The Cipher
of Nature in Kant’s Third Critique: How to Represent Natural Beauty as Meaningful?
Moran Godess-Riccitelli[1]
University of Potsdam, Germany
Abstract
What is it that we encountered with in our aesthetic
experience of natural beauty? Does nature “figuratively speaks to us in
its beautiful forms”,[2]
to use Kant’s phrasing in the third Critique, or is it merely our way of
interpreting nature whether this be its purpose or not? Kant does not
answer these questions directly. Rather, he leaves the ambiguity around them by
his repeated use of terminology of ciphers when it comes to our aesthetic
experience in nature. This paper examines Kant’s terminology of ciphers in the Critique
of Judgment and demonstrate through it the intimate link aesthetic experience
in natural beauty has with human morality. A link whose culmination point is
embodied in the representation of beauty as a symbol of morality.
Keywords
Aesthetic experience; Aesthetic judgment; Critique
of Judgment; Figurative language; Morality; Natural beauty
“Beautiful things show
[anzeigen] that human beings fit in the world”
Kant,
Reflexionen zur Logic, n. 1820A, 16:127[3]
Introduction
One of Kant’s most
occult insights regarding our aesthetic experience in the third Critique
is reflected in his repeated use of terminology of ciphers (this terminology
includes, inter alia, terms such as: hint, trace,
sign, mark, guideline, Ahnung),[4] suggesting our
experience of beauty is so cryptic that it requires the intervention of interpretation.
Thus, Kant inquired into the “true interpretation [Auslegung] of the cipher
[Chiffreschrift] by means of which nature figuratively speaks to
us in its beautiful forms”.[5]
The notion of Chiffreschrift
and the term Auslegung incline us to think along narrowly exegetical
lines, making something obtuse into something comprehensible and conclusive, as
in a process of bringing to light a meaning concealed in an object.[6]
While it is true that Kant’s terminology, in principle, tends to the idea of
interpretation in this conventional manner, in the aesthetic experience of
natural beauty Kant’s reference to the “interpretation of the cipher of nature”
proceeds in an opposite direction to that required by signs or symbols of
a given language. It does not follow the usual path “from a clear knowledge of
letters to the discovery of their meaning”, to use Gernot Böhme’s words “but –
if expressed in these terms – inversely, from the meaning experienced to
the discovery of the letters” (Böhme, 2017, p. 97). Thus, it seems to suggest a
conception of interpretation as essentially open.
However,
interpretation is not open in the sense of being arbitrary or offering up just
any meaning, nor by endlessly adding new meanings to old ones. Rather, its
openness consists in attuning us to certain ideas, i.e., moral ideas,
which no language can fully attain.[7]
The vast majority
of scholars tend to disregard Kant’s reference to ‘cipher’ or ‘language of
nature’.[8]
Kant himself seems to backed down from his remarks by giving them the status of
an analogy (i.e., his famous als-ob terminology) at least in the way we interpret
nature, whether this be its purpose or not.[9]
By shifting the focus back to the terminology of ciphers in the third Critique,
I wish to show aesthetic experience in natural beauty as intimately linked with
themes that are considered ‘cryptic’ in Kant’s moral philosophy, such as the realizability
of moral ideals in the natural world, moral progress, the moral proof for the
existence of God, and the supersensible substratum of
both human nature and nature at large.[10]
My intention is not
to crack the mystery by bringing us closer to a true interpretation of the cipher
of nature, but rather to delve into its necessity for our aesthetic experience
of natural beauty as one of its essential features.[11]
I will argue that it is from this vantage point of our experience in
nature that it is possible to extend our reflections
beyond the boundaries of nature to nature as a whole and to the assumption of a
final end of nature as Kant argues further in the ‘Critique of the Teleological
Power of Judgment’.[12]
I proceed as
follows: I start by examining nature’s figurative language in the ‘Critique
of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment’. Particularly I am interested in the link
Kant draws between beauty and morality through the notion of “hint” [Wink].
