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Regulative principles and ‘the Wise Author of Nature’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2010

LAWRENCE PASTERNACK
LAWRENCE PASTERNACK*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078
*
e-mail: L.pasternack@okstate.edu
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Abstract

There is much more said in the Critique of Pure Reason about the relationship between God and purposiveness than what is found in Kant's analysis of the physico-theological (design) argument. The ‘Wise Author of Nature’ is central to his analysis of regulative principles in the ‘Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic’ and also appears in the ‘Canon’, first with regards to the Highest Good and then again in relation to our theoretical use of purposiveness. This paper will begin with a brief discussion of the physico-theological argument before moving on to the Appendix and the Canon. Finally, it will consider some changes to the role of the Wise Author in the Critique of Judgement.

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Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 411 - 429
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Introduction

Kant's objections to the ontological, cosmological and physico-theological (design) arguments are contained in the third chapter of the First Critique's Transcendental Dialectic, ‘The Ideal of Pure Reason’. In addition to the objections aimed at the actual arguments, we also find various disparaging comments about the ontological and cosmological arguments in particular. For example, Kant expresses his distaste for the ontological argument, calling it ‘entirely unnatural, and a mere novelty of scholastic wit’ (A603/B631);Footnote 1 and when he turns to the cosmological argument, he writes, ‘so many sophistical principles come together that speculative reason seems to have summoned up all its dialectical art so as to produce the greatest possible transcendental illusion’ (A606/B634).

By contrast, there are many instances where Kant expresses a much more favourable attitude towards the physico-theological argument. For example, he writes that ‘it is the oldest, clearest and the most appropriate to common human reason’ (A623/B652); and despite his official rejection of the argument, he appeals to the strong ties which this argument has to our scientific use of the principle of purposiveness, claiming that its use ‘increases the belief [Glauben] in a highest author to the point where it becomes an irresistible conviction [Überzeugung]’ (A624/B652).

As we shall discuss in this paper, physico-theological considerations linger in the Critique of Pure Reason well after Kant's discussion of the standard argument. They appear in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, primarily within his deduction of regulative principles, and appear again in the Canon of Pure Reason.Footnote 2 The primary purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the ‘Wise Author of Nature’ in the Appendix and consider to what extent it yields an argument for God's existence which parallels the so-called moral argument for God.

We shall begin with the Ideal of Pure Reason's physico-theological argument. Though considerable work has been done on Kant's analyses of the cosmological and ontological arguments, the physico-theological argument has been mostly ignored in the secondary literature.Footnote 3 In addition to a reconstruction of Kant's presentation of the argument, we shall consider some of the desiderata governing his general approach to theology.

The next section of the paper focuses on the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic. There is a broad disagreement in the secondary literature regarding whether or not in the First Critique Kant assigns regulative principles a transcendental role or whether this only comes about in the Critique of Judgment. As we shall see, this debate is relevant to the status of the Wise Author of Nature in the Appendix.

The paper will then turn to the Canon, first exploring the relationship between the Kant's teleology and his moral theory, and then considering whether what has been discussed up to that point can be viewed as a theoretical (vs moral) argument for God's existence.

Finally, the paper will briefly explore the status of the Wise Author in the Critique of Judgment. As will be seen, the Wise Author is there removed from the deduction for regulative principles. Moreover, the intimations of a theoretical (vs moral) belief in God which can be found in the First Critique's Appendix and Canon are explicitly rejected in the Third Critique.

The physico-theological argument in the ideal of pure reason

The key aim of the Transcendental Dialectic is to show that it is impossible for us to have theoretical knowledge (Wissen) about anything that is beyond the limits of possible experience. After building his case against metaphysical theses about the self in the Paralogisms and metaphysical theses about the cosmos in the Aninomies, Kant turns to the metaphysics of God in the Ideal of Pure Reason. He begins by presenting the ens realissimum, as the concept of God ‘thought of in a transcendental sense’ (A580/B608). This concept is of a being which excludes no positive properties and so is in no way lacking something which could contribute to its greatness. As the transcendental concept of God, it serves as an a priori condition for theology. Put somewhat differently, if a proposed conception of God falls short of the ens realissimum, the conception is not worthy of being identified as God. As we shall see below, this requirement will play an important role in the Dialectic's physico-theological argument. But before we turn to it, let us briefly discuss Kant's evaluation of the ontological and cosmological arguments.

According to Kant, all arguments for God's existence are either ontological, cosmological, or teleological – and this consolidation provides the Ideal of Pure Reason with its overall strategy: first to show (a) that the ontological argument fails by virtue of the (infamous) claim that existence is not a predicate; then (b) that the other two arguments depend upon the ontological; and finally (c) because of this dependence, they succumb to the same fate.

As his example of cosmological arguments, Kant selects the Leibnizian argument that moves from the explanandum of the contingency of the world to the existence of an ‘absolutely’ necessary being as the world's explanans. An absolutely necessary being is one whose necessity does not stand in relation to anything further. By contrast, an hypothetically necessary being is one whose existence must obtain because some other state of affairs also obtains. Since the purpose of God in Leibniz's cosmological argument is to be the non-contingent cause of a contingent world, its necessity must be absolute. This, Kant here claims, is equivalent to its necessity stemming from its own nature. Thus we swiftly return to the problematic of the ontological argument: to posit a being whose necessity stems solely from its own nature is again to employ existence as a predicate.

Kant's critique of the physico-theological argument is less perfunctory. Where the theological concept generated by the cosmological argument is taken to be the same as that of the ontological, such is not the case for the explanans of the ‘manifoldness, order, purposiveness, and beauty’ of the world (A622/B650). More is required to bring this argument in contact with the ontological.

It will be helpful to consider the physico-theological argument as having two stages. The first stage moves from the empirical explanandum to an initial explanans. The second stage concerns the relationship between the initial explanans and the ens realissimum, which, as noted above, is according to Kant an a priori condition for theology.

