Kant and the Interpretation of Nature and History

Abstract

My purpose is to examine kant's views on interpreting nature and history and to attempt to see them as coherent by relating them to his theory of reflective judgment. with this reconstruction of a kantian conception of interpretation it is possible to shed new light on kant's approach to political history. i propose that reflective judgments as defined in the "critique of judgment" be conceived primarily as interpretive and only derivatively as either aesthetic or teleological. this approach to reflective judgments creates a spectrum of them ranging from the noncognitive to the cognitive and from the aesthetic to the practical.