622 J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626

warrant reassessment in light of recent scholarship in the history of science, the history ofphilosophy and the philosophy of science. Some leading Kant scholars have recentlyturned their attention to Kant’s 1790 ‘Critique of teleological judgment’, most notablyHenry E. Allison and Paul Guyer, but their primary interest is in Kant’s reflections on tel-eology as a part of his larger concern with the system of nature, either in relation to hisconception of the mechanical sciences or in relation to his moral philosophy.2 Indeed,the difficulty in interpreting the arguments of the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’ isin part due to the fact that they draw on the whole of Kant’s philosophy. Its placementin the Critique of judgment not only pairs it with the ‘Critique of aesthetic judgment’,but also frames it with an ‘Introduction’ which gives to the power of judgment a mediatingrole between the concepts of nature and the concept of freedom. Moreover, Kant’s lengthy‘Appendix’ to the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’ not only examines how the principlesof mechanism and teleology can be related in a system of nature, but also includes anextended discussion of the relationships between our concepts of nature and our moralityand faith in God. Guyer concludes that ‘recent work has begun to make it clear that thispart of Kant’s book should not be ignored’.3 Kant’s reflections on teleology and our com-prehension of organisms are not restricted to the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’, how-ever. He was concerned with the difficulties posed by organisms for our understanding ofthe natural world from his earliest writings, such as the Universal natural history and theory

of the heavens of 1755, the Only possible proof of the existence of God of 1763 and theDreams of a spirit-seer of 1766, a preoccupation that continued until the end of his life,as can be seen from his Opus postumum. He intervened in contemporary debates in naturalhistory and on the development of organisms and the races of human beings in his lecturesand related publications on physical geography and anthropology, and in his responses toworks by Johann Gottfried Herder and Georg Forster in the 1770s and 1780s. The mostextensive scholarship on ‘Kantian teleology and the biological sciences’ to date has beenconcerned with the relationship of Kant’s reflections on the unique characteristics oforganisms to studies in natural history, anatomy, development and anthropology in theeighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.4 Furthermore, Kant introduced natural teleol-ogy into his writings on politics and history, such as Idea for a universal history with a cos-

mopolitan intent of 1784 and To perpetual peace of 1795. He also discussed the humanpredisposition to animality in works such as Religion within the boundaries of mere reason

of 1793 and Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view of 1798. Thus, preoccupationswith teleology and our comprehension of the unique characteristics of organisms permeatemany of Kant’s writings, even as his larger philosophical system informs those preoccupa-tions. A growing body of literature discussing diverse aspects of Kantian teleology and thebiological sciences can now be found scattered in articles and as parts of larger studies.This collection of essays contributes to that scholarship by providing an extensive exam-ination of Kant’s writings on teleology and our comprehension of organisms, and of howthey have been variously interpreted and assessed, and offers reevaluations of theirsignificance.

It becomes clear on reading these essays that a considerable lack of consensus exists notonly on how to interpret Kant’s writings, but also on how to interpret their relevance to

2 Allison (2003 [1991], 2000), and Guyer (2005, 2003b, 2001).3 Guyer (2003a), p. xix.4 For an overview of this scholarship, and contributions to it, see Huneman (2007, Forthcoming).

J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626 623

the biological sciences of his time and to modern debates about teleology in biology. Itmight be assumed that Kant’s analysis of our comprehension of organisms—that theyappear to us as contingent with regard to the mechanism of nature and thus that we mustappeal to purposiveness, if only as a regulative principle, in our investigation of them—reflected the limitations of both the biological sciences and physical sciences of his time.It might also be assumed that subsequent developments in science, particularly in evolu-tionary theory and genetics, resolved the problems to which Kant’s analysis drew attentionand removed the need for an appeal to teleology in biological science. Indeed, Guyer con-cludes that ‘Kant’s analysis of our problem in comprehending organisms is now indefen-sible . . . undermined by developments in histology, embryology and genetics since thenineteenth century’.5 But recent work in both the history of science and the philosophyof science calls for a reassessment of such evaluations. Discussions at Guelph and contri-butions to this special issue suggest that Kant’s contributions to the development of biol-ogy and his continued relevance are still subject to debate.

The papers in this collection form three groupings. The first three papers, by Phillip R.Sloan, Philippe Huneman and Alix A. Cohen, discuss the importance of Kant’s philoso-phy for the ‘biological sciences’ of his time, respectively, natural history and the history ofnature, comparative anatomy and morphology, and anthropology and the study of man-kind as a natural species. The papers by Angela Breitenbach, Joan Steigerwald and MarcelQuarfood, focus on the Critique of judgment and the concepts of mechanical explanationand natural purpose that Kant articulated within it. The final group of papers by JohnZammito and D. M. Walsh raises the question of Kant’s relevance for contemporarydebates over function in biology.

