The Gulf and Transition between Nature and Freedom—— A Reexamination of the Fundamental Issue in the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment

This paper focuses on the following question:what problem concerning the relationship between the legislation of nature and the legislation of freedom was left unanswered by the first two Critiques and needed to be addressed by Kant in the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment? The research literature often holds that the problem left unanswered by the first two Critiques is a moral problem,and that it is the moral interest that compels Kant to discuss the gulf and transition between nature and freedom in the Introduction.This paper will offer a rather “heterodox” answer.The first two Critiques did not leave such a problem unanswered.The problem of the gulf and transition in the Introduction to the third Critique concerns whether the purpose prescribed by the moral law can be realized in nature,and this problem has already been addressed in the second Critique under the guise of “the possibility of the highest good” and there solved through the postulate of God.The realizability of the final purpose in nature is raised again in the Introduction not as a substantial question awaiting a response,rather,it is there to provide a perspective from which the judgment and its principle (the purposiveness of nature) can reveal their relevance and thus connect the law of freedom with the law of nature.This paper will refute the dominant moralizing interpretation and argue that only by starting from Kant's concern for systematicity can we understand the basic problem in the Introduction to the third Critique.