Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Organism and Causality

In #65 of the Critique of Judgment, referring to Efficient Causality and Teleological Causality, Kant asserts that "there cannot be more than these two kinds of causality", which implicitly challenges Aristotle's thesis that there are four kinds.  On the other hand, the free purposeless causality of the principle of Pure Practical Reason seems reducible to neither category.  Furthermore, later in #65, he characterizes an Organism as being constituted by a "formative force".  So, his insistence on adhering to those two causalities preempts any consideration of a potentially third Aristotelian possibility--Formal Causality--which, if incorporated into his system, could help demonstrate that Rational conduct is one of the processes of an Organism.

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