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Contributions to Hermeneutics 11 Horst Ruthrof The Roots of Hermeneutics in Kant's Reflective-Teleological Judgment Contributions to Hermeneutics Volume 11 Series Editors Jeffery Malpas, University of Tasmania Tasmania, Australia Claude Romano, Université Paris-Sorbonne paris, France Editorial Board Jean Grondin, Université de Montréal Montreal, QC, Canada Robert Dostal, Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr, PA, USA Andrew Bowie, Royal Holloway University of London London, UK Francoise Dastur, Nice, France Kevin Hart, University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA, USA David Tracy, University of Chicago Chicago, USA Jean-Claude Gens, Departement de Philosophie Universite de Bourgogne Dijon, France Richard Kearney, Philosophy Department Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Gianni Vattimo, University of Turin Turin, Italy Carmine Di Martino, University of Milan MILANO, Milano, Italy Luis António Umbelino, University of Coimbra Coimbra, Portugal Kwok-Ying Lau, Chinese University Hong Kong Shatin, Hong Kong Marc-Antoine Vallée, Fonds Ricoeur Paris, France Goncalo Marcelo, University of Lisbon Lisboa, Portugal Csaba Olay, Institute of Philosophy Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Hungary Patricio Mena-Malet, Alberto Hurtado University Santiago, Chile Andrea Bellantone, Catholic Institute of Toulouse Toulouse, France Hans-Helmuth Gander, University of Freiburg Freiburg, Germany Gaetano Chiurazzi, Department of Philosophy and Educational University of Turin TORINO, Torino, Italy Anibal Fornari, Continental Philosophy Review Catholic University of Santa Fe Santa Fe, Argentina Hermeneutics is one of the main traditions within recent and contemporary European philosophy, and yet, as a distinctive mode of philosophising, it has often received much less attention than other similar traditions such as phenomenology, deconstruction or even critical theory. This series aims to rectify this relative neglect and to reaffirm the character of hermeneutics as a cohesive, distinctive, and rigorous stream within contemporary philosophy. The series will encourage works that focus on the history of hermeneutics prior to the twentieth century, that take up figures from the classical twentieth-century hermeneutic canon (including Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, but also such as Strauss, Pareyson, Taylor and Rorty), that engage with key hermeneutic questions and themes (especially those relating to language, history, aesthetics, and truth), that explore the cross-cultural relevance and spread of hermeneutic concerns, and that also address hermeneutics in its interconnection with, and involvement in, other disciplines from architecture to theology. A key task of the series will be to bring into English the work of hermeneutic scholars working outside of the English-speaking world, while also demonstrating the relevance of hermeneutics to key contemporary debates. Since hermeneutics can itself be seen to stand between, and often to overlap with, many different contemporary philosophical traditions, the series will also aim at stimulating and supporting philosophical dialogue through hermeneutical engagement. Contributions to Hermeneutics aims to draw together the diverse field of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics through a series of volumes that will give an increased focus to hermeneutics as a discipline while also reflecting the interdisciplinary and truly international scope of hermeneutic inquiry. The series will encourage works that focus on both contemporary hermeneutics as well as its history, on specific hermeneutic themes and areas of inquiry (including theological and religious hermeneutics), and on hermeneutic dialogue across cultures and disciplines. All books to be published in this Series will be fully peer-reviewed before final acceptance. Horst Ruthrof The Roots of Hermeneutics in Kant's Reflective- Teleological Judgment Horst Ruthrof English and Philosophy Murdoch University Perth, WA, Australia ISSN 2509-6087 ISSN 2509-6095 (electronic) Contributions to Hermeneutics ISBN 978-3-031-18636-3 ISBN 978-3-031-18637-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18637-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Yingchi, my wife Preface … might we not be able to take a step, we are prompted to think, beyond and above nature … (… wohl gar über die Natur hinauslangen …) (CJ §72) The book proposes the thesis that modern hermeneutics from Friedrich Ast and Friedrich Schleiermacher to their postmodern successors has