Abstract

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Title:: An Epistemological Critique of Kant’s Concept of Natural Purposes:Focusing on the Transition from the First Critique to the ThirdCritique

Keywords:: teleology; architectonic; judgment; natural purposes; purposiveness of nature

Abstract:: Teleology has played an important epistemological role in the western philosophical traditionsince its inception, but its importance declined in modern thought. Kant, with his critical philosophy,defended the importance of teleology and reconstructed a new image for it, reserving a place for itsepistemological implication and highlighting the dialectical tension between his critical philosophy andteleology. The complete thinking path of Kant’s critique of teleology can be found in his wide range oftheorizations from the idea of natural purposes put forward in his Critique of Pure Reason to the compositionof his“ Architecture of Pure Reason”, which ultimately leads to a covert transition to purposivenessof nature and natural purposes in his Critique of Judgment. Kant, following the guidance of syntheticaljudgments a priori along the road paved by the first critique, introduced“ technic of nature” into the thirdcritique to act as the analogical principle of reflective judgment, replacing the“ theory of schema” to completethe“ objective” deduction of the purposiveness of nature. In so doing, Kant, on the one hand, criticized theepistemological value of natural teleology; he, on the other hand, demonstrated how reason and understandingwork harmoniously in the concept of natural purpose under the function of judgment.