CHAPTER III
THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT:
THE BEAUTIFUL
THE KEYSTONE OF THE CRITICAL ARCH
Kant saw his third Critique as the completion of his "entire critical enterprise" (ganzes kritisches Geschäft).1 (AK 5:170) As he writes in the "Introduction" to that work, the systematic division of the discipline of philosophy is according to the two possible kinds of concepts and their respective principles, namely, concepts of nature and concepts of freedom. Concepts of nature make possible a theoretical cognition governed by a priori principles; the concept of freedom by its very nature concerns principles for the determination of the will. (AK 5:171) The former is theoretical or natural philosophy and was the main theme of the first Critique; the latter is practical or moral philosophy and was the subject of the second Critique. The third Critique, the Critique of Judgment, is meant to provide a bridge between the realm of nature and the realm of freedom.
The psychology of the faculty of judgment is developed most fully in Kant's first version of the "Introduction" to the Critique of Judgment, which was revised before publication of the first edition in 1790 and was not published during Kant's lifetime.2 The power of judgment is a mediating link between understanding and reason in the order of our specific cognitive powers, and the feeling of pleasure and displeasure is the mediating link between our cognitive power in general and the power of desire.3 Kant explains that all the powers of the mind can be reduced to the by now familiar triad, namely the cognitive power, the feeling of pleasure and displeasure and the power of desire. These principal faculties are always based in their employment on the cognitive power, although not always on cognition, since cognition properly speaking requires both an intuition and a concept4 , and it is possible for the cognitive power to apprehend intuitions (pure or empirical) without concepts. When this occurs, as it does in aesthetic judgment, the presentations of the three faculties of the mind are apprehended by the cognitive power but are not cognized strictly speaking. The operation of all three principal mental powers is based on the cognitive power even though its own intuitions and the presentations of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure and the power of desire do not suffice to yield cognition. Kant intends to conduct an inquiry into the general power of cognition, through which we find that each of the three principal mental faculties are referred to corresponding higher mental powers that operate according to formal (a priori) principles. These higher faculties are understanding, judgment and reason, and their formal principles are lawfulness, purposiveness, and obligation (i.e., purposiveness that is also a law) respectively. The operation of these higher mental faculties according to their respective a priori principles yields our knowledge of nature, art and morals. (AK 20:245-7) The first Critique dealt with the cognitive power, the second Critique dealt with the power of desire; finally, the Critique of Judgment will deal with the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, thus completing the critical enterprise.
We should take special notice of the fact that the mediating link between the cognitive power and the power of desire is a feeling.5 While a feeling cannot be knowledge in the strict sense, it does take place in the spatio-temporal empirical world. We experience feeling; it is phenomenal. So while transcendental freedom, for example, cannot be an object of any possible experience6 , we do feel the free play of our powers of imagination and understanding when we are in the presence of a beautiful object. We experience our transcendental freedom indirectly in the presence of the beautiful. The feeling of the sublime is the result of the free play of the imagination and reason; in the sublime we get a feeling that we have within us a supersensible power.