failed to acknowledge Kant’s heuristic and indeterminate reflective-teleological judgment as one of the mainsprings of interpretation theory, even though it has stared them in the face since 1790. The book also suggests that reflective-teleological reasoning can be regarded as the culmination of Kant’s entire critical enterprise in that it deals with the cognitive interpretation of complex and opaque contexts well beyond the relative simplic- ity of formal, pure, empirical, practical, and merely aesthetic judgments. One of Kant’s core convictions in the Critique of Judgment is neatly compressed in the following sentence. “The concept of a causality through ends, that is ends of art, has certainly objective reality, just as that of causality according to the mechanism of nature has.” (Der Begriff einer Kausalität durch Zwecke (der Kunst) hat allerdings objektive Realität, der einer Kausalität der Natur ebensowohl. CJ §74). Throughout Part II of the third Critique, art is shown to function as the basis for the central anal- ogy which Kant consistently draws with the interpretation of nature, understood comprehensively as “the sum of phenomena.” Yet the focus on nature does not elim- inate the former. Art remains the platform on which Kant explores the applicability of reflective-teleological reasoning to all complex contexts. For it is in cognitive responses to works of art that our interpretive potential is most obviously challenged beyond merely aesthetic reactions of likes or dislikes, as discussed in Part I of the Critique. One of the book’s central concerns is the liberation of Kant’s method of reflective- teleological reasoning from its exemplifications via biological organisms. As Kant makes abundantly clear, the reflective-teleological judgment is designed to address nature in all its aspects as the sum of empirical phenomena, which includes human culture as its highest development (CJ §83). A major reason for the neglect in hermeneutics of this last and most important of critical concepts in the three ix x Preface Critiques has been the traditional, reductive reading of Part II of the Critique of Judgment as if it were offering no more than Kant’s contribution to the biological sciences. Yet Kant can hardly be held responsible for any bias in the reception history of his writings. Alone the ubiquity of his definitional phrases in the third Critique referring to what he meant by “nature” should have sufficed to make clear that the “Critique of Teleological Judgment” applies to more than a narrow conception of the non-human world. So, if we strip Kant’s descriptions of reflective- teleological judgments of its immediate applications throughout the Critique, the present study suggests, we arrive at a generalized proto-hermeneutics of interpretive principles that are still valid today. What emerges as central to reflective-t eleological reasoning as an interpretive tool is that it is a “supplementary thinking” (Hinzudenken; CJ §75) that renders puzzling aggregates of phenomenal particulars intelligible. Perhaps the most significant innovation that Kant has made here is that he has replaced the traditional truth-claims associated with judgments by placing the emphasis of reflective-teleological judgment on the principle of understanding. As such, Kant’s last critical concept of his Critiques produces open-ended, indetermin- istic, and always revisable, interpretive projections rather than deductive or even inductive certitude. Another methodological commitment of the book concerns the use of the term “metaphysics.” In light of the conceptual chaos in the philosophical literature as to its definition, I propose a minimalist conception as “any philosophical, speculative, systemic, all-encompassing, and meaning-endowing discourse about empirical, phenomenal reality,” which roughly paraphrases Kant’s final word on the matter. In the Opus Postumum, metaphysics is to “present the schematism of the concepts of reflection in a system” and “to organize empirical presentations of sense according to an a priori principle” (p. 139). This will permit the capture of philosophical hermeneutics from Ast and Schleiermacher to Heidegger and beyond to postmodern interpretation theory, as well as the neo-realism of Meillassoux and his followers, briefly addressed in the Conclusion, under the umbrella of “metaphysics.” In pursuing the central aim of the book in establishing reflective- teleological judgment as Kant’s most sophisticated critical concept, I deliberately deviate from most standard accounts. Instead, the gap the book is meant to fill is to rectify the failure in the bulk of the