Kant's Teleological Construction On Metaphysics

Kant's philosophical thinking is imbued with deep concern for the fate of metaphysics. Aristotle created a precedent of category metaphysics in Western history.Since then traditional Western metaphysical question is always intertwined with the epistemological problem, and its mainstream emerged with the form of absolute knowledge. To the times of Kant, marked with Wolf's subjects classification and focused on on tology ,metaphysics turned into a huge three-part system including rational psychology, rational cosmology and rational theology by means of logic.The metaphysics which Kant directly faces is such a mature form of metaphysics.At the age of Kant, humanity have made great achievements in the natural sciences . In contrast, as a rational career metaphysics was plagued by kinds of problems and became a battlefield with incessant conflicts. Kant clearly pointed out that the real reason of such a fate of metaphysics is the rational transgression caused by the absence of inspection on human's cognitive ability.In his opinion,based on the traditional logic argumentation we cann't acquire the pure rational knowledge and truth at all. Thus Kant creats his own unique transcendental logic and attempts to liquidate the traditional metaphysics. In transcendental logic, through the examination of human's cognitive ability based on transcendental transformation of the traditional logic, he reveals the dialectical nature of speculative inference by traditional metaphysics as knowledge and presents the path to the completelu elimination of such a dialectical nature. The fundamental sign of such a path is the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon . Cognition is only limited within the phenomenal world which can not transcend into the noumenal world. The traditional metaphysicianes does not distinguish between phenomenon and noumenon, applies intellectual category to the noumenal world beyond the scope of the phenomenal world and attempts to seek the knowledge about mental entity, cosmic entity.They falled into the transcendental illusions and failed ultimately. But the impossibility of metaphysics as knowledge doesn't make Kant give up the construction on metaphysics. According to his statement he wants to clear the way and lay a solid foundation for a new scientific metaphysics actually.Kant considers that as the route to the introduction to scientific metaphysics the critical study of human rationality by "Critique of Pure Reason" has sketched out the general outline of the future of metaphysics. Metaphysics as priori knowledge has been established independent of experience. But he is not satisfied with this and work on the practice field and the moral base moreover to construct metaphysics on transcendent object according to rational principles .He starts from experiential moral knowledge, peels off experience factors, separate out the principles of moral metaphysics in order to conduct the basis on critique in depth of practical reason.Moral metaphysics concernes with the foundation of purposeful activities of the will and attempts to produce a consistent representation about purposeful activities of the will .Its exertion is precisely transcendent.So the three transcendent ideas of theoretical reason free will, immortal soul and God have gained conclusive evidence in sense of morality through practical reason .Therefor metaphysics on the transcendent object can be built on moral base. The establishing process is achieved by the specialized critique of practical reason.Kant proposes that there can be only a critique of general practical reason and there can be no criticism of the so-called pure practical reason.Pure practical reason is the most pure part of general practical reason, and this is a self-evident truth. Morality is the most pure practical reason that not to be criticized.Therefore, critique of practical reason is just the use of pure practical reason to critically examine human's specific performance in general practical reason as which a standard to measure a variety of practical behaviors. Considering human's transcendental freedom as the prerequisite,Kant distinguishes between rules and guidelines and puts forward the principle of pure practical reason namely the eternal moral law. As a priori universal law of pure reason , moral law is the cognitive reason of the fact that human is free in practice and human's freedom is the reason that moral law exists. So, because of the fact that moral law exists freedom is not a simple transcendental freedom any more, but promoted to the level of transcendent freedom to be the inherent use in practice as transcendent freedom and thus turns into practical freedom. The practical factuality of freedom is not the factuality of knowledge, it does not provide any knowledge about the object, but on basis of the transcendent thing-in-itself affects the empirical phenomenal world realistically . In order to ensure the full realization of the moral law and attain the supreme good , to guarantee the practical factuality of freedom and thoroughly eliminate antinomy of practical reason , we need to rely on the precedence of practical reason and extract postulation of practical reason namely the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, thereby the two postulations are endowed with factuality in the practice sense and the transcendent cause. Kant criticizes the Stoic view of happiness concerned with virtue