1790: The End of Truth in the Interpretation of Complex Contexts

The paper argues that the standard pro- and anti-Kantian reception of the Critique of Judgment has largely misconstrued the relationship between Part I and Part II of the book by failing to recognize that the former is primarily providing a series of stepping-stones laying the groundwork for the elaboration of reflective-teleological reasoning in Part II. Instead of its dominant reading as foremost relevant to the study of biological nature, the paper distils from the reflective-teleological judgment a universal principle by which we typically interpret any complex set of particulars. As such, the reflective-teleological judgment of 1790 is shown to have done away with interpretive truth, replaced by Kant with the more modest claim of intelligibility.