Indeed, it is in this way that nature promotes the noumenal ends of freedom; the aesthetic experience gives us reason to believe that nature is supportive of our moral vocation. Kant holds that our investigation of the efficient causality of nature necessarily presupposes the concept of purposiveness (which is the formal principle of the faculty of judgment). We must assume a law governed unity in nature if our empirical cognition is to form a coherent experience. This transcendental principle of a purposiveness in nature is the transcendental concept which must guide us when reflecting on objects of nature if investigation of nature is to make sense. Purposiveness is either subjective or objective, and it is according to this distinction that the Critique of Judgment is divided into its two parts, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" and the Critique of Teleological Judgment." Aesthetic judgment is the power to judge formal, or subjective, purposiveness through the feeling of pleasure and displeasure; teleological judgment is the power to judge the real or objective purposiveness of nature through understanding and reason. (AK 5:193)
In the first "Introduction," Kant explains a little more carefully. There he writes that in a teleological judgment, nature is regarded as purposive objectively, i.e., by reference to the possibility of the object itself. In an aesthetic judgment, nature is regarded as purposive subjectively, i.e., with reference to the subject's way of presenting something. All purposiveness, whether objective or subjective, is either intrinsic or relative. Intrinsic purposiveness has its basis in the presentation of the object itself; relative purposiveness has its basis in the contingent use of this presentation. As we shall see, in the case of a beautiful object, the purposiveness is attributed in the aesthetic judgment to the thing and to nature itself. But there is a different aesthetic judgment in the case of the sublime; the pre-sentation of the sublime is applied to a purposiveness existing a priori in the subject, namely, the supersensible vocation of the subject's mental powers. The presentation of the sublime arouses a reflective feeling of purposiveness in the subject, which refers not to a purposiveness of nature concerning the subject, but rather to a possible purposive use we can make of the form of certain sensible intuitions. What matters in aesthetic judgments regarding the sublime is a contingent use we make of the presentation, not for the sake of cognizing the object as we do through the feeling associated with the beautiful, but for the sake of a feeling of the inner purposiveness in the predisposition of our mental powers. This is the basis of the division of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" into a critique of taste, which is the ability to judge the beautiful, and a critique of intellectual feeling (Geistesgefühl), which is the name Kant gives provisionally, as he tells us here, to the ability to present the sublimity in objects. (AK 20:249-50) By the time the Critique of Judgment is published, the "critique of intellectual feeling" has become the Analytic of the Sublime." Nevertheless, Kant maintains that the division of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" is according to the distinction between judgments of taste, which as such refer to the beautiful, and judgments of taste that arise from an intellectual feeling and as such refer to the sublime. (AK 5:194)
In the second, published "Introduction" to the third Critique, Kant's systematic concern regarding the explication of the mediating link between nature and freedom is more explicit.7 There is an immense gulf between the domain of the concept of nature, the sensible, and the domain of the concept of freedom, the super-sensible. No transition from the sensible to the supersensible through the use of theoretical reason is possible. And while the sensible world cannot have any influence on the supersensible world, the supersensible world must have influence on the sensible. The concept of freedom must be able to actualize its purpose in the world of sense, and so it must be possible to think of nature as being such that the lawfulness in its form will harmonize at least with the possibility of achieving the purposes of the laws of freedom in nature. Nature must in some way support the noumenal ends of freedom; the laws of causality must be somehow compatible with the laws of freedom. There must be a basis uniting the supersensible that underlies nature and the supersensible contained practically in the concept of freedom even though this basis cannot be cognized theoretically or practically. The basis Kant has in mind is the basis of aesthetic judgment; it is aesthetic judgment that makes possible the transition from our way of thinking in terms of principles of nature to our way of thinking in terms of principles of freedom. (AK 5:175-6)
As we have seen, Kant will argue that the experience of the sublime is the feeling of the inner purposiveness in the predisposition of our mental powers, namely our supersensible moral vocation. That the vocation of the human being is to be the ultimate purpose of nature and that nature's ultimate purpose must be to prepare human beings for the achievement of that ultimate purpose is a topic Kant takes up in §83 of the Critique of Judgment. There he asks, what is the purpose human beings are to further through their connection with nature? Either it is one that can be fulfilled by nature itself in its beneficence, or it is a purpose achieved through human aptitude and skill in the use of nature, either outside or within oneself. On the first alternative the purpose of nature would be human happiness; on the second it is human culture. (AK 5:429-30)
Happiness is only an idea of the complete satisfaction under empirical conditions of all inclination; it is an idea that changes so frequently that even if nature were completely subjected to human choice, it could not possibly adopt a definite and fixed universal law that would keep it in harmony with that wavering concept of happiness that each person sets for him or herself.8 Even if nature outside us were utterly beneficent, its purpose would not be achieved if that purpose aimed at human happiness, because human nature is not receptive to it. In the chain of natural purposes man is never more than a link. (AK 5:430-31)