The very existence of beauty in nature, Kant argues, gives us actual
hints that nature is hospitable to human morality.[13]
I wish to understand the peculiarity of the hint as an encrypted form of
communication that does not rely upon analogical relation, unlike the symbol,
for instance, but prepares the ground for it. Why are beautiful forms
necessarily perceived as hints when we experience them aesthetically?
And how can a mere hint be granted genuinely significant to the domain of
morality?
I then turn to the
‘Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment’.
I examine Kant’s claim that there must be a certain presentiment [Ahnung]
of our reason, or a hint [Wink] given to us by nature that we could, by
means of the concept of the ultimate end of nature, be led beyond our
reflection on natural purposiveness to “the highest point in the series of
causes”.[14] I
wish to dwell on the connection between Ahnung and Wink, arguing
that the fact that nature is giving us Wink is supported and
complemented by an Ahnung of our reason.
Finally, I propose
that nature’s language of ciphers presented in the third Critique (in
both its parts) suggests a preparatory link to Kant’s moral theology by
granting a complementary outlook on notions associated with it from nature’s perspective.[15]
I suggest that in the cipher of nature Kant implies that human beings have
something more concrete than the ideality of the postulates to indicate that
practical reason could be satisfied. For, it points towards nature’s underlying
accord with our moral vocation. We can find a ground for this underlying
accord only insofar as we take the natural existence of beautiful
objects, which serve our cognitive end, as a kind of evidence that
nature is hospitable also to the realization of our ultimate moral end.[16]
1. Nature’s
Figurative Language
In order for us to be able to appreciate Kant’s
description of nature as possessing its own (figurative) language we must
first, to use Friedlander’s phrasing, attentively elucidate “the inner
articulations of the grammar[17]
of the aesthetic judgment so as to make evident that Kant captures central
aspects of our experience of beauty” (Friedlander 2015, p. 6). Stated
differently, our task is to elaborate Kant’s aesthetic vocabulary from the expression
of the judgment: ‘this (this rose, this nightingale’s song, this landscape) is
beautiful’ – which articulates the entirety of our aesthetic experience –
towards the question of what exactly it communicates.
Whereas the expression of the judgment is perhaps
what is most identified with Kant’s aesthetics, its meaning remains deeply
enigmatic: when I judge a flower to be beautiful, I predicate something about
the object in front of me. Nonertheless, being beautiful is not a fact about
the flower in the same way that having a certain number of petals is a fact
about it. “The aesthetic judgment”, using again Friedlander’s words “is to be
understood over and above the assertion (which is always a determinate
state of affairs), insofar as it presents or opens a space of meaning in
the reflection on the object” (Friedlander 2015, p. 31).
This
implies that in judging something to be beautiful, we do not try to understand
beauty in the conventional sense of communicating a certain content about the
object. But our very engagement with the object must induce our
susceptibility to that “space of meaning in the reflection on the
object”. The idea is that the very act of articulating the experience of
beauty, by uttering ‘this is beautiful’, is in itself an expression of beauty.
Thus, more than what aesthetic judgment actually communicates, what it is
supposed to convey must be presented (instead of merely being said).[18]
The point is that this kind of presentation always presents more than what
is actually given to the senses in perceiving the object since it is the
presentation of a form: a form of purposiveness.
