Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to provide an interpretation of the epistemic role of the concept of natural end as Kant introduces it in the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment. I argue that this concept has two features, which I try to account for in my analysis. First, this concept is incomprehensible to us, this is the reason why it has a regulative status. Second, I argue that we can gain the concept of an organism only from the concept of a natural end as teleological thinking is required in order to distinguish between inorganic and organic things. In contemporary scholarship, the way we gain the concept of an organism is not addressed at all. However, I argue that only the focus on such a discussion reveals the epistemic role of teleology in Kant’s third Critique.