Disputatio XXXVIII: De Iudicio Teleologico et Fine Naturae

On the Teleological Judgment and the End of Nature

Quaeritur

Utrum iudicium teleologicum, quo mens naturam tamquam ad fines suos ordinatam interpretatur, sit mera reflectio regulativa humanæ rationis, an potius signum objectivum intelligibilis ordinis in ipsa natura, ita ut in eo praenuntiata sit ratio divina, quæ creaturam ad suam perfectionem dirigit.

Whether the teleological judgment, by which the mind interprets nature as ordered toward ends, is merely a regulative reflection of human reason, or rather an objective sign of an intelligible order within nature itself, such that in it is prefigured the divine reason which directs creation toward its perfection.

Thesis

The teleological judgment (teleologisches Urteil) in Kant’s Critique of Judgment expresses reason’s demand to view organized beings and the totality of nature “as if” they were purposively ordered. Though for Kant this demand is regulative, not constitutive, it nonetheless reveals a deep structure of intelligibility in which efficient and final causality converge. Theology may recognize in this reflective unity the vestige of divine wisdom—the Logos—wherein all things receive both their form and their end. The purposiveness discerned by reason is thus the temporal shadow of eternal intentionality.

Locus classicus

Kritik der Urteilskraft, §65 (AA V: 370–371):

“Ein organisirtes Product der Natur ist das, in welchem alles sowohl Zweck als Mittel ist. … Ein solches Product der Natur, wenn es einmal als Naturzweck betrachtet wird, giebt uns zuerst eine Idee von der Natur als einem System nach der Regel der Zwecke.”

“An organized product of nature is one in which everything is at once end and means. … Such a product of nature, once considered as a natural end, gives us for the first time an idea of nature as a system according to the rule of purposes.”

and §67 (AA V: 377):

“Die teleologische Beurtheilung der Natur nach der Analogie mit der Causalität durch Zwecke ist also nur ein Princip der reflectirenden Urtheilskraft, zum Behuf der Vernunft, die Erfahrung nach einem allgemeinen Gesetze zu systematisiren.”

“The teleological judging of nature by analogy with the causality through ends is therefore only a principle of the reflecting power of judgment, for the sake of reason, to systematize experience according to a universal law.”

Explicatio

In the Critique of Judgment, the teleological judgment follows the aesthetic as a higher mode of reflective reasoning. Whereas the judgment of taste feels purposiveness without a concept, the teleological judgment thinks purposiveness in the organization of nature. It is the intellect’s recognition that mechanical explanation alone cannot exhaust the phenomena of life.

Kant argues that certain natural entities, e.g., plants, animals, ecosystems, exhibit a reciprocal structure, for each part exists for the sake of the whole, and the whole sustains the parts. Such entities are Naturzwecke (natural ends). Though he forbids positing real teleology within nature, Kant insists that our reason must judge as if teleology were present, for otherwise the coherence of experience collapses. The teleological judgment thus functions as a transcendental condition of intelligibility, an indispensable heuristic by which nature appears as system rather than chaos.

Philosophically, this means that reason is not satisfied with mechanism. It yearns for meaning, for finality beyond blind efficient causes. The mind’s very structure inclines it to interpret nature as purposive, because the intellect itself, by seeking completion in understanding, is teleological. Kant therefore interprets teleological reflection as the expression of reason’s moral vocation within nature: the world must be seen as suitable to the realization of moral ends.

Theologically, this “as if” points beyond itself, for the necessity of viewing nature as purposive implies an ontological depth in which purposiveness is not mere projection but participation. The ordered interrelation of beings, the mutuality of part and whole, mirrors the rational and creative intentionality of the Logos. The teleologisches Urteil is the creaturely echo of divine wisdom organizing the cosmos ad gloriam Dei. In discerning purposes, reason encounters the world as symbolic of its Creator, the vestigium Providentiae.

The teleological judgment therefore bridges the aesthetic delight in beauty and the moral demand of freedom. It reveals that nature’s form is already ordered toward good, that contingency itself is enfolded in intelligible purpose. The unity Kant leaves indeterminate, theology identifies with the Logos, with the living reason by whom all things are made and toward whom they move.

Objectiones

Ob. I. The critical purist reminds us that Kant himself insists that teleology in nature is merely regulativ and cannot be regarded as constitutiv. To ascribe objective purposiveness is to transgress the limits of possible experience and reintroduce dogmatic metaphysics.

Ob. II. The mechanistic naturalist opines that modern science explains biological organization by physical law, evolution, and chance variation. Teleology is an anthropomorphic metaphor, and thus is not a real feature of nature. The world needs no purpose to be intelligible.

Ob. III. Materialist reductionism supposes that ends are illusions arising from human projection. Since nature’s apparent order is the byproduct of efficient causes and selection, any appeal to purpose is explanatory redundancy.

Ob. IV. Dialectical theology argues that finding divine purposiveness in nature blurs the radical discontinuity between revelation and creation. Providence is not readable from the world but declared in Christ alone. Natural teleology threatens the primacy of grace.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant’s restriction is methodological, not ontological. To say that teleology is regulative is to confess that reason cannot demonstrate it, not that it is false. The regulative necessity of purposive thinking implies that intelligibility itself is purposive. Theology interprets this necessity not as proof but as participation, for the finite intellect it attuned to divine wisdom.

Ad II. Mechanism describes how, not why. Laws of physics account for regularity but not for the meaningful order those laws presuppose. The intelligibility of evolution itself depends upon an order of possibility that exceeds mere chance. Teleology need not contradict science. Rather it names the deeper rationality that science presupposes.

