Kant and the Idea of the End

This essay aims at analyzing the different meanings in which the relationship between ‘end’ and ‘time’ could be interpreted in Kantian philosophy. In the phenomenal context, the end marks a shift from one temporal series to another, which, remaining within the continuous horizon of time, implies a relative end in the context of a continuous un-ended succession. The concept of the end in time, which we could call ‘phenomenal’, entails the idea of an endless length of time which develops towards the future. The perspective of a future infinity opens the idea of a noumenal end, an end of time as the end of the horizon of experience. This noumenal end, related to the synthetic unit of experience, is the idea of an absolute end which marks out a total discontinuity with everything that precedes it. Therefore it is not an endless duration in temporal terms, but a measureless duration: a paradoxical notion. Hence, given that the aporia of the discontinuity between time and eternity holds good for the theoretical reason, the bridge that tries to go over this abyss cannot be crossed according to the point of view of critical reason. Therefore, after the checkmate of the noumenal end, Kant seizes the Archimedean point where the thought of the end turns to the thought of the aim: in this way the idea of the end acquires a sense only if connected to the idea of an ultimate aim. Proposing himself as the creation of an ultimate aim, man finds in culture the only means by which he can emancipate himself from nature: man as moral being is the noumenal man who exerts liberty on an oversensitive faculty. Nevertheless, it seems that idea of the progress of the human race, owing to its intrinsic coherence with a concept of open and endless temporality, clashes with the moral idea of a final aim, which entails the notion of perfection and completion. It is here that the poetic notion of an end of all things qua an end of time, that is to say, as a sense of narrative closure, seems to comply with these requirements. In fact, according to Kant, it is possible, through imaginative action, to replace the cognitive abyss of the border instant between time and eternity with a symbolic space of continuity and accomplished duration, which lies within the limits where the human being is no longer subject to time but is its producer and builder.