Kant's "other nature"

Angelica Nuzzo

pp. 69-95

in: Gérard Kuperus, Marjolein Oele (eds), Ontologies of nature, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

"Kant's "Other Nature'" explores the "alternative" view of nature and cosmology that emerges in Kant's Critique of Judgment to supplement the mechanistic or scientific view of the Critique of Pure Reason. The essay argues for a different intellectual approach to nature, namely, one based not on mechanistic causality but on the concept of "purposiveness." This approach accounts for a nature and cosmos understood in terms of beauty and sublimity, individuality, and self-organizing beings. We find, then, an interaction between mind and nature as an aesthetic unity, as well as the idea of an aesthetic cosmos that provides the very possibility for the transcendental project. The essay extends this reading of Kant to Toulmin's ideas of a "new cosmology," offering a critical Kantian response to the current compartmentalization and specialization of the natural sciences. By way of conclusion, the essay argues that Kant's transcendental perspective does allow for a concept of nature that has a value of its own, independently of human mental faculties. It is, then, within this broader nature that we can define ourselves.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel