Immanuel Kant · 1790
Critique of Judgement
- Original title
- Kritik der Urteilskraft
- Language
- German
- Form
- Treatise
- Text
- Full text
- English
- No English translation · Yes: J. H. Bernard translation (1892; 2nd ed. 1914), Project Gutenberg #48433
- Source text
- gutenberg.org
- Selected
- Ben Breen, 2026-09-29; suggested by Claude research agents, 29 Sep 2026
- Status
- Arguments unverified; quotations chosen by machine, unchecked
Q08LIFE
Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
Q09LIFE
Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?No. an organism is not a machine. Holds that an organized being is not a mere machine, because a machine has only motive power while an organism has a formative power that it passes to matter and that reproduces and repairs its own parts.
Only a product of such a kind can be called a _natural purpose_, and this because it is an _organised_ and _self-organising being_. In a watch one part is the instrument for moving the other parts, but the wheel is not the effective cause of the production of the others; no doubt one part is for the sake of the others, but it does not exist by their means. In this case the producing cause of the parts and of their form is not contained in the nature (of the material), but is external to it in a being which can produce effects according to Ideas of a whole possible by means of its causality. Hence a watch wheel does not produce other wheels, still less does one watch produce other watches, utilising (organising) foreign material for that purpose; hence it does not replace of itself parts of which it has been deprived, nor does it make good what is lacking in a first formation by the addition of the missing parts, nor if it has gone out of order does it repair itself--all of which, on the contrary, we may expect from organised nature.--An organised being is then not a mere machine, for that has merely _moving_ power, but it possesses in itself _formative_ power of a self-propagating kind which it communicates to its materials though they have it not of themselves; it organises them, in fact, and this cannot be explained by the mere mechanical faculty of motion.
Critique of Teleological Judgement, §65 · §65 motive power vs formative power (KU 5:374-375) confirmed in secondary sources (Goy, Nunez on PhilArchive); Gutenberg #48433 listed.
What is more highly praised by poets than the bewitching and beautiful note of the nightingale in a lonely copse on a still summer evening by the soft light of the moon? And yet we have instances of a merry host, where no such songster was to be found, deceiving to their great contentment the guests who were staying with him to enjoy the country air, by hiding in a bush a mischievous boy who knew how to produce this sound exactly like nature (by means of a reed or a tube in his mouth). But as soon as we are aware that it is a cheat, no one will remain long listening to the song which before was counted so charming. And it is just the same with the songs of all other birds.Retained as a reserve/context passage for the original question; no stronger alternative placement established.