A Crucial Hint: Subjective Formal Purposiveness (SFP)
In
section VII of the published introduction to the third Critique Kant argues that natural beautiful objects satisfy the
fundamental subjective purpose of cognition without being brought under a
determinate concept, particularly of any determinate end. Thus,
[T]he
pleasure [in natural beauty] can express nothing but its suitability to the cognitive faculties that are in play in the
reflecting power of judgment, […] and thus merely a subjective formal
purposiveness of the object.[19]
The principle of SFP
is a condition in which a fundamental purpose of the judging subject is satisfied
in such a way that it is accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. This pleasure, Kant
argues, is the only kind of sensation that we do not automatically
transform into a predicate of objects and thus interpret exclusively as a sign
of our own mental condition.[20]
The
main point for our purpose is that we do not merely identify or heuristically
discover the form of purposiveness in the object, but we also, at the
same time, make it present by our engagement with the object.[21] More specifically, this
principle of SFP is not revealed in any teleological reflection but in natural
beauty itself. For it is natural beauty that
reveals to us a technique of nature, which makes it possible to
represent it [nature] as a system in accordance with laws the principle of
which we do not encounter anywhere in our […] understanding.[22]
In
§23 Kant states that natural beauty “carries with it a purposiveness in its
form, through which the object seems as it were to be predetermined for our
power of judgment, and thus constitutes an object of satisfaction in itself”.[23] This means that because
we have an actual experience of natural beauty, our judgment must adopt as
its own principle the view that nature sets out its empirical laws for the
purpose of judgment. In other words, it is as if natural beauty was designed
with a view of our own cognitive faculties. “And it is precisely this fact”, as
Eckart Förster puts it clearly in his 2002, “that underlies Kant’s ‘discovery’ that
natural beauty ‘reveals’ to us a formal purposiveness of nature with regard to our
power of judgment” (Förster, 2002, p. 10).[24]
Kant’s
basic idea is that even though natural beauty is not actually in nature,
it is intuitively given by certain objects of experience that we judge as if
nature itself is being purposive to our faculties. This means, that in
exhibiting beauty, from nature’s perspective, nature is actually presenting its
own subjective purposiveness, i.e. its purposiveness with respect to our
faculties. From the aesthetic judge’s perspective, in presenting the
purposiveness of nature, it is as if she becomes an integral part of nature
since her aesthetic experience of the object is simultaneously an experience of
her own capacities i.e., the capacity to judge.[25] It turns out that the
principle of SFP indicates a meeting point between nature’s form and our own,
as it were, for nature is now perceived as suitable for our capacities.
“The
question is only”, Kant asserts “whether there is such a representation
of purposiveness at all”.[26] He then goes on to
elaborate:
What is strange and anomalous is only this: that it [SFP] is not an
empirical concept but rather a feeling of pleasure (consequently not a
concept at all) which, […] is nevertheless […] connected with its
representation, just as if it were a predicate associated with the cognition of
the object.[27]
Kant’s point is
that the connection between purposiveness and feeling of pleasure is not merely
psychological but has a necessary and a priori character.[28] What we feel pleasure in
is the accordance between nature and those faculties of the mind that made that
contingent accordance possible. Stated differently, in Angelica Nuzzo’s
articulation “What we feel pleasure in is the possibility of attributing meaning
to the world we experience, and thereby of responding to its
manifestations in our own human way” (Nuzzo 2008, p. 243).
To turn, in light of this, to the
language of nature, it can be said that by presenting its own formal
purposiveness, natural beauty already contains a crucial hint. We are able to
make it explicit “in our own human way” only because it is already
there. Thus, the fact that our encounter with natural beauty produces a feeling
of aesthetic pleasure, indicates that nature’s hint is being received and responded to as a meaningful
language.[29]
But what is
it that we encountered with exactly in our aesthetic experience of natural
beauty: are we experiencing the actual hint of nature? Or are we
experiencing nature as giving us hints? The first question implies that
every experience of beauty already contains hints. The second implies that every
human being is such that they are capable of taking these hints.
Taking a Hint
As stated, the principle of SFP
of nature is described as being revealed only by aesthetic judgment concerning
natural beauty. Nonetheless, in Kant’s account natural beautiful objects are
not merely subjectively purposive for cognition, they are also
subjectively purposive for practical reason, in the sense of serving the
interest of morality without being subsumed under any determinate moral concept.
Thus, Kant asserts that “to take an immediate interest in the beauty
of nature […] is always a mark [Kennzeichen][30]
of a good soul”.[31]
The idea is that, similar to the
pure moral interest we have in the highest good as the final object of
practical reason, which does not involve any personal interest and is thus
universal, we have an intellectual interest in natural beauty.[32] The point I find intriguing
in this context is Kant’s enigmatic terminology in describing the intellectual
interest in natural beauty as a mark of a moral soul. His emphasis is on
the fact that this “mark” - later Kant employs similar terms e.g.: hint, trace,
sign, cipher -[33]
comes from nature itself and is expressed through its beautiful forms.
