According to Kant, as I understand him, nature has an orderliness that appears (or compels belief in) to have been ordered by a divine power, but that the validity of such an appearance can neither be proved or disproved by the power of (pure) reason. Darwin's theory shows (as I understand it) that all life is the product of successive random forces. Does Kant's philosophy remain unaffected by this Darwinian insight?
You're quite right about Kant. The purposiveness--orderliness--of organisms in particular and, indeed, of nature in general, while manifest in experience, cannot themselves, according to Kant, be proven from experience. In the Critique of Judgment (henceforth referred to as 'KU' and cited from James Creed Meredith's translation, revised by Nicholas Walker [Oxford University Press, 2007]), Kant explains that the principle of the intrinsic purposiveness of organisms "must be derived from experience....But owing to the universality and necessity which that principle predicates of such purposiveness, it cannot rest on merely empirical grounds, but must have some underlying a priori principle" (§ 66). Since, however, according to Kant, and in accordance with Kant's understanding of Newtonianism, nature itself is merely a realm of efficient causes, there is no room in nature for purposiveness (KU § 66), which leads to an antinomy of teleological judgment (KU §§. 69-78, esp. §§. 69-71), very roughly...
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