supreme and the Epicurus view of happiness concerned with supreme happiness, points out that the real supreme good is virtue consistent with happiness ,moreover the three postulation namely the immortality of the soul ,the existence of God and the free will constitute the condition for why the apriori synthetic judgement about virtue consistent with happiness is possible. Thus moral theology composed of the rules constituted by transcendent idea possesses the innate use in the practice sense. As a result, morality can provide with the foundation of religion and moral practice sets about transitting to religion field.Kant found that although the theoretical system of moral metaphysics has been established, the problem about realization of freedom in experiential nature remains unsolved. Although the concept of nature and the concept of freedom can co-exist on the same subject , but the empirical natural world and the transcendent free world each has a different legislation ,so they isolate from each other and can not be achieved unity. The concept of freedom should make the purpose raised by moral law come true in the empirical phenomenal world, or else hunman will always be subject to the laws of nature and never be able to realize their own freedom and moral law,naturely the transcendent ontic world will never be established. Therefore, Kant sets about critical reseach on judgment to found its priori principle for compensating the rift between phenomenon and onta and the rift between nature and freedom, so reflective judgment becomes the agent as the transition from knowledge to morality and the bridge berween theoretical reason and practical reason. The bridge leads the transition from natural person to free person, so based on natural person's personal special feeling we can activize the impressibility of moral emotion from Subject's inner and apocalypse us the laws of the transcendent moral world . Reflective judgement is different from prescriptive judgement, the latter is an intermediate capacity connecting sensibility and intellectuality, a congnitive capacity using general for special occasions, while the reflective judgment proceeds from the sensible object to search from Subject for general principle and attitude but not general knowledge for sensible object. Reflective judgement devides into aesthetic judgement and teleological judgement . Aesthetic judgement harmonizes human's imagination and intellectuality , returns to Subject's inner from a specific external object with the prupose of the inner's free harmonious activity among various cognitive capacity .Thus aesthetic object turns into a symbol of morality. Teleological judgment coordinates human's intellectuality and rationality, reflects on the nature to acquire a non-purpose purposiveness, that is, natural object has no purpose in itself and the law of nature is causal necessity, but the finite human intellectuality could not fully grasp the complicated natural causality, so the human reason use the reflective teleology compensate the deficiency of mechanical theory to explain the world.Aesthetic judgment is a cognitive activity not with the purpose of cognition which uses the cognitive ability but only associates with the sensibility. The aesthetic pleasure makes human aware of their own transcendent freedom. Teleological judgement is a non- cognitive activity used for cognition. It should belong to the scope of natural science but has no the meaning of theoretical knowledge and through the teleological pursuing layes the foundation for full realization of moral law. Through reflection teleological judgement coordinates two kinds of cognitive ability namely human intellectuality and rationality. It transits from the concept of organism's intrinsic teleological to the system of natural purpose , proceeds to inquiry the ultimate purpose of nature. Natural teleology is exactly moral teleology, thereout natural theology transits to moral theology. This is the end of Kant's metaphysical teleological constructionThrough a comprehensive review of human reason and with the ultimate purpose of human possessing free valuable personality, Kant achieves the unity of freedom and cognition through the critique of aesthetic judgment, the unity of freedom and morality through the critique of teleological judgment accordingly through reflective judgement achieves the unity of nature and freedom , cognition and morality.The purposeless principle of purpose-specific presented by Kant implements the connection of cognition and practice, the perforation of experiential field and transcendent field. It make Kant can lay the foundation for reconstruct metaphysics at the same time denyingtraditional metaphysics as knowledge.Metaphysics is not the knowledge in meaning of empirical science or experiential science which does not teach us knowledge but make us clear and wise. Schelling after metaphysics in order to purposiveness without purpose of art is characterized by visual theory, Hegel's to freedom and necessity speculative, characterized by unity of logical theory, in a way that all Kant The purpose of the construction of metaphysical ideas of continuity and development.From then on, Schelling's metaphysic theory of artistic intuition characterized by the purposeless purposiveness and Hegel's speculative logic theory characterized by unity of freedom and necessity extend and develop in some ways Kant's train of thought about the construction on metaphysical teleology.