Kant on Formative Power
26 Ina Goy INA GOY KANT(Concordia ON FORMATIVE University, Montreal POWER) The notion of a formative1 power is one of the most obscure in Kant’s theory of biology . Before I discuss Kant’s biological use of the term ‘formative power’, in section 1 of this paper I provide a list of all passages in which Kant uses the term, claiming that the older meaning of ‘formative power’ in Kant’s writings is an epi- stemological one, whereas the biological meaning of the term ap- pears not before the mid-1780s. I present and discuss some of thoseCriti passagesque of thein closer power detail, of jud andgment give a precise interpretation of the most central passage in Kant’s philosophy2 of biology in §65 of the . I defend the view that, for Kant, the formative power is a basic, immaterial, and intrinsic natural power in the organism belonging to an account of final causation. As a cause, it does not generate form and matter, or the matter of organisms, but only the end-directed teleological3 form of the matter of an organism. AsKant an on alternative vital force. Metaphysical to White’s concernsclaim ver- sus1 scientific practice Kants Philosophie der Natur. Ihre Entwick- lungFor imrecent inquiries seeund H. van ihre den WirkungBerg, Bildungskraft, in E.-O. und Onnasch Bildungstrieb (ed.), bei ibid. Der Baum imOpus Baum. postumumModellkörper, reproductive, Berlin Systeme- New und York, die DeDifferenzGruyterzwischen, 2009, pp. Leben 115- digem136; G.F. und Frigo, Unlebendigem bei Kant und Bonnet ibidKant, in , pp. 9-23; T. BlCheung,umenbach and Kant on mechanism and teleology in nature: the case of the formative drive The problem of animal generation in early, in modern, pp.
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