Ad III. If ends were mere projections, reason would deceive itself at its very core. Yet the human intellect’s drive to seek ends is inherent, not arbitrary. This drive reflects the structure of being itself as intelligible and goal-directed. The presence of purposiveness in thought signifies a correspondence with real finality in creation.

Ad IV. True, revelation consummates what nature intimates. Yet the Logos through whom all things are created is also the Word made flesh. The teleological order of nature is not a rival to grace but its foundation; it is the praeparatio evangelica of the world. Nature’s purposiveness is the created form of divine intentionality that revelation fulfills in Christ.

Nota

The teleological judgment occupies the middle ground between beauty and morality, between the grace of form and the demand of freedom. In the aesthetic, purposiveness is felt; in the teleological, it is conceived; in the moral, it is willed. Kant thereby restores final causality to philosophical dignity, albeit under the sign of reflection.

For theology, this marks the point where philosophy unknowingly touches creation’s inner logic. The world’s intelligibility is not accidental but the signature of divine intention. Every natural end is a finite parable of the ultimate end, a participation in the divine life. The teleological judgment thus prepares the intellect to recognize creation not as mechanism but as ordo amoris, an ordered love reflecting the eternal reason of the Logos.

Determinatio

1. The teleological judgment expresses reason’s necessity to interpret nature as a system of ends.

2. Though regulative for Kant, this necessity implies real participation of created reason in divine reason.

3. In nature’s teleology there appears the trace of Providence, the Logos himself, wherein efficient and final cause coincide.

4. Teleology is the middle path between aesthetic and moral cognition, preparing the intellect to recognize the unity of nature and freedom in the supersensible foundation.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXIX: De Iudicio Reflectente

If teleological judgment teaches reason to think unity within nature’s manifold purposes, the next step is to inquire into the very power that makes such unification possible. The mind not only discerns purposes but gathers them into an intelligible whole. This reflectierende Urteilskraft—the reflecting power of judgment—mediates between the understanding that legislates laws and the reason that seeks their unity.

Therefore we proceed to Disputationem XXXIX: De Iudicio Reflectente, wherein it shall be asked how the reflecting judgment serves as the image and echo of the divine intellect, gathering the manifold of experience into a unity that anticipates the Logos Himself, in whom all relations of form and finality find their consummation.

Disputatio XXXVII: De Iudicio Aesthetico et Pulchritudine Mundi

On the Aesthetic Judgment and the Beauty of the World

Quaeritur

Utrum iudicium aestheticum, quod Kant describit ut Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck, id est “purposiveness without purpose,” possit intellegi non tantum ut motus subiectivus delectationis, sed etiam ut indicium transcendentalis concordiae inter sensum et intellectum, ita ut in ipso sensibili appareat vestigium formae divinae, quae est principium omnis pulchritudinis creaturae.

Whether the aesthetic judgment, which Kant describes as “purposiveness without purpose,” may be understood not merely as a subjective feeling of pleasure but as an indication of the transcendental harmony between sense and intellect, such that within the sensible there appears a trace of the divine form, the principle of all creaturely beauty.

Thesis

The aesthetic judgment is the experience in which reason is reconciled with sense without the mediation of a concept, revealing an inner accord of faculties otherwise dissonant in ordinary cognition. In this gratuitous harmony, which seeks nothing beyond its own consonance, the intellect touches the trace of divine order. The beauty of the world, though a sensible experience, is an analogy of divine form, a prelude to theology in which the creature manifests the grace of its being.

Locus classicus

Kritik der Urteilskraft, §§1–22 (AA V: 204–231):

“Das Schöne ist das, was ohne Begriff als Gegenstand eines notwendigen Wohlgefallens erkannt wird.”
The beautiful is that which, without a concept, is apprehended as the object of a necessary delight.

and §9 (AA V: 220):

“Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck.”
Purposiveness without purpose.

In these early sections Kant defines the beautiful as that which elicits a feeling of purposive harmony between imagination and understanding, though this harmony cannot be determined conceptually. The judgment of taste thus mediates between the deterministic order of nature and the autonomy of freedom.

Explicatio

Kant’s Critique of Judgment begins with the analysis of aesthetic experience as a phenomenon that unites sensibility and reason without subsuming one to the other. In the judgment of taste, the mind finds itself in a free play. The imagination and understanding correspond spontaneously, producing a feeling of delight that is both individual and universally communicable.

This “purposiveness without purpose” expresses a peculiar transcendental structure. It reveals that the world, as it appears, is not alien to the human faculties of knowledge but proportioned to them as if designed for their accord. The necessity of the aesthetic pleasure, that is that everyone ought to find this beautiful, signals a claim to universal validity that exceeds private emotion.

The aesthetic judgment therefore discloses, though it cannot prove, a transcendental harmony between mind and world. It mediates between the mechanical lawfulness of the first Critique and the moral autonomy of the second, pointing toward a unity that will later demand the supersensible substrate. Beauty thus inaugurates the movement from mere cognition to the awareness of meaning within being.

Theologically interpreted, this experience bears ontological weight. The sensus pulchri is the creature’s pre-conceptual participation in the Logos. In the aesthetic delight that arises from proportion, radiance, and integrity, the human spirit experiences the trace of the divine wisdom through which all things are ordered. The harmony between imagination and understanding mirrors, on a finite plane, the eternal correspondence between divine intellect and created form.

