tool for human reasoning, not a metaphysical claim about ultimate ends.

RESOURCES

Kant's concept of beauty as a disinterested pleasure.

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