The first stage of the physico-theological argument is presented by Kant as follows:

  1. (1) Through observation we find ‘clear signs of an order according to determinate aim, carried out with great wisdom’. (A625/B653)

  2. (2) ‘This purposive order is quite foreign to the things of this world … i.e., the nature of different things could not by themselves agree in so many united means to determinate final ends, were they not quite properly chosen for and predisposed to it through a principle of rational order grounded on ideas.’ (A625/B653)

  3. (3) ‘Thus there exists a sublime and wise cause (or several)’. (A625/B653)

  4. (4) ‘The unity of this cause may be inferred from the unity of the reciprocal relation of the parts of the world … in accordance with all principles of analogy.’ (A625-6/B653-4)

In the above, (3) is motivated by (2), the rejection of the possibility that nature itself could be the source of its own order.Footnote 4 A page later, Kant also uses the classic analogical argument from human artifacts to support (3): ‘once we are supposed to name a cause, we could not proceed more securely than by analogy with such purposive productions [houses, ships, clocks], which are the only ones where we are fully acquainted with the causes’ (A626/B654). Formally, the two arguments are different (and we may even enumerate a third argument based upon A622/B650). However, since the general strategy of physico-theology is inductive, I think we can see the various arguments as complimentary, each providing to the conclusion additional inductive strength.

Kant's overall assessment of this first stage is surprisingly positive. He states that it would be ‘quite pointless to try to remove anything from the reputation of this proof’; and would come only by way of ‘abstract speculation’ instigated by ‘brooding indecision’ (A624/B652). Unlike the ‘scholastic wit’ and ‘dialectical art’ of the first two arguments, it is the ‘oldest, clearest and the most appropriate to common human reason’ (A623/B652). Despite the objections to which we now turn, he says of the argument's first stage, ‘we have nothing to object against the rationality and utility of this procedure’ (A624/B652).Footnote 5

The second stage concerns the gap between what the first stage could demonstrate and what theology ultimately needs. As discussed above, since the ens realissimum is the transcendental conception of God, something beyond a Wise Author is necessary. Like the Greek Demiurge, the Wise Author brings form to matter. But there still must (presumably) be a creator of that matter and the physico-theological argument on its own cannot get us there – nor can it establish that the Wise Author is an ‘all-sufficient original being’ (A627/B655): ‘the proof could at most establish a highest architect of the world, who would always be limited by the suitability of the material on which he works, but not a creator of the world’ (A627/B655). Thus the key objection to the physico-theological argument is quite different from the objection to the cosmological argument. The problem of the cosmological argument is that the being it supposedly proves is one whose essence must involve existence – something rejected in Kant's analysis of the ontological argument. Here, on the other hand, the problem is that the being of the physico-theological argument does not match up with the transcendental conception of God.

If Kant is correct about the transcendental role of the ens realissimum, his concern is legitimate. However, there is a response. He allows that the physico-theological argument can indeed bring us to admire ‘the magnitude of the wisdom, power, etc. of the world's author’ (A629/B657). Although we cannot hope for much precision at all, we may nevertheless model the cause as at least proportionate to the effect (A627/B655). Since we are here working within the sphere of empirical proofs, what we have for this conception is something which is derived from experience: we see the complexity, beauty, etc. of nature and we frame a cause which is at least adequate to what we see.

Though Kant claims that the argument does not provide a determinate conception of the divine (A628/B656),Footnote 6 it is not his position, as some have thought, that the concept of the Wise Author is therefore utterly indeterminate (empty or exceedingly vague). For Kant, theology requires the fully determinate notion of the ens realissimum because the actual concern of (Western) religion is a divine individual. This is why the section is titled the ‘Ideal of Pure Reason’. An ‘ideal’ (vs an ‘idea’) is the concept of an individual being (see A568/B596) – and Kant is here following the Leibnizian tradition that concepts of individuals must be fully determinate. General concepts can remain somewhat indeterminate as there are predicates which do not apply to them. The general concept of a triangle, to use the classic example, is neither isosceles, scalene, nor equilateral. However, an individual triangle must be one of these. Thus if the aim of a theological proof is to establish the existence of a divine being rather than just divinity, the targeted concept must be one which is fully determinate.Footnote 7

In addition to individuation, there are two other points of relevance for the concept of the ens realissimum. First, though this does not strictly follow, ideas of the most real, or highest, or infinite being are supposed to entail that it is impossible for there to be more than one being of the sort proposed. Second, I take it that the ens realissimum is the only one who would be considered genuinely worthy of worship.Footnote 8 Lesser divinities (Loki, Apollo, Ganesh, etc.) would not, for Kant, be held in such esteem.

However, if we are not concerned with monotheism in particular nor with making the case for a being worthy of worship, there is no direct need for either the ens realissimum or full determinacy. Instead, what is needed is a conception that gives us the guidance we need for some necessary cognitive activity. This issue is complex and will be dealt with through much of the remainder of this paper.

As we shall see, the concept of a Wise Author of Nature serves as the schema for our application of regulative principles to experience, it contributes to our scientific enquiry, and is also relevant to the reconciliation of morality and happiness in the Highest Good. We have yet to get into the details, but hardly should this concept be cast off as either so empty or so vague that it is without philosophical value. We may not be able to pin down the exact magnitude of the Wise Author's attributes (see A628/B656) nor attribute to it some further properties (creator of matter, benevolent, etc.) but such limitations do not prevent us from having a conception of it sufficient for many of our cognitive needs. It is to one of those needs we now turn.

The role of regulative principles in the Critique of Pure Reason

There is widespread disagreement about whether in the First Critique, Kant claims that regulative principles are transcendental conditions or whether they have only heuristic value. They may merely stimulate our scientific enquiry with various desiderata and ‘where the understanding alone does not attain to rules, [reason steps in] to help it through ideas’ (A648/B676). Or they may be necessary for the construction and application of empirical concepts, which are in turn necessary for the way in which we experience the world.

According to the former interpretation, one that is defended by Paul Guyer, Rolf Horstmann, Rudolf Makkreel and others, it is not until the Critique of Judgment that Kant assigns a transcendental status to regulative principles.Footnote 9 Their position is certainly not without textual support, for in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant often speaks of regulative principles as valuable for their ‘utility’ (A661/B689), that they can ‘be used with good success, as heuristic principles’ (A663/B691), and even states that there can be no transcendental deduction of these principles (A664/B692) – something which if they did have a transcendental role, we would expect.