Hence, beauty is not accidental ornamentation but manifestation. It is the appearance of order as grace, the epiphany of being’s intelligibility in sensuous form. The delight of the beautiful is thus the affective echo of divine affirmation: “and behold, it was very good.”

From this point of view, aesthetic judgment is not antithetical to theology but preparatory for it. It establishes the possibility of revelation through form. The same Logos who gives moral law and rational order also shines forth in the splendor of form. What Kant calls the free harmony of the faculties may therefore be seen as the creaturely reflection of that intra-divine harmony through which form, end, and delight coincide in God.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Empiricism argues that beauty is a sensory affection, and that the universality of aesthetic judgment is a fiction of communication, not a property of the object. No knowledge lies in delight.

Ob. II. Critical formalism claims that Kant himself denies that the aesthetic judgment can teach anything about God or the ends of nature. It is only a mode of reflection on our faculties, not a revelation of transcendental things.

Ob. III. The theology of the cross teaches that God is revealed in deformity and suffering, not in beauty. Beauty is the glory of the creature, but God hides beneath its opposite.

Ob. IV. Existentialism avers that beauty reveals nothing; it is an affective compensation for the absurdity of existence, not a vision of divine order.

Responsiones

Ad I. The feeling of beauty involves a claim to universal assent, and this claim transcends the private. Such universality without concept implies an objective ground of harmony between the faculties and the world. Even if empirical verification is impossible, the structure of the judgment presupposes a common rational order, an analogical participation in intelligible form.

Ad II. While Kant forbids metaphysical inference, he admits transcendental signification. The aesthetic judgment intimates the purposiveness of nature without defining its cause. Theology, interpreting this sign as vestigium sapientiae divinae, does not overstep critique but fulfills its openness. The “as if” of purposiveness becomes the “because” of creation.

Ad III. The cross does not abolish form but reveals its transfiguration. In Christ crucified, beauty and horror coincide; the pulchritudo crucis is beauty reconciled to truth. Thus, the theology of the cross deepens aesthetics: it discloses that true form is not symmetry alone but the radiance of love that gives itself.

Ad IV. Existential alienation misreads delight as flight. Yet the very capacity to perceive beauty amid suffering testifies to a transcendent order sustaining existence. Aesthetic joy is not escape but participation; it is the creature’s resonance with the intelligible goodness that grounds being against nothingness.

Nota

The aesthetic judgment marks the first recovery, after modernity’s fragmentation, of a holistic vision of reason and sense. Where the first Critique disjoined knowing from being, feeling here restores their secret unity. Beauty becomes the threshold by which epistemology turns toward ontology.

For theology, this signifies that revelation does not first occur in propositions but in splendor, in the radiance of form that draws the mind toward its source. In the delight of the beautiful, the soul anticipates participation: forma becomes praeambulum gratiae.

Determinatio

1. Aesthetic judgment is a harmony of the transcendental faculties; it is a sign of the concordance between reason and the world. 

2. Beauty, in so far as it is sensible, is an analogy of the divine form in which the intellect and sense are joined together. 

3. Delight in beauty is a pre-conceptual participation in the Logos, who is both form and finality of creation.

4. Aesthetics therefore prepares for teleology; feeling gives way to reflection, and purposiveness felt becomes purposiveness thought.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXVIII: De Iudicio Teleologico et Fine Naturae

If in beauty the soul feels purposiveness without purpose, in teleology the intellect thinks purposiveness with an end implied. Aesthetic harmony awakens a sense of design; teleological reflection interprets that design as order.

Therefore, we advance to Disputatio XXXVIII: De Iudicio Teleologico et Fine Naturae, wherein it will be asked how the reflective reason, moving from the experience of beauty, comes to posit purposiveness as a principle of nature itself, and how this transition anticipates the theological doctrine of creation ordered toward the glory of God.

Disputatio XL: De Substrato Supersensibili et Fundamentis Finalitatis

On the Supersensible Substrate and the Foundations of Finality

Quaeritur

Utrum notio Kantiana de substrato supersensibili, quod naturae et libertatis communis est, possit intellegi non solum transcendentaliter sed etiam ontologice, ita ut idem substratum theologice referatur ad Logos, in quo omnis finalitas creaturarum fundatur.

Whether Kant’s notion of a supersensible substrate, common to nature and freedom, may be understood not merely transcendently but ontologically, as the Logos in whom all creaturely purposiveness is grounded.

Thesis

The übersinnliches Substrat in Kant’s Critique of Judgment functions as the unifying ground that reconciles the realms of nature and freedom. While for Kant it remains an indeterminate concept, accessible only as a limiting idea, theology may recognize in it the ontological trace of the Logos—the living unity in which intelligibility, causality, and purposiveness converge. It is thus the hidden depth of divine reason through which all finality in creation derives its coherence.

Locus Classicus

Kritik der Urteilskraft, §57 (AA V:195–196):

“Es muß also ein gemeinschaftliches, aber uns unbekanntes, Substrat, dem sowohl der Natur, als dem Freiheitsgesetze gemäß, zum Grunde liegen, mithin die Möglichkeit der Einheit des Übersinnlichen, welches unter beiden liegt, sein.”

“There must therefore lie at the basis of both nature and the law of freedom a common, though to us unknown, substrate; hence there must be the possibility of a unity of the supersensible that underlies both.”

and §59 (AA V:198):

“Die Vernunft kann sich diese Übereinstimmung des Zweckmäßigen in der Natur mit demjenigen in der Freiheit gar nicht anders denken, als daß beide einer gemeinschaftlichen, aber uns unbekannten obersten Ursache, dem Übersinnlichen, angehören.”