But human beings have understanding and therefore an ability to choose their own purposes. If nature is regarded as a teleological system, it is man's vocation to be the ultimate purpose of nature subject to the condition that he have the understanding and the will to give both nature and himself reference to a purpose that is self-sufficient, final and transcends natural causality. In order to discover this ultimate purpose of nature in mankind, Kant writes that we must discover what nature can accomplish in order to prepare human beings for what they must themselves do in order to be a final purpose, and then separate that from all other purposes whose achievability rests on conditions we can expect nature to fulfill by itself. This latter purpose is human happiness on earth, or the sum total of all purposes that can be achieved through nature both outside and inside oneself. If one makes happiness one's whole purpose, one is unable to set a final purpose for one's own existence and to harmonize oneself with this final purpose, which is a purpose in accordance with the concept of freedom. There remains only one purpose which nature can accomplish with a view to the final purpose outside of nature, and this is that of producing in a rational being an aptitude for purposes generally, without reference to natural causality, which Kant calls culture. Culture is the only ultimate purpose that can be attributed to nature with respect to human beings. (AK 5:431) The formal condition under which nature can achieve this final purpose is civil society; only in civil society can the fine arts and sciences flourish. As we shall see, there is a universally communicable pleasure associated with these fine arts and sciences that undermines the tyranny of the senses and prepares us to embrace the ends of our reason under laws of freedom. Culture strives to give us an education that makes us receptive to purposes higher than those that nature itself can provide, namely, the purposes of morality.9 (AK 5:433-4) As Salim Kemal puts it, Kant uses culture to try to understand the relation of nature to individuals possessing the capacity for rational freedom.10
The aesthetic experience, then, is for Kant that which mediates between the realm of nature
and the realm of freedom through the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Moreover, especially
through the experience of the sublime, it is a kind of doorway to the supersensible, giving us
experiential evidence that we do in fact exist as both phenomenal and noumenal beings, and that
the transcendental ideas of an immortal human soul, freedom (as the causality of a being insofar
as the being belongs to the intelligible world), and God11 might be more for us than mere postulates
of pure practical reason. If this interpretation is correct, we see that the experience of the feeling
of the sublime, coming as it does through the feeling of pleasure and displeasure adds another,
more immediate, level of moral motivation to the incentives of pure practical reason described in
the second Critique.12
ANALYTIC OF THE BEAUTIFUL:
THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE
An aesthetic judgment that concerns the beautiful is a judgment of taste. In such a judgment the presentation of the object is not referred to the understanding so as to give rise to a cognition; rather, the presentation of the object is referred by the imagination to the subject and his or her feeling of pleasure or displeasure. In fact, the presentation of a beautiful object cannot be referred to any determinate concept of the understanding; it is precisely this indeterminacy that constitutes the quality of beauty. Hence the judgment of taste is reflective. Judgment in general is the ability to think the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal is given, the judgment that subsumes the particular under it is determinative. If only the particular is given and the universal must be found, the judgment is reflective.13 (AK 5:179) The judgment of taste is also a disinterested one;14 it is concerned with the mere contemplation of its object rather than its existence. Interest is liking connected with an object's existence, and such liking refers to our power of desire rather than to our feeling of pleasure and displeasure. (AK 5:204-5) What the senses like in sensation15 is the agreeable. When we find an object agreeable, we desire objects of that kind. The liking is more than a mere judgment about the form of the object; it means that the existence of the object has been referred to our state of being insofar as that state of being is affected by the agreeable object. The agreeable object arouses in us a pleasant feeling based on our relationship to its presence. We have an interest in its existence. (AK 5:205-7)
On the other hand, when we like a thing through its mere concept, by means of our reason, we call it good. If we like a thing we call good for its own sake it is intrinsically good. If we like it for the sake of something else it is good as a means. In both cases the concept "good" always contains the concept of a purpose (either it has worth in itself as an end or it is useful as a means to some other end). The concept of purpose involves a relation of reason to at least a possible volition, and so an interest in the existence of the object or action. When we call an object good, it becomes an object of the will through principles of reason under the concept of a purpose. (AK 5:207-8)16 Both the agreeable and the good then, are always connected with an interest in their object. This holds not only for goods that are means to ends but also for what is good absolutely, namely the moral good. In fact, the moral good should be our highest interest. (AK 5:209) But as shall be shown below, although the judgment of taste is disinterested, it leads us to that which is our highest interest, the moral good. This work will try to show that there is a clear and explicit connection in the third Critique between the beautiful and morality. How a disinterested judgment can be connected to our most vital interest is a problem we will have to take up later on.17
Taste is the ability to judge an object, or a way of presenting it, by means of a liking or disliking devoid of all interest. The object of such a liking is called beautiful."18 The fact that we like some-thing without any interest (which is subjective) leads us to believe that our judging contains a basis for expecting the same judgment from everyone. Since the liking does not depend on subjective con-ditions, we regard it as based on what we presuppose in everyone, namely the basic nature of the human mind. We regard beauty as a characteristic of the object and expect others to agree with our judgment, even though the aesthetic judgment really refers to the mental state aroused in the subject by the presentation of the object. We presuppose the aesthetic judgment to be valid for everyone as if it were a judgment of logic. But this universality cannot arise from concepts since the feeling of pleasure and displeasure is not based on concepts.19 This claim to universality not based on concepts Kant calls subjective universality" (subjective Allgemeinheit).20 (AK 5:211-2)
While everyone has his or her own taste regarding what is agreeable, for Kant it is ridiculous to say that the beautiful depends on what is charming and agreeable in a given subject. The taste of sense is distinguished from the taste of reflection in that the former is subjective and the latter involves a claim to subjective universality. When we call something beautiful we mean something more than that we ourselves like it, and we expect the agreement (Einstimmung) of others. Why do we expect others to agree with us when we judge an object beautiful, especially given that the beautiful is not really a characteristic of the object?