Nevertheless, there are also many who disagree with this deflationary interpretation, including Henry Allison, Reinhard Brandt, Michelle Grier, and Béatrice Longuenesse.Footnote 10 Though the Appendix does differ in detail with the Critique of Judgment, they believe that in both texts, Kant maintains that regulative principles do have a transcendental role. As described by Henry Allison, they organize, connect and make coherent ‘the first-order empirical claims regarding objects falling under these formal conditions (i.e. the conditions of the Aesthetic and Analytic)’.Footnote 11 Thus, experience requires not only the forms of intuition and the pure concepts, but regulative principles as well. Without them, there would be no ‘cognizable order at the empirical level’.Footnote 12 In other words, the forms of intuition and the pure concepts cannot on their own yield experience laden with empirical concepts. But human experience also requires a materially rich taxonomic and nomologic order.Footnote 13

This interpretive controversy is germane to our analysis of the relationship between God and purposiveness for two reasons. First, as we shall see, Kant does (despite those who claim the contrary) offer a transcendental deduction of regulative principles in the Appendix, a deduction in which the Wise Author is relevant. Second, if the deflationary interpretation were correct, then what Kant does say about the Wise Author's relationship to regulative principles would have to be interpreted in relation to the status of those principles. That is, if they are merely heuristic, coming to our aid just ‘where the understanding alone does not attain to rules’, then the theistic commitments generated thereby would be quite meagre. We might entertain the idea of a purposive connection at some point when our mechanical model hits a dead end and while doing so, we may entertain the idea that there is some Wise Author organizing nature. But hardly could we say that there is any existential affirmation.Footnote 14

Before moving on to Kant's discussion of the Wise Author in the Appendix, let me offer some further support for the position advocated by Allison, et al. For it, the textual evidence is quite abundant, so much so that I have trouble understanding why one would adopt the alternative. Consider A651/B679, where Kant claims that ‘it cannot be seen how there could be a logical principle of rational unity among rules unless a transcendental principle is presupposed’;Footnote 15 then A654/B683, ‘homogeneity [Gleichartigkeit] is necessarily presupposed in the manifold of a possible experience … because without it no empirical concepts, and hence no experience would be possible’.Footnote 16

Furthermore, consider the following pattern found in the first part of the Appendix. Each time Kant introduces a regulative principle and discusses its logical role (i.e. its role regarding taxonomic divisionsFootnote 17), he then adds that the logical role presupposes a transcendental foundation. The point is first made as a general claim at A651/B679, which is quoted above, and then repeated within the discussion of each principle: when Kant introduces the homogeneity [Gleichartigkeit] of genera, he asserts the need for a transcendental principle (A654/B682); then the same move is made regarding the law of specification within genera (A656/B684); and then with regard to affinity (which he also describes in terms of a continuum of taxonomic divisions), an appeal to a transcendental principle appears again (A660/B688).

The evidence, I believe, becomes overwhelming once we include the opening of the second part of the Appendix, ‘The Final Aim of The Natural Dialectic of Human Reason’, where Kant now claims that a deduction is possible, albeit different in character from the Transcendental Deduction of Pure Concepts. The deduction which he is about to offer is ‘the completion of the critical business of pure reason’ (A670/B698) and once offered, he concludes, ‘this is the transcendental deduction of all the ideas of speculative reason, not as constitutive principles for the extension of our cognition … but as regulative principles for the systematic unity of the manifold of empirical cognition in general’ (A671/B699).

I will not discuss the deduction in detail here. A rigorous analysis would demand a paper of its own. But in short, it is meant to show that reason's quest for systematic unity can be justifiably applied maximally to nature: i.e. the system of taxonomic and nomologic concepts has maximal homogeneity, specification, and affinity; and that these features apply to nature as whole. This quest, Kant claims, is ‘inseparably bound up with the essence of our reason [and] … therefore, is legislative for us’ (A695/B723). As I will discuss towards the end of this paper, the deduction in the Critique of Judgment takes a different approach. But in the Appendix, the deduction's strategy is to justify the maximal application of regulative principles through the supposition of a ‘highest intelligence’, i.e. an author capable of ordering nature with maximal systematicity (A670/B698–A671/B699).

Kant repeatedly characterizes this supposition as relative to our need to regard nature as maximally systematic (A671/B699, A672/B700, A673/B701, A676/B704, A679/B707, etc). It is taken ‘only problematically [vs assertorically] … so as to regard all the connection of things in the world of sense as if they had their ground in this being of reason’ (A681/B709). Nevertheless, we need it ‘for attaining to the highest systematic unity’ (A688/B716); and ‘[f]or the greatest systematic and purposive unity, which your reason demands as a regulative principle to ground all investigation of nature’ (A699/B727 – emphasis added).

Though the supposition of the Wise Author is used to undergird regulative rather than constitutive principles, these regulative principles still are necessary for the construction of empirical concepts and thus necessary for how we experience the world. They are repeatedly characterized as having a transcendental status and Kant does offer a deduction to that effect. Our commitment then to the Wise Author is not, therefore, something that is optional. To this point Kant writes: ‘can we nevertheless assume a unique wise and all-powerful world author? Without any doubt; and not only that, but we must presuppose such a being’ (A697/B725). Thus there is some mode of commitment to the Wise Author – or at least there are some passages which go farther than others in indicating a commitment. This commitment is not grounded in a theoretical proof, but it is grounded as a necessary supposition for an activity that we cannot do without. In the following section, I will argue that this supposition parallels Kant's appeal to God as a necessary postulate to secure our hope for the Highest Good. As such, it parallels what is often characterized as Kant's moral proof for God's existence.

Teleology and morality

There are ample points of analogy between Kant's teleology and his moral theory. Regulative Principles are, for instance, referred to as ‘maxims’ in both the First and Third Critiques (A666/B694, A668/B696, A680/B708, 5:375, 5:387, 5:411, etc.). Both also involve self-legislation. Moral self-legislation is, of course, a keystone to Kant's practical philosophy. In the case of teleology, systematic unity is ‘inseparably bound up with the very nature of our reason … [and] is on that account legislative for us’ (A695/B723).Footnote 18 This point of analogy has been explored by a few, including Allison, who compares the rational constraint to regard nature as purposive with the Groundwork's claim that we must ‘act under the idea of freedom’.Footnote 19 As practical deliberation embeds us in ‘the space of [practical] reasons’,Footnote 20 so the activity of concept formation commits us, prescriptively, to systematicity.Footnote 21 Michelle Grier makes some similar points, and also imports the logic of ought implies can when she writes: ‘as with maxims elsewhere considered, it makes no sense to adopt the maxim unless we also presuppose that it can be deployed in a way which will bring about the ends demanded’.Footnote 22

I do think the analogy with Kant's practical philosophy is illuminating. But its full depth has not yet been captured. In addition to what has been discussed so far, we may gain a richer understanding of regulative principles by comparing them to Kant's doctrine of the Highest Good. It is a doctrine which closely parallels his account of the systematicity of nature; and it is also one particular manifestation of systematicity.