“Reason can think this accord of what is purposive in nature with that in freedom in no other way than that both belong to a common, though to us unknown, highest cause—the supersensible.”

In these passages, Kant articulates the transcendental postulate that there must exist a common supersensible foundation underlying the two heterogeneous orders of experience, nature (necessity) and freedom (morality), even though reason cannot determine its nature conceptually.

Explicatio

The Critique of Judgment culminates in the discovery of a hidden unity that underlies the dualisms of Kant’s earlier critiques. Nature, governed by mechanical causality, and freedom, ruled by moral law, require a common ground if human reason is to see the world as one intelligible system. This ground is not empirical but supersensible; it is that which cannot appear within phenomena yet makes the unity of appearances and moral law possible.

For Kant, this übersinnliches Substrat is a necessary postulate of reason: it is the “unknown ground” (unbekanntes Substrat) in which the natural and moral orders share participation. It guarantees the possibility that the world of sense can be adequate to the purposes of reason, that creation as we know it can serve as a theater for the realization of moral ends.

Philosophically, this substrate is the transcendental condition of finality, the point of coincidence between efficient and final causality. It explains why the reflective judgment may legitimately interpret nature as if ordered toward ends. For, after all, such order is not accidental but rooted in a unity beyond the distinction of mechanism and teleology.

Theologically, this unity discloses the deep structure of participation. The supersensible substrate is the point at which creation remains held in being by the eternal Word. The Logos functions as the ens commune intelligibile, the "common intelligible being," the ontological depth in which form, purpose, and act coincide. What Kant calls “supersensible” is precisely what theology calls divine wisdom as immanent cause. It is the living intelligibility through which the world is not merely caused but constituted.

In the first Critique, reason was divided against itself; in the second, it sought its own autonomy. In the third, however, it begins to glimpse its unity in a common foundation. Kant’s “unknown cause” becomes, for theology, the known mystery, the Logos as the ground of both natural order and moral law.

Thus, the übersinnliches Substrat is not a sterile limit but a sign of participation. It is the horizon where finite being opens upon its divine origin. Just as the reflectierende Urteilskraft gathers the manifold into unity, so the supersensible substrate grounds that unity ontologically. It is the “gathering depth” of the Logos, the point at which all created teleology returns to its source and finds its coherence.

Objectiones

Ob. I. For the early Kant, the supersensible substrate is a Grenzbegriff, a boundary concept, introduced only to regulate thought. It carries no positive ontological content. To identify it with the Logos transgresses the limits of reason and collapses critique into dogmatism.

Ob. II. Naturalistic mechanism holds that teleology is a heuristic projection, and thus there is no need for a supersensible substrate. The unity of nature is explicable by physical law and probabilistic regularity, not by appeal to metaphysical grounds.

Ob. III. Atheistic existentialism supposes that Kant’s supersensible substrate is an empty abstraction masking human alienation. It does not unite nature and freedom but hides their disjunction under an illusion of harmony. To theologize it is to sanctify alienation.

Ob. IV. Dialectical theology declares that any “common ground” of nature and freedom undermines the radical distinction between Creator and creature. Revelation admits no shared substrate; God’s transcendence excludes ontological mediation.

Responsiones

Ad I. The limitation of reason to regulative use does not annul the ontological implication of its postulates. Kant’s Grenzbegriff marks the boundary not of being but of conceptual knowledge. The postulation of a unity beyond phenomena already implies its real possibility. Theology interprets this not as speculative knowledge but as metaphysical participation. It is the intellect’s recognition that its own act of synthesis is grounded in divine unity.

Ad II. Mechanism describes order but cannot account for its necessity. Physical law presupposes the very rationality it explains. The coherence of empirical causality and moral teleology cannot itself be causal; it requires a ground transcending both. The supersensible substrate expresses the logical necessity of an intelligible order that precedes empirical description.

Ad III. The accusation of abstraction misunderstands Kant’s intention. The supersensible substrate does not mask alienation but names the condition of possibility for overcoming it. It points to a unity that cannot yet be possessed but that nonetheless draws the finite toward reconciliation—a yearning that theology names participatio in Verbo.

Ad IV. The Creator–creature distinction remains intact. The supersensible substrate does not dissolve transcendence but affirms it as the ground of immanence. To say that nature and freedom share a common ground is not to identify them with God, but to confess that both proceed from and depend upon the divine act of creation, in which the Logos sustains their relation.

Nota

Kant’s übersinnliches Substrat is a pivotal moment in the history of reason: the first modern attempt to speak, within critical limits, of an ontological unity beyond empirical and moral dualism. In it, reason confesses— albeit unwittingly—its dependence upon what theology calls divine wisdom. The substratum gathers the scattered orders of necessity and freedom into a single purposive horizon. Accordingly, it is the silent counterpart to the Word through whom all things are made.

Theologically interpreted, this substrate is not a “thing” beyond experience but the presence of intelligibility itself—the immanent trace of God’s creative Logos within the fabric of reality. Where reason perceives an unknowable cause, faith perceives the infinite intelligibility of God acting within and through creation.

Determinatio

1. The übersinnliches Substrat signifies the transcendental unity grounding both the natural and moral orders;. tt is the necessary presupposition of any teleological relation between them.

2. Though Kant presents it as unknowable, its very necessity implies an ontological reality, a divine act of unity prior to all distinction.

3. This ground is best interpreted theologically as the Logos, the living rationality through which all being receives its order and purpose.

