Crazy Kant

The most awkward of philosophers makes me laugh out loud sometimes when he talks about emotionally serious issues with the same convoluted unevenness he uses when talking about conceptual issues:

"If the value that life has for us is assessed merely in terms of what we enjoy (i.e., happiness, the natural purpose of the sum of all our inclinations), then the answer is easy: that value falls below zero."

This is from a footnote (of course) in the Critique of Judgment, Part II (Critique of Teleological Judgment), in the section 83 titled "On the Ultimate Purpose That Nature Has as a Teleological System".

Kant's general point is that when we reflect on nature as a whole, we discover that humanity is the ultimate purpose for which the earth exists. Humans therefore have an obligation to live for this purposiveness and not live simply for their pleasures and their survival, as other animals do.

What is interesting about Kant's argument (so far as I understand it) is that it is not a simplistic reduction to - "God created the world for humans to fulfill a purpose in". Though it seems that Kant believed in God, he does not invoke the idea of God to explain anything in his critical system since God is a "transcendent" idea and cannot be verified by either reason or science. Rather, his understanding of our ultimate purpose has more to do with the plain (empirical) fact that people who pursue lives of pleasure inevitably get drawn down emotionally towards dissipation and ennui. Those who lead lives based on a foundation of purpose (scientists, social activists, artists, etc.) tend to have a sense of wholeness that keeps them harmonious even with the crudities of nature.

Actually, I have no idea if that is what he is saying. It makes some sense though... Our personal integrity is tied up with how we see the integrity or purposiveness of nature as a whole...