In the Canon (as elsewhere), the Highest Good is depicted as a synthesis of happiness with morality. This synthesis arises from a number of different considerations: (a) through moral conduct, we become worthy of happiness (A806/B834); (b) the effect of moral conduct should be happiness (A810/B838); and (c) the motivational force of morality stems from our interest in happiness (A806/B834, A811/B839, A813/B841). There is not much to say about (a). Let us grant it as a primitive thesis about desert. (b) expands upon (a) in that it proffers a causal connection between morality and happiness. This connection is not something we can ascribe to nature outside of our practical point of view – and the world hardly appears to unfold in this way. Nevertheless it is something for which we hope and much of Kant's discussion of the Highest Good aims at establishing the rationality of this hope.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, I see his argument for the rational hope for (b) to rest upon (c). Unless it is a hope to which we are entitled, ‘the majestic ideas of morality are, to be sure, objects of approbation and admiration but not incentives for resolve and realization’ (A813/B841). Kant first presents the idea of acting from duty in the Groundwork.Footnote 23 But here all we seem to have is the draw of happiness. Even though moral ‘laws command absolutely … and are thus necessary in every respect’ (A807/B835), it appears that they are enacted to render the self worthy of happiness.

The key question thus becomes how to justify the hope that our observance of morality can bring about happiness. Part of Kant's answer is that we must – here as well – posit a Wise AuthorFootnote 24: ‘[it] may be hoped for only if it is at the same time grounded on a highest reason, which commands in accordance with moral laws, as at the same time the cause of nature’ (A810/B838); ‘Morality in itself constitutes a system, but happiness does not, except insofar as it is distributed precisely in accordance with morality. This, however, is possible only in the intelligible world, under a wise author and regent’ (A811/B838).Footnote 25

Both theoretical and practical reason seek systematicity. In the former case, regulative principles are utilized to connect the products of the understanding. In the latter case, not only do we have the pure system of moral duties, but also a synthesis of these duties with our natural interest in happiness. In both cases, reason prescribes systematic unity and in both cases, that unity hangs upon a theological postulate. The Wise Author has arranged creation such that the natural world conforms with our use of regulative principles and that happiness can be distributed according to our moral worth. In both cases, we can see this postulate as being necessitated in two different ways. First, hypothetically: if we accept the antecedent that nature conforms with (theoretical or practical) reason, then the Wise Author is the cause of this arrangement. Second, absolutely: we are constrained to accept the antecedent per Allison's argument discussed above.

Another argument from design?

We have seen that Kant's explorations of theology and teleology extend far beyond the physico-theological argument. The sympathies Kant there expressed towards this argument may, in isolation, have seemed perplexing. But we now see that the concept of the Wise Author is integral to his defence of regulative principles in the Appendix and in the Canon is further used to help justify our hope for the Highest Good. The Wise Author makes one more appearance in the Canon, an appearance that supports an affirmation of His existence consistent with what was said in the Appendix.

After discussing two other modes of belief, moral and pragmaticFootnote 26, Kant introduces doctrinal belief [doctrinale Glaube] and characterizes our doctrinal belief in God as follows:

Now we must concede that the thesis of the existence of God belongs to doctrinal belief … purposive unity is still so important a condition of the application of reason to nature that I cannot pass it by … . But I know no other condition for this unity that could serve me as a clue for the investigation of nature except insofar as I presuppose that a highest intelligence has arranged everything in accordance with the wisest ends … even in this theoretical relation it can be said that I firmly believe in God. (A826/B854)Footnote 27

Though moral belief is a familiar notion to Kantians and it appears throughout the Corpus, we find in the Critique of Pure Reason also a doctrinal belief in God's existence. This mode of belief is first alluded to in the Preface to the Second Edition. Shortly after Kant's famous statement that he wants to find the limits to knowledge [Wissen] in order to make room for Faith [Glaube] (Bxxx), he discusses physico-theology and writes ‘the splendid order, beauty, and providence shown forth everywhere in nature lead[s] to the faith [Glauben] in a wise and great author of the world’ (Bxxxiii).

Unlike knowledge, which depends upon epistemic warrants, belief is grounded in ‘the direction that an idea gives me and the subjective influence on the advancement of my actions of reason [Vernunfthandlungen]’ (A827/B855). In the case of morality, we have the practical postulates of freedom, immortality and God. Each are objects of belief, according to Kant, and our assent is legitimated by the needs of pure practical reason. There is no theoretical proof, but in order to sustain our commitment to morality, we are practically committed to them.

The need underlying doctrinal belief is, however, theoretical; and as such, doctrinal belief is described as ‘an analogue of practical judgment, where taking them to be true is aptly described by the word belief’ (A825/B853). We do not here have a theoretical proof which yields knowledge of God's existence. Such a proof was rejected back in the Ideal of Pure Reason. Nevertheless, we do still have a demonstration of some sort, offered in the Appendix, and grounded in ‘the direction that an idea gives me and the subjective influence on the advancement of my actions of reason’ (A827/B855). Without regulative principles we could not have ‘a cognizable order at the empirical level’ and we postulate the Wise Author for without this postulate we would not be justified in our conception of nature as a systematic unity. Thus Kant claims, towards the end of the Appendix, that we not only may, but must assume the existence of the Wise Author (A697/B725).

Though ‘assume’ [annehmen] is vague, I think we may read the introduction of doctrinal belief as a more precise way of expressing what was there intended. Assigning a mode of belief to our cognition of the Wise Author carries with it some significant features. Such commitments are, like knowledge as well, instances of conviction [Überzeugung] – a term whose meaning we can most readily grasp by first defining Kant's opposing term of ‘persuasion’ [Überredung]. Persuasion, Kant writes, ‘has only private validity’ and ‘has its ground only in the particular constitution of the subject’ (A820/B848).Footnote 28 It may stem from some inclination that favours the proposition, such as in the case of wishful thinking. In such instances, I may feel confident and deceive myself into thinking that this confidence is an artifact of some process of justification.Footnote 29

By contrast, when one's assent merits the name ‘conviction’, it is because the grounds which lead to the assent are ‘valid for all human reason’ (A820/B848). Conviction has, in other words, objective validity in that the grounds upon which I come to assent should lead other rational beings to assent as well. On matters of conviction ‘the judgments of every understanding must agree’ (A820/B848). In the case of knowledge, the agreement should come from epistemic warrants. In the case of belief, the agreement has its basis in the needs of reason.Footnote 30

As the practical postulate of God gains its objective validity through a need of practical reason, so the theoretical postulate likewise gains objective validity through a need stemming from an activity of reason. Assent to the Wise Author is not a theoretical proof of the sort repudiated in the Ideal of Pure Reason. It is not made inductively thorough appeal to the apparent order of nature. Also, it is not a proof that yields transcendental knowledge. However much it has been bypassed, attention instead directed to moral belief, we can see from Preface to Canon that Kant endorses another mode of assent to the Wise Author's existence, one which is rooted in our application of regulative principles to nature.