4. The supersensible substrate thus expresses in critical terms what theology confesses in creedal form, that all things subsist and cohere in ipso.

5. The human experience of purposiveness is therefore a finite reflection of the eternal finality of the Word, in whom creation and freedom converge.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLI: De Phenomenologia et Apparitione Entis

The supersensible substrate, in which Kant discerned the hidden unity of nature and freedom, marks the highest reach of transcendental reflection. Here, reason approaches its own boundary wherein the unconditioned ground of appearance must be thought, yet cannot itself appear. But what for critical philosophy remains a limit, for theology becomes a threshold: limen revelationis.

For the supersensible is not the negation of the sensible, but its depth. The Logos who grounds all purposiveness does not remain forever concealed behind phenomena. Rather, He gives Himself in appearance, not as an object among others, but as the manifesting of manifestation itself. What the übersinnliches Substrat named in abstraction, phenomenology will seek in concretion: the event of being as appearing.

Thus we pass from the critical postulate of unity to the phenomenological experience of presence. The next disputation therefore asks how being itself comes to light, and how this Erscheinung des Seins may be understood as the self-showing of divine intelligibility.

We proceed, then, to Disputationem XLI: De Phenomenologia et Apparitione Entis, in which it will be examined whether the appearing of being discloses not merely the conditions of experience but the act of the Logos through whom all things are made manifest.

Disputatio XXXIX: De Iudicio Reflectente et Mediis Transcendentalibus

On Reflecting Judgment and the Transcendental Media

Quaeritur

Utrum iudicium reflectens, quod inter intellectum et rationem mediare intendit, in ipsa ratione humana exprimat imaginem intellectus divini, ita ut ratio finita per participationem eiusdem logici ordinis possit adunare naturam et libertatem in unitate transcendentalis finalitatis.

Whether the reflecting judgment, which mediates between understanding and reason, expresses within human reason an image of the divine intellect, such that the finite mind, by participation in that same logical order, may unite nature and freedom within a transcendental unity of finality.

Thesis

The reflecting judgment is the finite echo of divine intelligence. Whereas the determining judgment merely applies universals already possessed, the reflecting judgment searches for the universal latent within the given particular. In this creative search the human intellect mirrors the divine act by which the Logos draws form out of multiplicity and unites it within a purposive whole. It is therefore the participatory point at which human reason, open to both nature and freedom, attests its origin in the transcendent order of divine reason.

Locus Classicus

Kritik der Urteilskraft, §77 (AA V:406):

“Die Urteilskraft hat also ein Prinzip a priori für die Möglichkeit der Natur, als eines Systems der Gesetze; aber nur in ihrer reflektirenden, nicht in ihrer bestimmenden Gebrauch.”

“The power of judgment therefore has an a priori principle for the possibility of nature as a system of laws—but only in its reflecting, not in its determining use.”

and §57 (AA V:179):

“Die Urteilskraft überhaupt ist das Vermögen, das Besondere als unter dem Allgemeinen enthalten zu denken. Ist das Allgemeine (die Regel, das Prinzip, das Gesetz) gegeben, so ist das Urteil, welches das Besondere darunter subsumirt, bestimmend. Ist aber nur das Besondere gegeben, wozu sie das Allgemeine finden soll, so ist das Urteil reflectirend.”

“The power of judgment in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) is given, then the judgment which subsumes the particular under it is determining. But if only the particular is given, for which it is to find the universal, then the judgment is reflecting.”

These passages locate the Urteilskraft reflectirend as that faculty through which human reason, lacking the divine intellect’s immediate unity of concept and intuition, nonetheless participates analogically in the Logos by seeking the universality immanent within the given.

Explicatio

Kant distinguishes between two uses of judgment:

1. Determining judgment (bestimmende Urteilskraft) applies a known universal to a particular. It functions executively, reproducing a conceptual order already supplied by the understanding.

2. Reflecting judgment (reflectierende Urteilskraft) begins with the particular and seeks the universal appropriate to it. It functions creatively, establishing unity where none is given.

This difference corresponds to two modes of intellect. The determining judgment imitates the providential intellectus ordinans, the intellect that administers law already decreed. The reflecting judgment, by contrast, imitates the intellectus creator, the divine mind that gives form to what has no prior rule.

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant introduces this reflective power to mediate between nature and freedom, the realms sundered by his earlier critiques. The reflecting judgment discovers a Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur, a purposiveness of nature that, though not demonstrable as an objective property, is nonetheless necessarily presupposed by human reason. This purposiveness is not a law among others but the very possibility of lawfulness as such.

The mind, in reflecting upon nature, finds itself compelled to think the world als ob it were ordered for cognition and moral vocation. In this “as if,” finite intellect testifies to its participation in an order beyond itself. The reflecting judgment, therefore, is not a mere psychological projection but the echo of divine ordering, the resonance of the Logos within the act of human intellection.

Whereas the bestimmende Urteilskraft operates within a finished creation, the reflectierende Urteilskraft experiences the world as if it were still being formed. It is the cognitive analogue of divine creativity: the search for unity that mirrors the eternal act in which the divine intellect knows both universal and particular as one.

Here the theology of the Logos as gathering becomes luminous. The Logos unites the dispersed into intelligible wholeness; it is the principle in which multiplicity coheres. Likewise, the reflecting judgment performs, within the finite mind, this same gathering act by drawing together the scattered manifold of experience, and seeking the universal that would make them one. In this unifying motion the intellect imitates the divine Logos, whose gathering of creation into order is mirrored analogically in every act of reflective understanding.

