344 Kant: A Biographyanswer Forster's criticisms. In particular, he rejects Forster's idea that there
are only two races, Negroes and whites, and that there were two basic ori¬
gins {Stämme) of the human race. Kant insists that there are four races, all
of whom have one origin. Forster's position is not only needlessly complex,
but also does not account well for the differences among humans. Fur¬
thermore, if Forster is right in claiming that human beings originated sep¬
arately in two different parts of the world, and if the differences among
humans justify speaking of four races, then Forster should admit that there
were four different kinds of human beings at first. Much of the discussion
must strike the contemporary reader as tedious at best, and offensive at
worst - an example of the latter being Kant's considered opinion that Ne¬
groes (like gypsies) have an inherited aversion to hard labor and will never
make good farmers.^51
Kant's second concern is more philosophical. He wants to answer
Forster's criticism that his insistence on teleological principles is unscien¬
tific, and that he allowed theology to intrude into science in the "Conjec¬
tural Beginning." Kant points out that he does not mean to question the
idea that nature needs to be explained empirically, using merely causal prin¬
ciples. Unlike those who speak of "basic forces" of matter, which are
supposed to be responsible for the creation of nature and natural kinds, he
does not introduce empty or unscientific concepts. His view of ends is very
different. Teleology does not proceed along hylozoistic lines, and it is not
an attempt to override the causality of nature. Indeed, the "teleological prin¬
ciple in nature must always be empirically determined." The same would
be true of the ends of freedom, if nature had first provided us with the
objects of volition, that is, with needs and inclinations, and then allowed
us to choose. "But the Critique of Practical Reason proves that there are pure
practical principles that determine reason a priori and which therefore give
ends to reason a priori." While teleology cannot explain nature completely,
because it is restricted by empirical conditions, we must expect complete¬
ness from "a pure doctrine of freedom." Because morality must be viewed
as something that is realizable in nature, moral teleology must also be ap¬
plied to nature. It is justified to that extent.^52
Kant takes up these same concerns again at the end of the third Critique.
They were important to him from the beginning of his thought about aes¬
thetic matters. It has been argued that Kant's work on the book proceeded
in three distinct steps. Thus, John H. Zammito, basing himself on prior
work by Michel Souriau, Gerhard Lehmann, and Giorgio Tonelli, distin¬
guishes three phases - an aesthetic phase (summer 1787—88), a cognitive