Conclusion

Summary

I have argued that Kant's new a priori principle of judgment in the CJ, the principle of purposiveness without a purpose, is an a priori formal structure of the subject's judging activity that explains how the subject may represent a unity of the diverse as such. This reading allows us, I have suggested, to understand how purposiveness is exhibited both in the causal interrelations we attribute to the parts of natural organisms in teleological judgment, and in the subject's aesthetic experience of objects as beautiful. As we have seen, Kant denies that purposiveness may be attributed objectively either as a material, causal form of relations to organisms, or as a formal, cognitive structure of relations among properties to objects considered as beautiful. Nonetheless, judgments “applying” the principle of purposiveness, i.e., reflective teleological judgments and aesthetic judgments, are justified – albeit as only subjectively valid – because judging according to, and structured by, the principle of purposiveness is a necessary, though subjective, condition for empirical cognition. Thus, the CJ may be read to comprise a unified project in defense of the subjectively necessary principle of purposiveness, a project necessary to supplement Kant's account of the a priori conditions for the possibility of judgment, knowledge, and experience in the CPR.

This interpretation of the CJ project explains, too, Kant's often circuitous locutions in this text, particularly concerning the principle of purposiveness and its role as a principle of judgment.