Thus, the reflecting judgment may be called participatory: its movement from the particular to the universal is an analogical repetition, in finitude, of God’s movement from universal wisdom to particular creature. Through it, the human intellect becomes aware that all understanding presupposes being already gathered into intelligibility by the Word.

The transcendental media through which this participation is perceived are two:

• Aesthetic judgment, wherein beauty intimates purposive unity without concept;

• Teleological judgment, wherein the order of nature is discerned as if it were designed.

Both express, under finite conditions, the infinite intelligibility of creation.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Kant's earlier critical idealism claimed that the purposiveness of nature is only regulativ, not konstitutiv. It guides reflection but asserts nothing about things themselves. To identify this structure with divine intellect reintroduces dogmatic metaphysics which the Critique sought to overcome.

Ob. II. Empirical naturalism hold that the sense of purposiveness is an anthropomorphic projection. Human cognition evolved to impose order for survival; teleology is a byproduct of adaptation, not a window into divine reason.

Ob. III. Dialectical theology asserts that there can be no analogia entis between Creator and creature. The reflectierende Urteilskraft is a natural faculty, bound by sin, incapable of genuine participation in divine knowing. Revelation alone bridges the gap.

Ob. IV.  Heidegger supposes that the Urteilskraft remains imprisoned within subject-object metaphysics. What it calls purposiveness is merely the forgotten openness of Being (Seinsvergessenheit). Participation must be replaced by Ereignis, the event in which Being itself discloses.

Responsiones

Ad 1. The regulative status of purposiveness does not preclude its metaphysical significance. What Kant calls “regulative” may, from the theological side, be seen as the phenomenal trace of divine constitutivity. The intellect’s necessity to think unity reveals that reality is not chaos but already grounded in the rational order of the Logos. The “als ob” points beyond itself: it is the finite mirror of a unity that truly is.

Ad 2. Empirical projection theory presupposes the very congruence of mind and world it seeks to explain. If teleology were merely adaptive, its success in tracking real structures of order would be inexplicable. The evolutionary account explains why we look for unity, not why unity is there to be found. Purposiveness in cognition presupposes purposiveness in being.

Ad 3. The analogia entis asserted here is ontological, not salvific. It concerns the structure of reason as created participation in divine wisdom, not redemptive grace. To deny all analogy makes revelation unintelligible, for the Word can address humanity only because humanity shares, however finitely, in the Logos’ capacity for meaning.

Ad 4. Heidegger’s Ereignis can be read as a radicalized form of the same insight: manifestation itself presupposes participation in the source of manifestation. The reflecting judgment is the finite act through which Being’s intelligibility becomes known. It is the cognitive correlate to what phenomenology calls Erscheinen, the shining-forth of being.

Nota

The reflectierende Urteilskraft is Kant’s most theologically potent discovery. In it, reason ceases to dominate and begins to listen; it seeks to discern the universal latent within the given particular.

The bestimmende Urteilskraft resembles divine providence as administration of established law; the reflectierende Urteilskraft resembles divine wisdom as creation in act. Its searching movement from particular to universal is the finite image of that divine understanding in which all multiplicity is comprehended at once.

Through this faculty, human reason discloses its participatory vocation: to seek, to gather, and to unify in correspondence with the eternal act of the Logos. Thus, the Critique of Judgment quietly reinstates metaphysics at the heart of critique—an ontology of participation veiled beneath epistemological modesty.

Determinatio

1. The reflectierende Urteilskraft differs from the bestimmende not only functionally but ontologically: it imitates, under finite conditions, the creative act of divine intelligence.

2. The “regulative” purposiveness Kant describes is the phenomenal sign of a deeper, constitutive order grounded in the Logos.

3. The finite mind’s search for unity mirrors the divine intellect’s perfect intuition of unity; the difference is not of kind but of mode. It is participation not possession.

4. The reflectierende Urteilskraft thus mediates nature and freedom by attesting that both share a common root in supersensible reason.

5. Human judgment, in its reflecting capacity, bears witness that intellect itself is a participation in the divine actus essendi intelligibilis, the act by which the Word comprehends all things as ordered.

Transitus ad Disputationem XL: De Substrato Supersensibili et Fundamentis Finalitatis

If the reflectierende Urteilskraft reveals the mind’s participatory openness to divine unity, then the next question concerns the ground of this unity itself. What is the hidden bond that makes both nature and freedom intelligible within one order of purposiveness?

Therefore we proceed to Disputationem XL: De Substrato Supersensibili et Fundamentis Finalitatis, wherein it shall be examined whether Kant’s das übersinnliche Substrat—the supersensible substrate underlying both natural and moral purposiveness—may be interpreted as the ontological depth of the Logos: the living foundation of all teleology and the inner intelligibility of creation itself.

Disputatio XLI: De Phenomenologia et Apparitione Entis

On Phenomenology and the Appearance of Being

Quaeritur

Utrum phaenomenologia, in doctrina sua de apparitione entis, patefaciat aditum ad veritatem ontologicam et theologicam, an potius concludat ens intra ambitum immanentiae conscientiae.

Whether phenomenology, in its doctrine of the appearance of being, opens a path to ontological and theological truth, or rather confines being within the immanent sphere of consciousness.

Thesis

The appearing of beings is not merely a psychological event or a representation before consciousness, but the ontological act through which being manifests itself. In the horizon of phenomenology rightly understood, the act of manifestation already presupposes participation in a transcendent Logos: the divine reason through which beings appear as intelligible.

