Finding Aristotle: An Unspoken Debt in Kant's Teleology

[Winner of the 2024 Review of Metaphysics dissertation essay contest.] In the Critique of the Power of Judgment—Kant’s seminal work on teleology—Kant never once mentions the philosopher who is widely credited with inventing teleology, namely, Aristotle. To make matters worse, when Kant does survey and critique available views on natural teleology throughout the history of philosophy, he seems to completely overlook Aristotle’s teleology. While this may lead us to surmise that Kant was either indifferent towards or ignorant of Aristotle’s teleology, the author argues that it is possible to read Kant as advancing a version of Aristotle’s natural teleology—a version, of course, that respects the limits drawn by Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Moreover, our investigation into Kant’s Aristotelianism reveals a new way of explaining the organism without rendering it a convenient fiction or dogmatically asserting its reality. In the end, our exercise of situating Aristotle in Kant’s account of natural teleology reveals that omission is sometimes a high form of intellectual flattery.