We are accustomed to thinking of
hints, traces, signs, marks as evidence of something that has already
materialized or happened (think of ruins, remains, fossils, etc..). But what do
these notions mean for future possibilities? In what ways can natural beautiful
objects indicate the realizability of our moral vocation? Moreover, how does
this figurative language of nature enable us to reflect on something
that cannot in principle be represented, i.e., our moral end?
The answer lies, I wish to suggest,
in the idea of SFP of nature. The point is that when we take nature to “give a
hint”, “show some trace”, “give a sign”, or “figuratively speak to us in its
beautiful forms”[34],
to use some of Kant’s formulations, what is finally at stake is the idea that
[N]ature […] in its beautiful products shows itself as art, not merely
by chance, but as it were intentionally, in accordance with a lawful
arrangement and as purposiveness without an end, which latter, since we never
encounter it externally, we naturally seek within ourselves, and indeed in that
which constitutes the ultimate end of our existence, namely the moral vocation.[35]
When we relate to
nature as giving us hints, we in fact embody the idea that natural
beauty reveals itself as having SFP. That is the decisive hint in which nature
“shows itself as art”: it reveals itself as something made “as it were
intentionally”. Stated differently, what nature shows in its beautiful products
is that it is not organized “by chance”, but made in the way art is made, namely,
according to a structure we know from purposes, “a lawful arrangement”, yet
without there being an actual, determinable purpose in play.[36]
The
crucial point for our purpose is that this form of purposiveness presented in
nature’s beautiful products is revealed by our engagement with nature through
our aesthetic experience, as aforesaid, which, in turn, indicates the
significance of the existence of the beautiful object in nature. More
precisely, it shows the (pure) interest we have in the existence of beauty
in nature.
The
idea is that natural beauty is not merely beauty that we find in nature
randomly “by chance” as it were, it is rather beauty that contains in itself
something of what nature means to us.[37] Thus, in taking an intellectual
interest in natural beauty man experiences pleasure not only in the form
of natural beautiful objects but also in their actual existence, even
though “no sensory charm has a part in this and he does not combine any sort of
end with it”.[38]
It is in this way in which we actually sense that nature itself is
giving us hints of its possible correspondence with “the ultimate end of our
existence” namely, our moral vocation.[39]
In
Kant’s words:
[S]ince it also interests reason that the ideas (for which it produces
an immediate interest in the moral feeling) also have objective reality, i.e.,
that nature should at least show some trace [Spur zeige] or
give a sign [Wink gebe] that it contains in itself some sort of
ground for assuming a lawful correspondence of its products with our satisfaction
that is independent of all interest […], reason must take an interest in
every manifestation [Äußerung] in nature of a correspondence
similar to this; consequently the mind
cannot reflect on the beauty of nature without finding itself at
the same time to be interested in it. Because of this affinity, however, this interest
is moral.[40]
Kant’s
claim is that in exhibiting natural beauty, nature becomes an object of
interest of our practical reason since it presents “a lawful correspondence of its products with
our satisfaction”,[41] i.e. it exhibits in
nature a SFP that is similar to the interest of practical reason, namely the
moral satisfaction in the striving for our highest human end.[42] What is of interest for
us in the beautiful object is, thus, not merely its form but its very presence
in nature. This is what makes it an intellectual interest in the beautiful that
is freely provided by nature.[43] [44]
The question is, how are we to interpret
this intellectual interest in beauty? Kant himself is led to worry that his own
interpretation of the matter may seem “too studied to be taken as the true
interpretation [wahre Auslegung] of the cipher by means of which nature
figuratively speaks to us in its beautiful forms”.[45] Kant is referring here to
his explanation of aesthetic judgement of the beautiful in terms of their
affinity with moral feeling so they can be related analogically.
The
decisive point is that when we experience the cipher of nature we are not
yet engaged in analogical presentation. For, there is a difference between having
an intellectual interest in the beautiful and giving it articulation.[46] The thing that nature
shows us in its beautiful forms is not a piece of knowledge about its
structure or about our existence, but rather a hint whose decipherment
remains occult.[47]
Let me demonstrate this with Kant’s examples of colors and tones that cannot be
illustrated analogically but perceived merely as hints.