God in the Critique of Judgment

The term ‘doctrinal belief’ does not appear in the Third Critique, despite Kant's frequent references to the Wise Author. In fact, the term appears nowhere in the Kantian Corpus other than in the Critique of Pure Reason's Canon. Part of what motivated this paper was to gain an understanding of what led Kant to posit the doctrinal belief in God in the Canon and why this propositional attitude – by this or any other name – is not reaffirmed in subsequent texts.Footnote 31 Its absence in the Third Critique is not, I believe, trivial and can help us recognize an important shift which occurred from the First to the Third Critique. Though the Wise Author is still important to the latter text, His role does change – and that change corresponds to a change in Kant's approach to the deduction of regulative principles.

Section five of the published Introduction to the Critique of Judgment contains its deduction of regulative principles and Kant leads into it by first stating that purposiveness is, in fact, a transcendental principle.Footnote 32 Kant then continues with an argument to the effect that the ‘thoroughgoing interconnection of empirical cognitions’ cannot be explained by way of the pure concepts of the understanding (5:183). Though they are responsible for the formal conditions ‘under which objects can be cognized together in a single spatio-temporal framework’,Footnote 33 they underdetermine how particulars are to be organized. Thus, as has been discussed earlier in this paper, further principles are required to bring about the ‘cognizable order at the empirical level’.

In the First Critique's deduction of regulative principles, Kant repeatedly states that we must import from ‘the idea of a supremely wise cause the rule [viz. maximality] according to which reason in connecting empirical causes and effects in the world may be employed to best advantage’ (A673/B701).Footnote 34 But in the Third Critique, with the introduction of reflective judgement, we do not need to look outside the faculty of judgement for a further ‘rule’ or schema to direct the application of regulative principles.

The faculty of judgement has its regulative principles or ‘maxims’ (homogeneity, specification, affinity, purposiveness). These maxims are the rules of operation for the faculty and the faculty reflects its own prescriptive principles onto nature, seeking out relations between particulars and constructing the general concepts through which we systematize the natural world.Footnote 35 Thus the process that was in the First Critique assigned to the faculty of reason, now is attributed to reflective judgment, which in the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, is described: ‘To reflect (to consider), however, is to compare and to hold together given representations either with others or with one's faculty of cognition’ (20:211). In a sense, both are taking place: judgment, guided by its maxims, compares particular representations with one another, looking for the features expressed by those maxims, and when found, connects these representations by employing (or generating) appropriate general concepts (see also 5:179 and 5:404–410).

I do not intend to explore the deduction much beyond this brief framework.Footnote 36 My concern, rather, is why there is no mention of the Wise Author in it. Kant no longer calls upon the Wise Author to provide the schema of the ‘maximum of the division and unification of the understanding's cognition in one principle’ (A665/B693). Though towards the end of the Appendix, Kant states that systematic unity is ‘inseparably bound up with the very nature of our reason … [and] is on that account legislative for us’ (A695/B723), he seems to not have quite grasped the force of this point at the time.

But by clarifying the normativity of regulative principles, and with reflective judgment, there is no need to add the further rule of maximality. It is used in the First Critique because Kant does not there see how to apply the maxims of reason to nature without some intermediary principle. But in the Third Critique, the question of how we can represent particulars as part of a system is more straightforward: judgment is guided by its own maxims and as it reflects on particulars, it organizing them through these maxims. Maximality, I take it, is simply implied by these maxims. One need not say in addition to ‘one ought to organize nature into a system’ that ‘one maximally ought to organize nature into a system’ or ‘one ought to organize nature into a maximal system’. In both cases, maximality is redundant. In the later case, it is implied by ‘system’. In the former case, the ought, we may say, is categorical and so, again, nothing is added by its inclusion.

There is, nevertheless, still a role to be played by the Wise Author. It is not within the deduction itself. Rather, it has a merely heuristic role. By this I do not mean that regulative principles are merely heuristic (as Guyer et al. have argued). Rather, the concept of the Wise Author is used to help us think about nature's purposiveness. In §73, Kant explores various alternative heuristics: First, a merely mechanical account which he associates with Epicurus; then Spinozism; then hylozism; and then theism, which he states ‘can best rid the purposiveness of nature of idealism and introduce an intensional causality for its generation’ (5:395). The first two fail due to internal flaws which we do not need to discuss here. The third option's failure is somewhat more relevant. In effect, it turns purposiveness into an empirical concept which we are to discover in our observation of the organic. On its own, that does not seem a problem. But it becomes one for Kant because it creates a circle of explanans and explanandum: we use a part of nature to explain nature as a whole; but we must also use the whole of nature to explain its parts.Footnote 37

The benefit of theism is that it, unlike the first two options, legitimates our conception of nature as purposive but places the explanans outside of nature, unlike hylozism. It thus offers us the best way – among the options given – to think about the cause of natural purposiveness. Nevertheless, the concept of a Wise Author is ‘a merely subjectively appropriate concept for the constitution of our cognitive faculty’ (5:437). The appeal we make to this concept ‘cannot justify any objective assertion’ (5:395); ‘we cannot make any objective judgment at all, whether affirmative or negative, about the proposition that there is an intentionally acting being as a world-cause (hence an author) at the basis of which we rightly call natural ends’ (5:400).Footnote 38

The need for a doctrinal belief is no longer present in the Critique of Judgment. The concept of a Wise Author remains, but now in a manner which does not require or even, in relation to teleology, permit assent. In relation to the Highest Good, moral belief is still endorsed and Kant is here explicit that only from morality can we come to belief: ‘the concept of God acquires the distinction of counting as a matter of faith in our affirmation only through its relation to the object of our duty, as the condition of the possibility of attaining the final end of that duty’ (5:470).

