Kant's Antinomy of Reflective Judgment: A Re-evaluation

Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 23 (1):183 (2004)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show that there is a genuine difficulty in Kant’s argument regarding the connection between mechanism and teleology. But this difficulty is not the one that is usually underlined. Far from consisting in a contradiction between the first and the third Critique, I argue that the genuine difficulty is intrinsic to the antinomy of reflective judgement: rather than having any hope of resolving anything, it consists in an inescapable conflict. In order to support this claim, I show firstly why converting the thesis of the antinomy about mechanism into reflective judgement does not require renunciation of the universality of causality demonstrated in the first Critique. Then, I suggest that the actual difficulty with Kant’s argument is that there is a genuine conflict inherent in the reflective form of the antinomy. Finally, I examine in detail the antinomy of reflective judgement and compare it to the other Kantian antinomies in order to show that its uniqueness makes it uniquely troubling. This leads me to conclude that the Kantian resolution of the conflict between mechanism and teleology is unsatisfactory.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Freedom and constraint in Kant's Metaphysical elements of justice.K. Flikschuh - 1999 - History of Political Thought 20 (2):250-271.
Reflective judgment as world disclosure.María Pía Lara - 2008 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 34 (1-2):83-100.
The antinomy of teleological judgment Kant.V. Zanetti - 1993 - Kant Studien 84 (3):341-355.
The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment.Eric Watkins - 2009 - Kant Yearbook 1 (1):197-222.
Kant's putative antinomy of teleological judgment.Mark R. Wheeler - 1999 - Diálogos. Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Puerto Rico 34 (74):101-120.
Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment.Henry E. Allison - 1992 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (S1):25-42.

Analytics

Added to PP
2014-01-18

Downloads
301 (#61,399)

6 months
232 (#8,920)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Alix Cohen
University of Edinburgh

Citations of this work

The Freedom of Solar Systems.Mathis Koschel - forthcoming - Hegel Bulletin:1-30.
Kant’s answer to the question ‘what is man?’ and its implications for anthropology.Alix A. Cohen - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (4):506-514.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Kant and the Double Government Methodology.Robert E. Butts - 1986 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (3):371-375.

View all 7 references / Add more references