Abstract

JAUREGUI, Claudia. Ascending and Descending Causality: Kant and the Peculiar Unity of the Natural Ends. Prax. filos. [online]. 2019, n.49, pp.87-106. ISSN 0120-4688.  https://doi.org/10.25100/pfilosofica.v0i49.7948.

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant calls attention to some natural products -the organized beings- which present a kind of causality that is completely unknown to us. Organisms are the causes and effects of themselves. They are not only organized beings, but also self-organizing beings. These peculiarities cannot be explained by mechanical causality. Whereas efficient causes have the temporal form of a descending series, the causal nexus in organisms have the temporal form of a series that is descending as well as ascending.

In this paper, I intend to elucidate to what extent the consideration of organisms as natural ends allows to translate the temporal form of their causal nexus to a temporal form consistent with the principle of the second analogy of experience.

Keywords : Causality; Mechanism; Teleology; Natural Ends; Temporality.

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