Mere Colors
In §42 Kant underpins the affinity
between the intellectual interest we take in natural beauty and the moral
interest we have in the final object of practical reason, the highest good, via
the examples of colors and tones. He writes:
[Colors and tones] are the only sensations which permit not merely
sensory feeling but also reflection on the form of these modifications
of the senses, and thus as it were contain a language [eine Sprache]
that nature brings to us and that seems to have higher meaning [höhern
Sinn].[48]
Kant discerns
colors and tones as the only sensations that constitute the ‘language of
nature’. According to Kant the uniqueness of these sensations lies precisely in
allowing “not merely sensory feeling but also reflection on the form
of these modifications of the senses”.[49] In other words, colors
and tones enable us to reflect on the form of their own operative mode
on the senses, rather than being perceived as mere effects. I focus here mainly
on the instance of colors while my aim is to point out its relation to the SFP
of nature.[50]
In §14 Kant argues that “a mere color,
e.g. the green of a lawn, […] is declared by most people to be beautiful in
itself” although it seems to have at its basis merely the matter of the
representation, viz. simply sensation, “and on that account deserved to be
called only agreeable”.[51] Kant’s idea is that
judging a color to be beautiful demands abstracting it from its charm and
emotion as a “mere sensation” and regarding it in its formal aspect. Thus, in
contrast to the effect of sensory pleasure, we experience it as aesthetic
pleasure, namely, the pleasure in the reflection on its form. Kant provides a
physical explanation:
If one assumes, with Euler, that the colors are vibrations (pulsus)
of the air immediately following one another […], and, what
is most important, that the mind does not merely perceive, by sense, their
effect on the animation of the organ, but also, through reflection, perceives
the regular play of the impressions (hence the form in the combination of
different representations) […], then colors […] would
not be mere sensations, but would already be a formal determination of the
unity of a manifold of them, and in that case could also be counted as beauties
in themselves.[52]
Simply put, when
we treat colors according to Euler’s theory,[53] i.e. as (empirically) real
spatio-temporal entities manifested in sensation,[54] we can for example see
the green of the lawn as intrinsically beautiful, namely as having a form.[55] This means that having a
representation of a color is more than just a function of sheer receptivity of
the senses being causally affected in one way or another. The main point for
our purpose is that in order to play a role in judgments of beauty the ‘real
existence’ of colors must be taken into the expanse of reflection, otherwise
they will fall under the rubric of determinate judgments. The expanse opened by
reflection on natural beauty is what Kant refers to as the purposive form of
the object.
The point I wish to stress is that
recognizing a formal aspect in colors is not enough in order for it to manifest
the ‘language’ of nature. Rather, it has to be understood in terms of formal purposiveness.
As stated above, nature’s SFP is necessarily connected with our reflection on
natural beauty, i.e. with our intellectual interest in beauty. Since that intellectual
interest is directed solely to the existence of nature’s correspondence
to our faculties,[56] it follows that the most
significant feature in our aesthetic experience is expressed in the mere charms
[Reize] in beautiful nature, e.g. in colors (and tones) “which are so
frequently encountered” Kant states “as it were melted together [zusammenschmelzend]
with the beautiful form”.[57]
A mere color, in this regard, is
viewed as being part of the SFP of nature, whose very existence hints at
nature itself as having a purpose that conforms to our faculties. As such, one
would not be able to appeal with pure color analogically to the domain
of morality, or to moral ideas for that matter. But the formal aspect of colors
could be, as it were, that dimension through which nature itself can “speak
to us”, i.e. communicate with us, “in its beautiful forms”. Because it does so figuratively,
however, this communication remains cryptic to us yet in a way “that seems to
have higher meaning”.[58]
That
is the sense in which “the white color of the lily” to use one of Kant’s
examples of colors “seems to dispose the mind to ideas of innocence”.[59] There is no analogical
relation here, where the same rule of reflection is applied on two different
objects,[60]
but rather a complete openness that the color grants us of an expanse of meaning in the reflection on the object.[61]
It follows, that when Kant affirms that colors (and
tones) are sensations that “as it were contain a language
that nature brings to us and that seems to have higher meaning”, which
he then refers to the moral domain, the significance lies not in what
this higher meaning may consist in, but in its very existence. Yet, as
the sentence that follows makes evident, such higher meaning is not simply
given, it is, rather, achieved: “At least this is how we interpret
nature, whether anything of the sort is its intention or not”.[62]
Does
this mean that the beautiful forms we experience in nature that manifest our
attunement with it, are in fact traces and hints of a higher, moral meaning of
the world? Or is the fact that “this is how we interpret nature” means
that the hints we find in nature are no more than accidental effects of
mindless mechanism? I wish to examine these questions in proceeding from the
beauty of nature to its purposeful arrangement in the ‘Critique of the
Teleological Power of Judgment’.