The first group of papers draws on recent scholarship in the history of science reexam-ining the significance of German contributions and of Kant in particular to the ‘biologicalsciences’ of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Phillip R. Sloan’s paper,‘Kant on the history of nature: The ambiguous heritage of the critical philosophy for nat-ural history’, argues against the view, defended especially by James Larson, that Kant gavepreference to the ‘history’ of nature, and that his opinions were thus found untenable byworking naturalists.6 He rather argues that Kant’s arguments moved over time in theopposite direction, and served to restrict speculative natural history within limits thatled notable successors, such as Alexander von Humboldt and Georges Cuvier, to find inthe critical philosophy grounds for rejecting a historical science of nature in favour of adescriptive program in natural history. Sloan concludes that those who found warrantfor drawing from Kant a program of developmental transcendental morphology, and evena form of evolutionism, misread him. Philippe Huneman’s paper is also interested in howKant was read by subsequent anatomists and naturalists. In ‘Naturalising purpose: Fromcomparative anatomy to the ‘‘adventures of reason’’’ he argues that Kant’s concept of nat-ural purpose was elaborated in both functional and formal senses by later figures. LikeSloan, he interprets Cuvier’s comparative anatomy as drawing on Kant, seeing in hisemphasis on adaptive functions as regulative principles a faithfulness to Kant’s position.But Huneman is primarily interested in how a reinterpretation of Kant’s critique ofspeculative natural history and conception of scientific explanation proved productivefor the developmental transcendental morphology of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and

5 Guyer (2003b), p. 46.6 Larson (1994).

624 J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626

Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Alix A. Cohen’s paper, ‘Kant on epigenesis, monogenesisand human nature: The biological premises of anthropology’, examines Kant’s conceptionof mankind as a natural species. Positioning Kant within contemporary debates overorganic generation and the human races, she demonstrates how Kant argued for the bio-logical unity of the human species and for racial difference to be attributed to the posses-sion of natural predispositions. Cohen argues that Kant’s account of man’s naturalpredispositions was not limited to the issue of races, but encompassed unexpected humanfeatures such as gender, temperaments and nations. Kant understood these predisposi-tions, she concludes, to be the means for the realization of Nature’s overall purpose forthe human species.

While the first group of papers is concerned with several of Kant’s works up to andincluding the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’, the second group of papers focuses onthe arguments of Kant’s third Critique. Angela Breitenbach contends in her paper,‘Mechanical explanation of nature and its limits in Kant’s Critique of judgment’, that what,on first consideration, appears to be a thoroughly mechanistic conception of nature inKant, turns out to be very limited. By considering Kant’s concept of mechanical lawsas found in his early writings and his 1786 Metaphysical foundations of natural science

in relation to both Hannah Ginsborg’s and Peter McLaughlin’s accounts of Kant’s con-cept of mechanism,7 she concludes that the mechanical laws in the third Critique shouldbe understood as a particular species of empirical causal laws. She suggests that Kant’sconclusion in the third Critique, that our hope for an explanation of all of nature accord-ing to such mechanical laws is based on ‘regulative’ considerations about nature, mayleave room for an alternative non-mechanistic conception of nature. Joan Steigerwald’spaper, ‘Kant’s concept of natural purpose and the reflecting power of judgment’, examinesthe concept of natural purpose as Kant articulated it in the ‘Critique of teleological judg-ment’ in relation to and in distinction from the concepts of nature and the concept of pur-pose he had developed in his other critical writings. She argues that although Kantrestricted his reflections on organisms to phenomena that can be demonstrated in experi-ence, the concept of natural purpose is a product of the reflecting power of judgment, andconcerns only the relation of things to our power of judgment. Yet it is necessary for theidentification of organisms as organisms, as organized and self-organizing, and as subjectto unique norms and circular or ‘reflective’ causal relations between parts and whole. Mar-cel Quarfood’s paper, ‘Kant on biological teleology: Towards a two-level interpretation’,offers a way to balance Kant’s claims in the Critique of judgment that teleology is indis-pensable for conceptualizing organized beings and yet that it is a regulative principlemerely subjectively valid for our reflection on such beings. He proposes distinguishingbetween two roles that the concept of natural purpose serves. The concept has an identi-ficatory function, enabling us to single out certain objects as natural purposes, and thusconstituting the special science of biology; here Quarfood finds in Kant a partial endorse-ment of Aristotelian teleology and even a quasi-explanatory role for teleology. But on ameta level of philosophical reflection, the concept has a merely regulative role.