Conclusion

As we have seen, there is much more said in the Critique of Pure Reason about the relationship between God and purposiveness than what is found in Kant's analysis of the physico-theological argument. The ‘Wise Author of Nature’ is central to his analysis of regulative principles in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and is at the heart of his deduction of these principles. This leads Kant to claim that we must ‘assume’ the existence of the Wise Author, which I have interpreted as equivalent to the Canon's ‘doctrinal belief’.

Given his characterization of this propositional attitude and Kant's account of the relationship between the Wise Author and regulative principles, I think we can see in the First Critique what may be considered a second physico-theological argument. The first argument provides inductive grounds for the Wise Author, given the ‘manifoldness, order, purposiveness, and beauty’ of the world (A622/B650). The second argument closely parallels the argument for God as a condition necessary for the Highest Good. Though Kant claims that only in the practical argument do we have a fully determinate conception of God, he nevertheless still asserts a belief in a being who at least has sufficient wisdom and power to craft the world with maximal systematic unity. This conception may not be adequate to the ens realissimum, but given Kant's positive depiction of the first step of the physico-theological argument, as well as his further use of the Wise Author in his deduction of regulative principles, it does seem that we can stray from the ens realissimum and still find something of philosophical worth.Footnote 39

Yet, as we have just explored, Kant adjusts his physico-theology in the Critique of Judgment. The Wise Author remains as the best way for us to think about the purposiveness of nature. But there is no claim that we must assent to His existence. Such assent is now exclusive to morality. The Third Critique's deduction does not hang upon the problem of maximality and justifies our application of regulative principles to nature by appeal to the operations of the responsible faculty and the role which that faculty plays in the construction of the ‘cognizable order at the empirical level’. Because the operations of this faculty are not something we can do without, its principles are ‘just as necessarily valid for our human power of judgment as if [they] were objective principle[s]’ (5:404).Footnote 40

References

Notes

1. Citations to Kant will be to the Akademie Ausgabe by volume and page, except for the Critique of Pure Reason where citations will use the standard A/B edition pagination. English quotations will be, unless otherwise indicated, from the Cambridge edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (gen. eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992–).

2. Some readers might be surprised by the claim that there is a deduction of regulative principles in the First Critique. As I will discuss later in the paper, the secondary literature is split on the issue.

3. There are no articles (that I am aware of) which focus on it. But it has been discussed in a number of books on Kant's philosophy of religion, including Allen Wood's Kant's Rational Theology (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1978); and Peter Byrne's Kant on God (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). Kraft's, Michael ‘Thinking the physico-teleological proof’, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 12 (1981), 65–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, despite its title, primarily concerns the relationship between God and purposiveness in the Critique of Judgment. Though Kraft's article deals with some issues similar to those treated in this paper, much of it cannot be sustained in light of more careful recent scholarship. For instance, central to his interpretation is his claim that systematic unity is actually a constitutive principle and thus we have knowledge (Wissen) vs belief (Glaube) of God's existence (see 70–73).

4. As I will briefly address later in the paper, Kant returns to this premise in the Critique of Judgment's discussion of hylozoism (see 5:394–5).

5. Wood downplays Kant's comments about the first stage and suggests that they are just concessions ‘for the sake of argument’; Wood Kant's Rational Theology, 130. However, Kant's positive comments seem too strong and too abundant. Thus I think, and Byrne does as well, that they have more significance; see Byrne Kant on God, 37–39.

6. For further examination of the issue of determinacy, see Wood Kant's Rational Theology and Byrne Kant on God.

7. This topic is discussed in the Lectures on Philosophical Theology, 28:1014. See Leibniz, Philosophische Schriften, 7:311; Wolff Gesammelte Werke, II, 3,187–189, and Baumgarten Metaphysica, §151. In Kant's Real Progress essay, he appears to claim that the concept of God (outside of its role in morality) is empty (see 20:304). Note that this discussion is limited to the conceptual resources relevant specifically to the ontological and cosmological arguments (see 20:303). Kant's point here is that since existence is not a predicate, ‘we can frame no concept of a being whose existence is absolutely necessary’ (20:304).

8. At A625/B653, Kant recognizes that the physico-theological argument does not establish just one Author: ‘there exists a sublime and wise cause (or several)’. The case for monotheism, according to Kant, can only be satisfied through the moral argument. See A814/B842ff.

9. See Paul Guyer Kant and the Claims of Taste, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 37–38; Rolf Horstmann ‘Why must there be a transcendental deduction in Kant's Critique of Judgment?’, in Eckhart Förster (ed.) Kant's Transcendental Deductions (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), 157–176; Rudolf Makkreel ‘Reflection, reflective judgment, and aesthetic exemplary’, in Rebecca Kukla (ed.) Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant's Critical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 223–244. See also Tuschling, Burkhard‘The system of transcendental idealism: questions raised and left open in the Kritik der Urteilskraft’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 30 (1992), 109–127CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kinnaman, Ted‘The task of the Critique of Judgment: why Kant needs a deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 75 (2001), 243–269CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note that Guyer appears to have revised his position. See, for example, ‘Kant and the systematicity of nature: two puzzles’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 20 (2003), 277–295.

10. Henry Allison ‘Is the Critique of Judgment “post-critical”?’, in Sally Sedgwick (ed.) The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 78–92; Reinhard Brandt ‘The deduction of the Critique of Judgment: comments on Hampshire and Horstmann’, in Förster Kant's Transcendental Deductions, 177–192; Grier, Michelle‘Kant on the illusion of a systematic unity of knowledge’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 14 (1997), 1–28Google Scholar; Béatrice Longuenesse Kant and the Capacity to Judge, Charles Wolfe (tr.) (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 163–166. Note that Longuenesse's grounds are different from the others here mentioned. She connects the First and Third Critiques by way of the First Critique's ‘amphiboly of concepts of reflection’, finding in this section a reliance upon the powers of reflective judgment.

11. Allison ‘Is the Critique of Judgment “post-critical”?’, 82.

12. Henry Allison Kant's Theory of Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 37. Though he is here discussing the Third Critique, he is again indicating that there must be a supplement to the ‘transcendental laws laid down in the Analytic’ (ibid.). I think this is a helpful way of positioning what is at stake in both the First Critique's Appendix and in the Critique of Teleological Judgment.