Locus Classicus

“Was uns zunächst und zumeist begegnet, ist das Seiende im Ganzen.” — Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit §29.
(“What first and most of all encounters us is beings as a whole.”)

This sentence marks the turning point from phenomenology as method to phenomenology as ontology: the recognition that appearance is not a derivative mental state but the disclosure of beings themselves within the openness of Being.

Explicatio

Phenomenology arose as a protest against both empiricism and speculative idealism. Husserl’s cry to return “zu den Sachen selbst” called philosophy back from abstraction to the immediacy of what shows itself. In this return, being was no longer treated as a hidden substrate behind appearances, but as that which becomes manifest in appearing. As Heidegger explained in Section VII of Sein und Zeit, it is that which shows itself as itself. 

The key structure of this manifestation is intentionality, the directedness of consciousness toward its object. Yet intentionality itself presupposes the prior possibility that something may appear at all. Since this givenness is not created by the subject but received, the act of consciousness is receptive before it is constructive.

Thus, phenomenology, in its most radical sense, reveals that appearing is not a mere event within the subject but a participation in a more original disclosure of being. Every horizon of experience already implies the transcendence of what appears beyond it. The horizon of the world points to an infinite openness which no act of consciousness can totalize.

Theologically interpreted, this openness intimates the divine Logos, the principle of manifestation that both grounds and exceeds all finite givenness. In the shining of the phenomenon, theology perceives a trace of the Word through whom all things appear and by whom they are sustained in intelligibility.

Obiectiones

Ob I. Transcendental idealism holds that phenomenology, by its very method, brackets metaphysical commitments. But to posit a divine Logos as the source of appearing violates the neutrality of the phenomenological reduction and collapses philosophy into theology.

Ob II. Naturalistic empiricism claims that appearance is merely a function of perceptual mechanisms. The world “appears” only because the brain interprets sensory inputs, and thus there is no ontological act of showing, only causal processes.

Ob III. Confessional theology declares that revelation is not equivalent to appearance. God discloses Himself through Word and Spirit, not through the natural horizon of phenomenality. To identify divine revelation with appearing is to naturalize grace.

Ob IV. Existentialist atheism supposes that the horizon of appearance is bounded by finitude and death. Phenomenology uncovers not divine transcendence but the absence of God, the silence Nichts that defines human existence.

Responsiones

Ad 1. The phenomenological epoché suspends metaphysical assertions within the act of reflection, but it does not deny their ontological ground. To recognize that appearance implies givenness is not to violate the reduction, but to unfold its presupposition that what appears gives itself. The question of the giver is intrinsic to phenomenology’s logic and opens naturally toward theology.

Ad 2. The causal explanation of perception presupposes the very appearing it seeks to explain. Neural correlates describe how phenomena are processed, not how being becomes manifest. Empiricism can analyze conditions of sensation, but not the ontological event of manifestation itself.

Ad 3. While revelation exceeds phenomenology, it does not exclude it. Appearing is the analogical condition under which revelation becomes thinkable. Because the same Logos who speaks in Scripture also grounds the intelligibility of all phenomena, phenomenology, properly ordered, is a vestibule to theology.

Ad 4. The disclosure of finitude is itself an intimation of transcendence. The awareness of limit presupposes orientation toward the unlimited. Even the horizon of death testifies to the Being that grants all horizons, whose givenness endures beyond negation.

Nota

Phenomenology reopens the ontological question under the sign of appearing. Its most fruitful contribution to theology lies in showing that the world is not a closed system of object, but rather it is a field of manifestation. To appear is already to participate in a revealing act. By interpreting phenomenology in the light of faith, theology recognizes that this revealing act is not anonymous but personal. It is the act of the Word who “was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

In this sense, phenomenology becomes a philosophical propaedeutic to theology. It purifies the gaze so that the appearing of beings may again be seen as the trace of divine self-showing. While it neither proves God nor replaces revelation, it nonetheless restores the world to its capacity for epiphany.

Determinatio

Phenomenology, when pursued to its limits, discloses an ontology of manifestation that opens naturally toward the theology of the Word. The act of appearing (phainein) is not grounded in the subject’s synthesis but in the Logos that gathers being into visibility. Every phenomenon is thus a finite participation in divine intelligibility, an echo of the eternal self-showing of God. To behold the appearing of beings is, implicitly, to behold the shining of the Creator through them.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXVIII: De Hermeneutica et Historia Verbi

Having discerned in phenomenology the ontological depth of manifestation, we must now inquire how this appearing is mediated by history and language. If every disclosure occurs within a horizon shaped by tradition, then divine self-showing must also unfold hermeneutically as Word within history.

Therefore we proceed to Disputationem XXXVIII: De Hermeneutica et Historia Verbi, where we asks how understanding and interpretation belong to revelation itself, and how the Word maintains truth amid the temporal flux of its historical manifestation.

Disputatio XXXVI: De Tillichiana Correlatione et Potentia Entis

On Tillich’s Correlation and the Power of Being

Quaeritur

Utrum doctrina Tillichiana de potentia entis et methodus correlationis possint theologicam veritatem sustinere, si intellegantur non existentialiter sed participatione ontologica.

Whether Tillich’s doctrine of the power of being and his method of correlation can sustain theological truth when reinterpreted, not existentially, but through ontological participation.

Thesis

Tillich’s “power of being” expresses an authentic intuition of divine immanence and creative causality, but his existential and correlational method requires ontological deepening. Only when esse is understood as participation in the Logos, as the act of God giving actuality to being, can Tillich’s insight into the “God above God” become a true theology of the living presence of the divine within creation.