Quarfood leaves his conclusions as only suggestive for the modern philosophy of biol-ogy, although in other places he takes up this question.8 The last group of papers is con-cerned directly with the relevance of Kantian teleology for the biological sciences today,

7 Ginsborg (2004, 2001), and McLaughlin (1990).8 Quarfood (2004).

J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626 625

and the authors offer quite different conclusions. One of the reasons Kant’s ‘Critique ofteleological judgment’ has found new attention is a growing interest of both the biologicalsciences and the philosophy of biology in the phenomena of organic development, main-tenance and reproduction. Kant’s analysis of organisms as natural purposes brought toattention precisely their unique capacities for self-organization. The question has thusarisen as to whether or not Kant’s analysis might be instructive for present debates regard-ing the goal-directedness of biological functions. In ‘Teleology then and now: The questionof Kant’s relevance for contemporary controversies over function in biology’, John Zam-mito locates the motivation for a renewed interest in Kant in an impasse in current func-tion talk, with little consensus over why teleological approaches are found only in biology,how they work and what risks they carry, and the extent to which they can be grounded inbiological processes. But he warns that if naturalism is the aspiration of contemporary phi-losophy of biology and if biology wants to conceptualize self-organization as actual in theworld, Kant offers little help. Zammito argues that epistemological ‘deflation’ was thedecisive feature of Kant’s treatment of the biological sciences of his day. The third Critique

essentially proposed the reduction of biology to a kind of pre-scientific descriptivism,doomed never to attain authentic scientificity. Denis Walsh takes a different stance inhis paper, ‘Organisms as natural purposes: The contemporary evolutionary perspective’.Walsh begins by emphasizing recent studies in the biological sciences that have strong res-onances with Kant’s conception of organisms as natural purposes—their capacity for self-organization, their emergent properties, their adaptability and their capacity to regulatetheir component parts and processes. Then, in a reformulation of Kant’s ‘Antinomy’between teleological and mechanical principles for our judgment of organisms, heattempts to carve out an explanatory role for organismal purposes that is consistent withthe modern commitment to mechanism. Appealing to the apparatus of invariance expla-nation, he sketches a model for how purpose and mechanism can be regarded as reciprocalcauses of organisms, and concludes that purposiveness has a genuine, ineliminable role inbiological explanations.

This special issue does not attempt to resolve debates regarding the interpretation ofKantian teleology and its relevance to the biological sciences of Kant’s time or today.What it does present is the current state of the debate.

References

Allison, H. (2000). Is the Critique of judgment ‘post-critical’? In S. Sedgwick (Ed.), The reception of Kant’s critical

philosophy (pp. 78–92). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Allison, H. E. (2003). Kant’s antinomy of teleological judgment. In P. Guyer (Ed.), Kant’s Critique of the power of

judgment: Critical essays (pp. 219–230). New York: Rowman and Littlefield (First published 1991).Ginsborg, H. (2001). Kant on the understanding of organisms as purposes. In E. Watkins (Ed.), Kant and the

sciences (pp. 231–253). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Ginsborg, H. (2004). Two kinds of mechanical inexplicability in Kant and Aristotle. Journal of the History of

Philosophy, 42, 33–65.Guyer, P. (2001). Organism and the unity of science. In E. Watkins (Ed.), Kant and the sciences (pp. 259–281).

Oxford: Oxford University Press.Guyer, P. (2003a). Introduction. In idem (Ed.), Kant’s Critique of the power of judgment: Critical essays (pp. vii–

xxi). New York: Rowan & Littlefield.Guyer, P. (2003b). Kant’s principle of reflecting judgment. In idem (Ed.), Kant’s Critique of the power of judgment:

Critical essays (pp. 1–61). New York: Rowan & Littlefield.Guyer, P. (2005). Kant’s system of nature and freedom: Selected essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

626 J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626

Huneman, P. (Ed.). (2007, Forthcoming). Understanding purpose: Collected essays on Kant and the philosophy of

biology. NAKS Publication Series. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.Larson, J. L. (1994). Interpreting nature: The science of living form from Linnaeus to Kant. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press.McFarland, J. D. (1970). Kant’s concept of teleology. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.McLaughlin, P. (1990). Kant’s critique of teleology in biological explanation: Antinomy and teleology. Lewiston,

NY: Edwin Mellen Press.Quarfood, M. (2004). Transcendental idealism and the organism: Essays on Kant. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell

International.Zammito, J. H. (1992). The genesis of Kant’s Critique of judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Zumbach, C. (1984). The transcendent science: Kant’s conception of biological methodology. The Hague: Martinus

Nijhoff.