By End however we must not at once, nor must we ever merely, think
of the form which it has in consciousness as a mode of mere mental
representation. By means of the notion of Inner Design Kant has
resuscitated the Idea in general and particularly the idea of life.
Aristotle's definition of life virtually implies inner design, and is
thus far in advance of the notion of design in modern Teleology, which
had in view finite and outward design only.
Animal wants and appetites are some of the readiest instances of
the End. They are the _felt_ contradiction, which exists _within_
the living subject, and pass into the activity of negating this
negation which mere subjectivity still is. The satisfaction of the
want or appetite restores the peace between subject and object. The
objective thing which, so long as the contradiction exists, _i.e._
so long as the want is felt, stands on the other side, loses this
quasi-independence, by its union with the subject. Those who talk of
the permanence and immutability of the finite, as well subjective as
objective, may see the reverse illustrated in the operations of every
appetite. Appetite is, so to speak, the conviction that the subjective
is only a half-truth, no more adequate than the objective. But appetite
in the second place carries out its conviction. It brings about the
supersession of these finites: it cancels the antithesis between the
objective which would be and stay an objective only, and the subjective
which in like manner would be and stay a subjective only.
As regards the action of the End, attention may be called to the fact,
that in the syllogism, which represents that action, and shows the end
closing with itself by the means of realisation, the radical feature is
the negation of the _termini._ That negation is the one just mentioned
both of the immediate subjectivity appearing in the End as such, and
of the immediate objectivity as seen in the means and the objects
pre-supposed. This is the same negation, as is in operation when the
mind leaves the contingent things of the world as well as its own
subjectivity and rises to God. It is the 'moment' or factor which (as
noticed in the Introduction and § 192) was overlooked and neglected in
the analytic form of syllogisms, under which the so-called proofs of
the Being of a God presented this elevation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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