2. Nature’s
Wink and Reason’s Ahnung
In the ‘Critique of Teleological Power of Judgment’ Kant
suggests we follow yet another ‘hint’ which comes from nature itself. Such a
hint is signaled by the assumption of the concept of “natural purpose” [Naturezwek].
In order for us to be able to regard our moral vocation as a real possibility,
or as Kant puts it “to step beyond nature and even
connect it to the highest point in the series of causes”, Kant argues that we
must first attempt to discover “where that stranger [Fremdling] in
natural science, namely the concept of natural ends, leads”.[63]
Nature’s hint [Wink], in this sense, is supposed to indicate to us a
supersensible basis for reflection upon our condition as sensible rational
beings.
The idea is
that the meeting point between nature and morality lies in the new possibility
of thinking of the concept of natural purpose by means of reflection that
conjoins our sensible and intelligible nature. It follows that nature’s hint to
us is accompanied and complemented by a ‘presentiment’ [Ahnung] of our
reason, because reason is now learning to recognize itself as part of
nature and to think in a way that is attuned to it.[64]
I wish to elaborate the relation between nature’s Wink and reason’s Ahnung
by focusing on the concept that is indeed a “stranger”
in natural science, namely the concept of “natural ends”.
Where Natural Ends
Leads
We form the concept of ‘natural ends’, in Kant’s account,
on an analogy with the production of man-made objects according to their
purpose. The idea is that in order for us to not regard nature’s
causality as a blind mechanism, we must represent the possibility of
objects in it teleologically, i.e., as ends.[65] Kant
argues that teleological judgments as such are required, not to provide
a theoretical explanation on natural ends[66] but
simply to recognize their existence.[67]
Stated differently, the concept of ‘natural ends’
suggests that our capacity for purposeful action is irreducibly involved in our
capacity for making sense of nature (or of parts of nature, e.g.
organisms, for that matter). The idea is that the two activities: making sense
of human action and making sense of organisms both rest on the same reflective
structure, namely on our capacity for recognizing the form of purposiveness.
If in the ‘Critique
of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment’ we referred to the form of purposiveness of
nature as opening the space of meaning in the reflection of the object, that
is, as the opening of that dimension through which
“nature figuratively speaks to us in its beautiful forms”,[68]
the concept of ‘natural ends’ suggests that there are objects in nature that open
up to us, in the sense of their ability to become part of our experience, only
when we recognize their affinity with objects made purposively by us. To this
extent, as I suggested earlier, reason can recognize itself as part of
nature and to think in a way that is attuned to it.
The important point here is not that we cognize natural
objects as having the form of our reason.[69]
Rather, Kant affirms that organic nature elicits or induces our
employment of an idea of reason. Thus, when Kant says: “It must
therefore be a certain presentiment [Ahnung] of our reason, or a hint [Wink]
as it were given to us by nature, that we could by means of that concept of
final causes step beyond nature”[70]
he seems to suggest that there is something more in organic phenomena
than the systematic structure that we discover in nature in general by way of
our understanding. For, we experience certain objects (e.g., “crystal
formations, various shapes of flowers, or the inner structure of plants and
animals”)[71] as
not fitting into nature conceived mechanically and that they accordingly intimate
an origin outside it: a supersensible ground for the object.[72]
Stated
differently, natural ends do not lead us to knowledge or cognition of anything
transcendent in its transcendentally real essence, as it is in itself.
