BRUNO OBERLANDER ERBELLA

The project proposes an investigation of the analogical relationship between Natural History and Human History in Kant's passage between nature as a teleological system and the teleologically oriented History of humanity, both under the use of the teleological judgment. In this sense, the guiding thread of the research is the concept of finality (Zweckmässigkeit), which takes various forms throughout the Critique of Judgment (1790). The objective in view is accomplished mainly through the articulation of these forms, and among them, especially, the internal and external finalities, found in the appendix of this work, the Doctrine of the method of the teleological faculty of judgment. Moreover, the research has as secondary reference some works written in the 1780s. In these, the use of teleological principles in naturalistic questions - Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace (1785); Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophie (1788) - and about human history (Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (1784); Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (1786) - establish the similsimilarities and differences of these analogous fields.