literature on Kant’s Critiques to identify his reflective-teleological judgment as a revolutionary moment in the theorization of interpretation, when Kant relinquishes truth-claims in favor of the more modest assertion of merely rendering complex contexts of particulars intelligible. To be sure, some recent writings on Kant acknowledge the “high heuristic potential” of the transcendental reflection in its functions of concept formation, differen- tiating among elements of consciousness, and logical relations (Balanowski 2018, pp. 2–6); its broader scope beyond “the land of truth” (Truwant 2015, pp. 169, cf. 2018); and its use for separating philosophy from the sciences (de Boer 2010). Henry Allison has drawn our attention to the potential of Kant’s concept of teleology as foundational for his philosophy of history (2012; cf. 1991, 2000), while Kenneth Westphal has addressed reflection in its epistemic, interpretive character in opposition to relativism (2003, 2004). Other major Kant scholars have dealt with Kant’s announcement of reflection in the first Critique (Longuenesse 1998; 2003), Preface xi the systematicity of reflection and Kant’s use of teleology in his ethics and morality (Floyd 1988; Guyer 2005; cf. 1990; Ward 1971), and teleology as interpretive projection (Patrone et al. 2014; Brandt 2007; Guyer 2014; Kitcher 1986). Ginsborg’s contribution to the Blackwell Companion to Kant “Kant’s Biological Teleology and Its Philosophical Significance” speaks of Kant’s “higher-order scientific theorizing” and the “intentional character of mind” as characteristics of the Critique of Judgment. An early commentary on a central feature of Kant’s reflective-teleological reasoning was the identification of indeterminacy (Meerbote 1984; Henrich 1992), a motif recently resumed in terms of the “open question” in the third Critique (Lindemann 2015). Then there is the emphasis on organic unity and the unity of the third Critique (Aquila 1991; Zammito 1992, 2006), the identification of reflective-teleological judgment as “interpretive projection” (Gibbons 1994), as applicable to art and other complexities as “critical teleology” (Höffe 1994, p. 226), as well as the interpretive, regulative, and “agnostic” characterization of Kant’s dual-level concept of teleology (Quarfood 2006). Arguably the most persuasive arguments in favor of the influence of Kant’s third Critique on interpretation theory is Rudolf Makkreel’s Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutic Import of the Critique of Judgment (1990). But although Makkreel directs the reader also to the relevance of reflective- teleological reasoning for hermeneutics, he does not seriously pursue this goal. Other examples engaging with Kant’s reflective reasoning are the writings on law and reflective equilibrium by John Rawls (1971) and Ronald Dworkin (1986), as well as the commentary on the latter by Alexandre Lefebvre in The Image of Law: Deleuze, Bergson, Spinoza (2008) and in his paper “Critique of Teleology in Kant and Dworkin: The Law without Organs” (2007). However, in spite of these contributions to highlighting the interpretive potential of Kant’s reflective-teleological judgment, the bulk of the relevant literature has focused on the technical discussion of reflection (Merritt 2018), the antimony of the teleological method (Allison 1991; Zanetti 1993; Geiger 2009; Watkins 2009; Quarfood 2014), and the biological, scientific aspects of Part II of the Critique of Judgment (Butts 1990; Zammito 2006; Cohen 2007; Zuckert 2007; Breitenbach 2009, 2014; Ginsborg 2005, 2014). A recent publication dedicated to The Act and Object of Judgment (Ball and Schuringa 2019) all but forgets to address the topic of judgment in Kant’s Critique of Judgment. So, even if we were to collect all relevant remarks in the literature on the interpretive strength of Kant’s last major critical concept, the reflective-teleological judgment, the results would be disappointing. A more radical approach is proposed in this book, one that gathers the majority of Kant’s observations with a hermeneutic potential. The method to be employed for such reflective gathering is to take Kant’s definition of “nature” seriously as “the sum of phenomena,” instead of privileging biological entities. This is being done on the assumption that this definition, as well as a range of similarly general remarks, permit us to strip Kant’s interpretive statements of its exemplifications and, as a result, arrive at the teleological projection of a set of general proto-hermeneutic principles. In a certain way, then, the anticipated target of the book is used as its method.