Teleology as a way to religion. Hölderlin and the antinomy of judgement

Abstract

The paper discusses Hölderlin’s reading of the Kantian antinomy of the faculty of judgement from a letter to Hegel in January 1795. Its meaning is first explored in relation to a kind of distinctiveness that Hölderlin recognizes to the solution of the antinomy, to the point of considering it the place where the entire spirit of the Kantian system comes to the fore. Secondly, the prototypical role of the antinomy of the faculty of judgement for the other antinomies is shown according to a feature they share in the way in which they are solved. The aim of the paper is to bring out the distinctive feature of Hölderlin’s theoretical confrontation with the Critique of teleological judgement as a task and orientation of Hölderlin’s philosophical commitment itself, which understands Kant’s efforts from a different perspective than the one of his contemporaries.