TELEOLOGICAL UNITY
Says Socrates in the Republic:
If we do not know the Form of the good, though we should
have the fullest knowledge possible of all else, you know
that that would be of no use to us, anymore than is the
possession of anything without the good. Or do you think
there is any advantage in universal possession if it is not
good, or in understanding the whole world except the good?
(Republic 505).
In its relation to all other knowledge Aristotle's first
philosophy exercises the same function as Plato's
dialectic. It is “the most authoritative of the sciences
and more authoritative than any ancillary science,” for
it knows the supreme good in the whole of nature,
and therefore the end to which the other sciences are
directed (Metaphysica 982b 5). Saint Thomas and the
medieval philosophers follow Aristotle in assigning to
metaphysics the status of ruler of all the other sciences
as directed to one end, and for Kant this legislation
as a regulative guide constitutes the very essence of
philosophy. The pursuit of sciences with a view to
attaining their greatest logical perfection he calls “the
scholastic concept” of philosophy.
But there is likewise another concept of philosophy, a
conceptus cosmicus, which has always formed the real basis
of the term 'philosophy,' especially when it has been as
it were personified and its archtype represented in the ideal
philosopher. On this view philosophy is the science of the
relation of all knowledge to the essential ends of human
reason (teleologia rationis humanae), and the philosopher
is not an artificer in the field of reason, but himself the
lawgiver of human reason
(Critique of Pure Reason, B 867).
Reason, in exercising its purely logical function, is
concerned with bringing the manifold knowledge pro-
vided by the understanding to the highest degree of
systematic unity. It is this unity which distinguishes
science from a mere aggregate of things known. In
pursuit of this end reason is compelled to operate with
the idea of the form of the whole of the science in
question, an idea which determines a priori the scope
of the content of the science and the relation of its
parts to one another. This regulating idea gives the
science the same kind of unity as that possessed by
an animal organism, and just as the parts of each sci-
ence form an organic whole, so also do all the sciences
taken together. “Not only is each system articulated
in accordance with an idea, but they are one and all
organically united in a system of human knowledge,
as members of one whole, and so as admitting an
architectonic of all human knowledge” (ibid., B 863).
This whole of human knowledge will be directed by
an idea, in the same way as is each of its constituent
sciences, in order that the essential ends of reason
served by each will be viewed under one ultimate end,
namely, “the whole vocation of man.” The highest
degree of formal unity in the natural sciences—
psychology, physics, and a third science which is a
systematic union of the first two—is pursued under the
regulative idea of the whole of nature as the work of
a supreme intelligence. Practical reason, or morality
also operates under a regulating idea, that of a King-
dom of Ends. This idea provides a means of formulating
the moral law: “every rational being must so act as
if he were by his maxims in every case a legislating
member in a universal kingdom of ends.” Such a king-
dom could be realized only if nature harmonized with
human ends, that is, only if the kingdom of nature and
the kingdom of ends were united under one supreme
ruler. Hence the moral idea of God is that supreme
regulating idea which brings all the sciences into sys-
tematic unity in the science of moral theology. It is
moral theology which “enables us to fulfill our voca-
tion,” or attain our highest end.