But we have, rather, an ‘Ahnung’ that there is a transcendent ground of
the non-sensible form of appearances, i.e., the form of purposiveness. Since
this form is not sensible, we are entitled to suppose that the purposive form
exhibited in organic nature corresponds with the form of its (noumenal) grounding.
The form of the grounding, in turn, can be cognized only as it is manifested in
natural objects and it is thus a mere hint.
The question
is how our teleological judgment of certain objects in nature is induced by “a
certain Ahnung of our reason” or a hint
“given to us by nature”, to the possibility of going beyond nature and even “connect[ing] it to the highest point in the
series of causes”?[73]
Beyond Mechanical Causality
In the
‘Antinomy of the Power of Judgment’ Kant presents the difference between
mechanism and teleology of nature in their logic of causality. The antinomy
goes as follows:
Thesis:
All generation of material things and their forms must be judged as possible in
accordance with merely mechanical laws.
Antithesis:
Some products of material nature cannot be judged as possible according to
merely mechanical laws (judging them requires an entirely different law of
causality, namely that of final causes).[74]
This “representation [Vorstellung]”
of the antinomy, as Kant refers it, means to show that while the only way to a
“proper cognition of nature” is made of mechanistic explanations, when it comes
to human reason the use of teleology is inevitable.[75]
Thus, while it is indeed our “obligation to give a mechanical explanation of
all products and events in nature […] as far as it is in our capacity to do so”
Kant stresses that we must at the same time never “lose sight of the fact that
those which […] we can in spite of those mechanical causes, subject to investigation
only under the concept of an end of reason, must in the end be subordinated to
causality in accordance with ends”.[76]
Notice that the two opposing theses Kant presents as the
antinomy contain assertions not about nature itself but about the ways we form
judgments on nature, which Kant refers as no more than a “guideline” [Leitfaden]
enabling us to sense that nature forms a unity under empirical laws.[77]
This guideline is not aimed at producing theoretical knowledge, as aforesaid,
what it gives us, instead, is an Ahnung.
The term Ahnung is notoriously difficult to
translate. The Cambridge translation to the third Critique choses
‘presentiment’. Other scholars offer ‘inkling’,[78]
‘suspicion’,[79]
‘intimation’.[80] All
translations capture the fact that Ahnung goes beyond traditional conceptions
of rational explanation. In the present context of the ‘Teleology’, as we have
seen, Ahnung is complemented by a Wink that it might be possible
to go beyond a purely naturalistic study of nature in terms of mechanical
causality.
The
interesting point is that although an Ahnung is not constituting of
knowledge in itself, it nevertheless remains within the domain of pure reason,
see: “a certain Ahnung of our reason”,[81]
and is directed towards future discovery. This ambiguous characterization of
the term Ahnung manages to combine the theoretical impossibility
of having knowledge about the final end of nature together with the
rational faith of being able to arrive at insight about it.[82]
That is the beginning of an answer as to how, when we
judge certain objects in nature to be purposeful, we feel encouraged by “a
certain Ahnung of our reason” or a hint
“given to us by nature, that we could by means of that concept of final causes step
beyond nature and even connect it to the highest point in the series of causes”.[83] The part that still
in need of clarification is: towards what these Ahnung and Wink
indicate us, and more generally for what purpose do we need to regard nature as
having its own language?[84]
3. Conclusion:
Towards Moral Theology
In the ‘General
Remark on the Teleology’ Kant sums up the ‘Teleology’ section by arguing that the concept of natural purposes leads us “beyond the
boundaries of nature” since through it we in fact extend our teleological
reflections to nature as a whole and to the assumption of a final end of
nature.[85] This concept of natural
purposes, Kant stresses “can never be given a priori, but only through
experience, but which nevertheless promises [verheißt] a concept
of the original ground of nature which among everything that we can conceive
fits only the supersensible”.[86]
Kant further clarifies that
this kind of teleology (natural teleology) “does not suffice for theology”.[87] Because when we apply the
concept of a natural purpose to the final end of nature, or to its supersensible
ground, for that matter, we take a concept that derives its meaning from the
context of human agency and apply it to something we do not and cannot know