13. In the Dohna-Wundlaken logic, Kant claims that animals do not employ concepts (28:702). However, research suggests that many animals, most notably the great apes, do utilize concepts. The issue of animal cognition is explored by Mark Okrent in ‘Acquaintance and cognition’, in Kukla Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant's Critical Philosophy, 85–108.

14. This is the position of Allen Wood in Kant's Rational Theology, 141–142. He does not discuss the status of regulative principles in detail, but appears to see them as merely heuristic and thus he understands Kant to be rejecting the need to ‘posit’ a Wise Author's existence.

15. Later in the paragraph, we find one of the most quoted passages related to this controversy: ‘without it we would have no reason, and without that, no coherent use of the understanding, and lacking that, no sufficient mark of empirical truth; thus in regard to the latter we simply have to presuppose the systematic unity of nature as objectively valid and necessary’ (A651/B679).

16. The Wood/Guyer translation uses ‘sameness of kind’ for Gleichartigkeit. Though a more literal translation, I have modified the translation using instead ‘homogeneity’. This is the term found in the Kemp Smith translation and in much of the secondary literature.

17. See A303/B459–A305/B361 and 9:94–99. See also Allison Kant and the Claims of Taste, 32, and Longuenesse Kant and the Capacity to Judge, 90–95.

18. In the Critique of Judgment, this comes to be referred to as ‘heautonomy’ (20:225, 5:186). For a detailed discussion, see Juliet Floyd ‘Heautonomy: Kant on reflective judgment and systematicity’, in Herman Parret (ed.) Kant's Ästhetik, Kant's Aesthetics, L'esthétique de Kant (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), 192–218.

19. Allison Kant's Theory of Taste, 40. See 4:448.

20. Ibid. See also idem ‘We can act only under the idea of freedom’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 71 (1997), 39–50. Regarding the relationship between concept formation and systematicity, see also the work of Hannah Ginsborg including ‘Thinking the particular as contained under the universal’, in idem Aesthetic Cognition in Kant's Critical Philosophy, 35–60 and idem ‘Lawfulness without a law: Kant on the free play of the imagination and understanding’, Philosophical Topics, 25 (1997), 37–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. In Kant's Theory of Taste, Allison discusses an issue of paramount importance to the systematic character of regulative judgment: ‘that the very possibility of concepts as general representations presupposes a system of concepts’ (34). See also the cited texts by Ginsborg and Floyd.

22. Grier ‘Kant on the illusion of a systematic unity of knowledge’, 16.

23. For discussions of this shift in Kant's understanding of moral motivation, see my introduction to Immanuel Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (London: Routledge, 2002); Frederick Beiser, ‘Moral faith and the Highest Good’, in Paul Guyer (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 588–629; Insole, Christopher‘The irreducible importance of religious hope in Kant's conception of the Highest Good’, Philosophy, 83 (2008), 333–351CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Henry Allison Kant's Theory of Freedom, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 69–70. Based upon a reconsideration of the Collins notes, I am no longer sure whether there was such a shift. Though Georg Ludwig Collins attended Kant's course on ethics in 1784/5, some believe that these notes were purchased by Collins and are actually from lectures of the mid-1770s. Hence, it may be that even in the mid-1770s Kant distinguished moral action based upon the hope for happiness from a ‘moral motive’. See 27:284–285 and 27:287.

24. Though Kant also refers to the being who facilitates the Highest Good as the ‘Wise Author’ there is an equivocation which ought to be mentioned. Given Kant's objections to the physico-theological argument, the theological concept in use there (and, I presume, in the Appendix) does not include moral attributes. However, when Kant speaks of the Wise Author in relation to the Highest Good, I take it that he is there including moral attributes (as well as omnipotence and omniscience – see A815/B843). These two conceptions of God are compatible and one may be viewed as just a partial conception of the other.

25. Some have claimed, including Paul Guyer, that by the Second Critique, Kant maintains that the Highest Good may be realized in this life and thus abandons the postulate of immortality. For the sake of space, I cannot address this issue adequately here, an issue which spreads into the problematic of the unity of reason. But will say that there is ample textual support for a sustained commitment to the afterlife throughout the Critical Period. In the Second Critique, see 5:122–124; in the Third, see 5:469–474; in Religion, see 6:69, 6:126; in Real Progress, see 20:298–299. What this afterlife is like may be quite different from the contemporary image and may be closer to the doctrine of bodily resurrection common to the Early Church and Judaism. See 6:134–135. There is also some modest evidence that Kant was influenced by the Königsberg Pietist, Franz Albert Schultz, who preached that the afterlife is corporeal. See Manfred Kuehn Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 37–39.

26. Moral Belief pertains to those propositions which are rooted in pure practical reason. These include the Highest Good and the Practical Postulates. They are, according to Kant, held with absolute certainty, though independent of epistemic warrants. They demand our assent as they are ‘needs of reason’ (see A811/B839f and A828/B856f). Pragmatic Belief pertains to those propositions which are concerned with actions in pursuit of contingent ends (see A823/B851f). There are times, Kant claims, where in order to undertake a particular action, we must commit to the truth of a proposition for which we lack epistemic grounds. In the Critique of Pure Reason he offers the example of a physician who lacks adequate grounds to diagnose a patient but still must believe in some particular diagnosis in order to undertake a course of treatment. Elsewhere, he uses the example of a businessman who must believe in the profitability of a deal in order to agree to it (9:68), and a general who must believe in the efficacy of his strategy before ordering his troops to follow it (24:750).

27. Rudolf Makkreel briefly discusses doctrinal belief. Unfortunately, he does not clearly distinguish between it and moral belief – claiming that in the Critique of Pure Reason, doctrinal belief pertains to the Highest Good and its postulates, but in the Critique of Judgment, ‘a mere private holding to be true becomes a reflective mode of judgmental assent that demonstrates what is valid “for us”’; Makkreel, Rudolf ‘Regulative and reflective uses of purposiveness in Kant’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 30 (1992), 59Google Scholar. This confusion is, in part, due to a misunderstanding of Kant's use of Fürwahrhalten (holding-to-be-true). Since the publication of Makkreel's paper, there has been some important work done on this topic, beginning with Stevenson's, Leslie ‘Opinion, belief or faith, and knowledge’, Kantian Review 7 (2003), 72–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Chignell, Andrew‘Belief in Kant’, Philosophical Review, 116 (2007), 323–360CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem ‘Kant's concepts of justification’, NoÛs, 41 (2007), 33–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am generally sympathetic with Stevenson's work but take issue with much of Chignell's treatment of the topic. One such concern is discussed in n. 31 below. For a detailed study of how Kant's understanding of belief changed over time, see my ‘The development and scope of Kantian belief: the Highest Good, the Practical Postulates and the fact of reason’, forthcoming in Kant-Studien. I also explore Kant's other examples of doctrinal belief and their fate in the Critique of Judgment in ‘Kant's doctrinal belief in God’ forthcoming in Rethinking Kant.

