This paper examines how in the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’ Kant characterized the concept of natural purpose in relation to and in distinction from the concepts of nature and the concept of purpose he had developed in his other critical writings. Kant maintained that neither the principles of mechanical science nor the pure concepts of the understanding through which we determine experience in general provide adequate conceptualizations of the unique capacities of organisms. He also held that although the concept of (...) natural purpose was derived through reflection upon an analogy to human purposive activity in artistic production and moral action, it articulates a unique notion of intrinsic purposiveness. Kant restricted his critical reflections on organisms to phenomena that can be given to us in experience, criticizing speculations on their first origins or final purpose. But I argue that he held that the concept of natural purpose is a product of the reflecting power of judgment, rather than an empirical concept, and represents only the relation of things to our power of judgment. Yet it is necessary for the identification of organisms as organized and self-organizing, and as subject to unique norms and causal relations between parts and whole. (shrink)

The paper argues for the importance to Kant's critique of judgment of epistemological reflections upon the problematics of experimentation on organic processes. It examines the investigations of generation by Wolff and Blumenbach, demonstrating how their experimental practices mediated reflectively between organic phenomena and their conceptualisation, acting as instruments of their judgments of these processes. It then reads Kant's ‘Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft’ in light of these experimental investigations, arguing that Kant highlights how the problematic relation between organic phenomena and their (...) conceptualisation manifested in such investigations is opened up as a space for reflection, thus making this act of judgment conscious. The relation between Kant's critiques of judgment in his first and third critiques are then discussed, and it is argued that the reflective character of judgment highlighted in the judgment of organic processes draws into focus the problematic aspects of all judgments of natural phenomena, by making conscious the synthetic process of judgment effected by unconscious acts of the imagination in the first critique. Finally, the paper examines Humboldt's galvanic experiments, showing how they were informed by Kant's critical philosophy, but also how they contributed to the blurring of the boundaries between the judgment of organic and inorganic processes. Thus it is claimed that the reflections upon judgment in the Kritik der Urteilskraft problematized rather than clarified Kant's treatment of judgment in the first critique. (shrink)

This paper examines the notions of ground and grounding across several of Schelling’s works, from the philosophy of nature, through transcendental idealism and identity philosophy, to the Freedom essay and The Ages of the World. It contends that Schelling repeatedly returns to the same problematic, that each attempt to establish a foundation for philosophy is inscribed with the particular and the concrete, so that the work of grounding is also an ungrounding. It reads the different expressions of Schelling’s philosophy against (...) and through one another, arguing that each offers both a foundation and critique of its others. (shrink)

Kant used transcendental reflection to distinguish in judgment what belongs to its form and what to its material. Regarding the form of judgment, Buchdahl’s work highlights the analogies between the different levels of judgment in Kant’s transcendental ontology. He uses the explicit contingency of judgments of the system of nature to illuminate the contingency of judgments of objects in general. In the Critique of pure reason, Kant had left much of the work of judgment to the unconscious imagination. Fichte and (...) Schelling attempted to make conscious and determinate the work of the unconscious imagination, but found themselves unable to avoid a reflexive regress in trying to objectify and provide a foundation for the activity of the self in judgment. Buchdahl also clarifies the role Kant gave to the object in judgment, as the indeterminate ‘thinghood’ remaining once all forms of cognition are abstracted. Fichte represented this objective side of consciousness as the not-I, as the limit of the activity of the I, as an unconscious, alien element within consciousness. Schelling struggled to illuminate this unconscious object in judgment, to provide a construction of nature, without dissolving its positive presence into abstract formulations. In pursuing relentlessly Kant’s critique of judgment, Fichte and Schelling exposed its opaque points and problematized the ambition to build a complete system of philosophy.Author Keywords: Kant; Fichte; Schelling; Judgment; Imagination; Naturphilosophie. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationships between Goethe's morphology and his ideas on aesthetic appraisal. Goethe's science of morphology was to provide the method for making evident pure phenomena [Urphänomene], for making intuitable the necessary laws behind the perceptible forms and formation of living nature, through a disciplined perception. This emphasis contrasted with contemporary studies of generation, which focused upon hidden formative processes. It was his views on aesthetic appraisal that informed these epistemological precepts of his science. His study of antique (...) artefacts convinced Goethe that these should be prototypes for all art, since they made perceptible the ideal of art, its archetypes or objective forms. His ambition was to eliminate the subjective elements he contended were leading contemporary art astray. He argued that the techniques he developed for cultivating the perception of the ideal exemplars of art could become a model for science, enabling the intuition of the objective forms of nature through a similar disciplined and cultivated perception. This paper also examines some of the wider motivations for the particular emphases Goethe gave to his science and aesthetics, noting a similar impulse to discipline unruly forces in his life -- in his work as an administrator for the Weimar court and Jena University, in his vision of an ideal German culture centred on the aristocracy, and in his literary productions and biographical writings. Finally it discusses the extent to which those unruly elements nevertheless remained a potent and disturbing presence in his understanding of nature, his art and his life. (shrink)