Locus Classicus

“God is the ground of being: He is being-itself, not a being.” — Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology I, §2.

This sentence encapsulates Tillich’s attempt to speak of God beyond theism and to preserve transcendence without objectification. Yet it also poses the central ambiguity as to whether “being-itself” signifies divine act or abstract ground.

Explicatio

Tillich sought to overcome both classical theism and modern atheism by identifying God as being-itself, the ground and power of all that is. For him, existence derives its reality from participation in this ultimate ground, while estrangement and non-being describe the human condition of finitude and anxiety. The divine, in turn, is not one being among others but the inexhaustible depth of all being, that power by which beings stand against the threat of non-being.

Tillich’s method of correlation proposes that theology answers the existential questions posed by human reason with the revelatory answers given by faith. Human existence and divine revelation stand in dialectical relation, for while the former raises the question, the latter supplies the answer in symbolic form.

Yet this correlation harbors an instability. By locating revelation within the horizon of human questioning, it risks reducing divine truth to the measure of human existential concern. The “God above God,” meant to transcend finite projections, may dissolve into the abyss of indeterminacy if not grounded in an ontological act of divine self-communication.

A participatory reinterpretation restores ontological density to Tillich’s insight. “Being-itself” is not an abstract essence but the living act (actus essendi) by which God communicates being. The “power of being” is the self-diffusive vitality of the Logos -- creative, sustaining, and redemptive—through whom all things receive their actuality. Thus, correlation becomes not merely epistemic but ontological, for human questioning participates in divine self-revelation because both arise from the same ground, the creative Word.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Classical theism claims that Tillich’s identification of God with “being-itself” erases the Creator–creature distinction. If God is identical with being, then creation is not truly other, and transcendence is lost.

Ob. II. Existential theology supposes that the participatory reinterpretation misreads Tillich’s purpose. He intended “being-itself” symbolically, not metaphysically. To return to ontology is to revert to the very essentialism he overcame.

Ob. III. Empirical realism opines that the “power of being” is a poetic expression, not a real cause. Nature operates through physical laws, not through an indeterminate divine potency.

Ob. IV. 4. Barthian dialectic holds that correlation compromises divine sovereignty. God’s Word does not emerge as an answer to human questioning but confronts it from without, judging and recreating it.

Responsiones

Ad 1. Tillich’s identification of God with being-itself does not collapse the distinction if being is understood as participatory. The creature receives its act of existence from the divine act without sharing its essence. God remains transcendent as the unparticipated source, yet immanent as the act that grants participation.

Ad 2. Tillich’s symbolic intention can be affirmed without denying ontological grounding. Symbols mediate reality only if they participate in it. To interpret being-itself through participation gives substance to the symbol and prevents it from dissolving into pure metaphor.

Ad 3. Physical law describes regularities within being but cannot account for the actuality of existence itself. The “power of being” names the metaphysical act that makes any law operative. It is not a rival cause but the enabling act through which causal relations exist at all.

Ad 4. Correlation does not entail equality between divine and human discourse. When grounded in participation, it becomes the ontological structure by which divine revelation encounters finite reason: the same Logos who gives being also gives understanding. The Spirit mediates correlation not as negotiation, but as illumination.

Nota

Tillich’s theology bears witness to a profound tension of the modern mind: the desire to affirm divine immanence without surrendering transcendence. His “God above God” and “power of being” preserve the mystery of God beyond objectification, yet his existential method risks losing the concreteness of divine act.

By recasting correlation within participatory ontology, theology can retain Tillich’s sensitivity to existential depth while grounding it in metaphysical realism. The anxiety of finitude is no longer the final horizon but the occasion for divine self-giving. The potentia entis becomes not an abstraction but the creative vitality of the triune God, the living causality of the Logos through the Spirit.

Determinatio

Tillich’s correlation, rightly understood, gestures toward the participatory structure of all theological knowledge: every question of existence presupposes the prior act of divine self-bestowal. His “power of being” thus anticipates a theology of causation in esse: God as the act by which beings stand in their being. The existential becomes metaphysical, and metaphysics itself becomes personal, for the act of being is the act of divine love communicating itself to what is not God.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXVII: De Iudicio Reflectente et Mediis Transcendentalibus

In the preceding disputation, we found in Tillich’s notion of the potentia entis a powerful though ambiguous intuition of divine immanence—the sense that God’s creative act is not external to being but the ground of its very actuality. Yet this insight remained caught between ontology and experience, between divine causality and human self-understanding. Tillich’s correlation sought to mediate these realms, but its existential method lacked a clear account of how such mediation becomes possible within finite reason itself.

This impasse leads us to the question of the transcendental mediation that unites the finite and the infinite within the very structure of cognition. If theology is to affirm the divine presence as the power of being, it must also explain how the human mind recognizes this power and participates in it. Here the critical philosophy of Kant offers decisive assistance: for in the Critique of Judgment Kant uncovers a faculty within reason that bridges nature and freedom—the reflectierende Urteilskraft, whose act of seeking unity among particulars mirrors, in finite mode, the very creativity of the divine Logos.

Therefore we proceed to Disputationem XXXVII: De Iudicio Reflectente et Mediis Transcendentalibus, in which it shall be examined how the reflecting judgment serves as the intellectual analogue of participation in the divine reason, and how through this mediating faculty the human mind, echoing the Logos, gathers the manifold of experience into purposive unity.