Journal of the History of Philosophy

No one doubts that Kant is a systematic thinker. He hopes to achieve what he calls unity of the faculty of reason, which has various meanings: reason unifies appearances into a coherent natural system; theoretical and practical reason are the same reason, applied differently; the unity of nature and freedom is demonstrated in the three Critiques; all knowledge is related to the ends of human reason, especially the highest good; among other things. In The Teleology of Reason, Courtney Fugate claims that Kant achieves systematicity in his philosophy through teleology, and specifically his appeal to the aims of theoretical and practical reason (knowledge and moral perfection, respectively). [End Page 788]

Fugate begins part 1 of the book by explaining what Kant means by teleology and setting his view in its historical context. In his pre-critical period, and in keeping with the Leibnizian-Wolffian tradition, Kant justifies his teleological commitments with reference to the nature of God. According to Fugate, the critical philosophy does not turn away from teleology, but it does ground our theoretical and practical purposes in the nature of reason rather than God (even though God still plays a crucial role). Fugate’s basic claim is that, according to Kant, reason must presuppose as a transcendental condition that the perceptions that are given to us in theoretical cognition conform to things in themselves, and that we are able to achieve the highest good through our moral striving. Our commitment to both of these aims depends on “the postulation of a jointly theoretical and moral God” (14).

Fugate covers the teleology of human knowledge in part 2. According to Fugate, Kant develops a transcendental teleology, claiming that we must, as a condition for the possibility of experience—and indeed a condition for any use of reason or even for self-consciousness— presuppose that there is a convergence between our judgments according to concepts and the objects underlying our perceptions. The purpose of the cognitive faculty is knowledge, and the purpose of any cognitive judgment is a kind of correspondence with the object itself. We can of course never apprehend whether there is in fact an absolute correspondence between knowledge and reality, and in that sense the ideal of a divine intellect exposes our epistemic limitations. Nevertheless, as a condition for the possibility of knowledge, we must presuppose that any possible presentation to consciousness accords with our basic forms of conceptual unity.

In part 3, Fugate addresses teleology in Kant’s moral theory and seeks to show how practical and theoretical reason are unified by means of transcendental theology. As with theoretical reason, the aim of practical reason serves both to empower and limit us. It limits our pursuit of self-love, which Fugate traces to cognitions based in theoretical reason; thus practical reason limits theoretical reason. But from the first-person practical perspective we also define ourselves as autonomous beings who give ourselves ends to pursue and who are striving for moral perfection. Fugate then claims that we must postulate God’s existence in order to have a virtuous disposition, since only God can guarantee that we are able to achieve our moral aims, including the highest good. Thus theoretical reason is subordinated to practical reason, and the moral incentive is increased by belief in God—that is, Kant asserts both the primacy of the practical and the dependence of practical reason on transcendental theology.

The Teleology of Reason is thoroughly researched, and Fugate’s interpretation illuminates much of Kant’s work, including many references to teleology that seem out of place on other readings. His argument does depend on several controversial premises, however. First, his interpretation of Kant’s ethics as fundamentally teleological, where we...