independently. Thus, Kant argues that natural teleology can only give us a hint
that “we could by means of that concept of final causes step beyond nature and
even connect it to the highest point in the series of causes”.[88]
However,
even though it is indeed a mere hint, its significance lies in the openness of
the dimension towards what it may be directed. My point is that the idea of natural purposiveness -
although it cannot give us objects that go beyond what can be given in
intuition[89]
should nonetheless be viewed as pertaining to the very possibility of the
practical dimension of our final moral end, i.e., “the
highest point in the series of causes”.[90]
This last
point is even more pronounced in the ‘Aesthetics’ section. As we have seen, aesthetic
judgment demonstrates that nature is purposive with respect to our faculties
through the SFP exhibited by natural beautiful objects. This is, I wish to
argue, nature’s crucial hint for us suggesting that in judging nature as
beautiful we also judge that nature is here for us. The pivotal point
here is that even though Kant is clear that this is only our interpretation
of nature, it nevertheless provides more than the ideal notion of the
postulates. This is because our interpretation is based on nature’s own
appearance to us.[91]
Thus, we are warranted in judging natural beauty as a “cipher by means of which
nature figuratively speaks to us”.[92]
The ‘language
of nature’ in this regard can at best be seen as a suggestive or inspiring
language that enables us to reflect on certain objects in nature in a way that
we can then connect with certain rational ideas. Stated differently, natural
beauty suggests (in occasioning pleasure in us) that nature is not indifferent
to us but can be seen as already pertaining to the domain of morality. The
linguistic dimension of nature consists in the fact that this kind of
subjective experience has to be communicable, i.e., that there must be a
dimension of interpretation or configuration of the mere figurative aspect of
nature to something that can be made explicit on the one hand yet remains
conceptually indeterminable on the other.
The critical
point is that we can make it explicit because it is already there, in nature.
This is the sense in which I have suggested that the cipher of nature offers a
kind of evidence that the work of nature is aimed at our moral vocation.
For it shows that the dialectic that otherwise precludes the satisfaction of
practical reason, is already in the process of coming undone. This explains why
Kant says, that “reason must take an interest in
every manifestation [Äußerung] in nature of a correspondence similar to this”.[93]
Given that reason (in this case the reference is to practical reason) has to
strive to realize its objects, Kant says that it is crucial for us to have experiences
that indicate that these objects are indeed realizable.
Notice Kant’s
choice of words in this context to the ‘traces and hints’ of nature as the Äußerung der Natur
which can be translated as an ‘expression’ or even ‘utterance’ of nature thus
reinforces the idea of the linguistic dimension of nature.[94]
However,
as far as these experiences in nature go, they cannot get us all the way
through. That is, they do not get us to the unconditioned final end that
practical reason seeks, as it cannot be exhibited, by its definition, in
intuition. These experiences can thus only ‘indicate’ or ‘hint’ to us, as it
were, that this end is coherent and could have objective reality. My
point is that this hint we experience in nature, being part of nature’s
language, prepares the ground for Kant’s treatment of beauty as a symbol of morality which stands
as the culmination of ‘The Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment’.
The idea is that beautiful
nature presents us with SFP, which is the hint towards the realizability of the
highest moral end – the highest good. Stated differently, the hint nature gives
us allows us to articulate how beauty is a presentation [Darstellung]
of the morally good. What we have here is a way of representing [darstellen]
nature as meaningful to us.[95]
Only then do we have a ground to make analogical presentation thus to
regard beauty as a symbol of morality.[96]
The
symbolization articulated in the form of analogical relation is the true
groundwork for Kant’s moral theology as he puts it later in the Religion:
“We always need a certain analogy with natural being in order to make supersensible
characteristics comprehensible to us”.[97] My point is that in order for us to be able to make such
analogical presentation we must configure our aesthetic experience of mere
hints and ciphers in nature. This allows us to use certain objects in
nature viz., natural beautiful objects, also as symbols.[98]
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