An Unstable Middle Position The Kantian Account of Teleology and its Controversial Legacy

This paper addresses Kant’s arguments about the problem of whether living organisms should be considered as organized according to specific purposes. In the opening paragraphs of the Critique of Teleological Judgment, the second section of his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), Kant famously uses the structure of a bird as an example. The form of a bird, especially its bone structure and the position of its wings, suggests a positive answer to that question: they seem intended for flight. Kant, however, finds this concept tantamount to conceiving nature in technical terms, i.e. as the product of a maker.