28. See also the Vienna Logic, 24:890 and the Jäsche Logic, 9:73.

29. One of my concerns about Makkreel's characterization of propositional attitudes is that he describes conviction as a ‘reflective feeling’. See Makkreel ‘Regulative and reflective uses of purposiveness in Kant’, 59. Conviction [Überzeugung] is a term Kant drew from George Friedrich Meier's Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, the textbook from which Kant lectured on logic from 1756–1796. Though it is the subjective component of our attitudes (i.e. our psychological commitment to a proposition), rather than the objective component (i.e. the justificatory grounds for assent), it is not a feeling per se. Feeling may be attached to it, but conviction refers to the mode of holding-to-be-true which comes by way of grounds that are objectively valid.

30. Kant also states in a variety of texts that conviction comes in two forms, ‘logical’ and ‘moral’. The former pertains to knowledge and the latter to belief (A829/B857). He sometimes uses ‘practical’ instead of ‘moral’. See 6:62ff, 9:72 and 28:1082. Evidence that Kant views Glaube as an instance of conviction is abundant. For example, in the Critique of Judgment he writes that when a proof is ‘based on a practical principle of reason (which is thus universally and necessary valid), then it can make a sufficient claim of conviction from a purely practical point of view, i.e., moral conviction.’ (5:463). See also: 6:103, 8:142, Ref 2450, 2454, 2489, 9:72, 24:148–149, etc.

31. Though Kant nowhere uses doctrinale Glaube other than in the Canon, it is possible that the same concept is elsewhere called theoretische Glaube. This is the position of Andrew Chignell in ‘Belief in Kant’. The most significant use of theoretische Glaube is in Kant's 1796 essay, ‘On a recently prominent tone of superiority in philosophy’. If the two terms are indeed synonymous, then we have a clear repudiation of this category of belief in Kant's later writings: ‘there is no theoretical belief in the supersensible’ (8:396n); ‘even the word “belief” does not occur at all in the theoretical sense’ (ibid.).

32. In preparation for his deduction of this principle, he refers to ‘the maxims of the power of judgment’ which he says are ‘laid down a priori as the basis for research into nature’, and then cites such principles as parsimony, the continuum of formal divisions, and the distribution of those divisions within a system of higher levels of generality (5:182). The second principle corresponds to what Kant calls affinity in the Appendix and the third principle captures both homogeneity and specification.

33. Allison Kant's Theory of Taste, 37.

34. Here I have followed the Kemp Smith translation of ‘von der Idee einer höchstweisen Ursache die Regel hernehmen, nach welcher die Vernunft bei der Verknüpfung der Ursachen und Wirkungen in der Welt zu ihrer eigenen Befriedigung am besten zu brauchen sei.’ The Wood/Guyer translation reads: ‘it is from the idea of a most wise cause that we take the rule that reason is best off using for its own satisfaction when it connects up causes and effects in the world’. I find the Wood/Guyer translation of this passage syntactically awkward if not ambiguous.

35. This issue is, I believe, crucial for the deduction. However, it is hardly more than hinted at in terms of the subordination of genera and species. For a more direct discussion of the topic, see §76 and §77.

36. I am generally sympathetic with the position that human experience depends upon a ‘cognizable order at the empirical level’ and that the deduction's goal is to establish the necessity of regulative principles for the construction of this order. In other words, for discursive intellects such as ours, we rely upon these principles to organize particulars, construct appropriate general concepts, and organize these concepts into a systematic unity. As I see it, my discussion of ‘maximality’ offers a modest supplement to the work already done by Allison et al. It identifies, I believe, one of the primary changes to Kant's strategy from the First to the Third Critique's deduction of regulative principles and indicates why the Wise Author is dropped in the latter.

37. As noted earlier in the paper, this objection parallels premise (2) in the Critique of Pure Reason's formulation of the physico-theological argument. We can also find similar concerns raised in Kant's Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion; see 28:1063–1064.

38. In Kant on God, Peter Byrne discusses the heuristic role of God in the Third Critique, emphasizing the conceptual minimalism used by Kant. With regards to teleology, there is hardly more we may legitimately employ than a ‘bare reference to the unknown source of order’; Byrne Kant on God, 65. What we do say about God is ‘for a heuristic purpose and its substantive content is determined by that heuristic purpose’ (ibid.). As quoted above, the concept of a Wise Author is ‘a merely subjectively appropriate concept for the constitution of our cognitive faculty’ (5:437). I further emphasize that this minimalism extends to the existential question as well. As expressed in the passages I cite above (5:395 and 5:400), our use of the concept of a Wise Author of Nature to envision the source of purposiveness does not carry a commitment to the Author's existence.

39. We may relieve the tension here by contrasting between the theoretical role of the Wise Author, a role to which it is presumably adequate, and a different role (or roles) played by the ens realissimum. The reason why theology is thought to require the latter is because of what it is supposed to offer beyond explaining the order of nature. As discussed earlier, the concept of God is further used to explain the origin of the universe, to address questions about the status of morality, to support the legitimacy of our hope for the Highest Good, and as an object worthy of worship. If distinct from the ens realissimum, the Wise Author may not be due worship and so many not be suitable to religious practice. However, either it can still be considered on its own as at least suited to how we must think about the order of nature and/or as a relevant but incomplete way of thinking about God. As I discuss in n. 24 above, one theological conception can be understood as a partial conception of the other. Moreover, even if the ens realissimum is the idea of a being who is completely determined, let us not presume we fully grasp this idea. Regarding our construction of the ‘very deficient’ theologica ectypa, see 28:995–998 and 28:1016–1026.

40. This sentence was written in the singular, referring specifically to purposiveness. Please excuse my adaptation of it in order to have it fit regulative principles in the plural. This paper evolved out of some ideas which arose from my presentation of ‘Kant's doctrinal belief in God’ to the 2010 meeting of the Eastern Study Group of the North American Kant Society. I am grateful to the organizers and participants at this meeting, especially Pablo Muchnik. I would also like to thank Peter Byrne for his comments on this paper.