If the judgment were based on a concept it would concern the good rather than the beautiful.21 The reflective judgment of taste is not based on a concept (judgments based on concepts are determinate). If we did not expect agreement when we judge an object beautiful, the beautiful would be no more than the agreeable (i.e., the fact that we expect agreement means that the beautiful is something more than the agreeable). Everything we like without a concept would be included under the taste of sense, since the agreeable is what we like without expecting universal agreement. But judgments regarding the beautiful involve taste of reflection wherein we expect universal agreement just as we do in judgments of logic. This universality, which does not rest on concepts of the object (be they formal or empirical), is not a logical universality but an aesthetic one. (AK 5:214)
Kant terms a universality that does not rest on concepts of the object general validity" (Gemeingültigkeit). This is the validity that a presentation referred to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure may have as opposed to the validity of a presentation referred to the cognitive power. Alternatively Kant uses the term subjective universal validity" (subjective Allgemeingültigkeit) for the aesthetic or general validity, and objective universal validity" (objective Allgemeingültigkeit) for the validity of a logical judg-ment. (AK 5:214-5) The aesthetic judgment does not rest on a concept and so cannot have logical universal validity which requires a concept. Hence the aesthetic judgment does not deal with the object itself. The subjective universal (aesthetic) validity attributed to a judgment of taste is not the result of a connection of the predicate beauty" with the concept of the object, it is the result of a connection of the predicate beauty" and the (mental) realm of judging persons (who encounter the object we call beautiful). (AK 5:215) Why is this so? Why do we expect agreement when we judge an object beautiful?
When we judge objects in terms of concepts, we can demand objective (logical) universal validity. But if we judge objects merely in terms of concepts we lose all presentation of beauty. There can be no rule by which we could demand the acknowledgment of another that an object is beautiful. The beautiful does not fall under a rule (the categories).
When we encounter the beautiful, we want to submit the object to our own eyes as if our
liking of it as beautiful depended on the sensation. But when we say an object is beautiful we
hear a universal voice" (allgemeine Stimme), and it is on that basis that we expect agreement
from everyone. Hence Kant says at this point
. . . that nothing is postulated in a judgment of taste except such a universal voice about a liking unmediated by concepts. Hence all
that is postulated is the possibility of a judgment that is aesthetic and yet can be considered valid
for everyone. The judgment of taste itself does not postulate everyone's agreement (since only a
logically universal judgment can do that, because it can adduce reasons); it merely requires this
agreement from everyone, as an instance of the rule, an instance regarding which it expects
confirmation not from concepts but from the agreement of others.
Hier ist nun zu sehen, daß in dem Urtheile des Geschmacks nichts postulirt wird, als eine solche
allgemeine Stimme in Ansehung des Wohlgefallens ohne Vermittelung der Begriffe; mithin die
Möglichkeit eines ästhetischen Urtheils, welches zugleich als für jedermann gültig betrachtet
werden könne. Das Geschmacksurtheil selber postulirt nicht jedermanns Einstimmung (denn das
kann nur ein logisch allgemeines, weil es Gründe anführen kann, thun); es sinnt nur jedermann
diese Einstimmung an, als einen Fall der Regel, in Ansehung dessen es die Bestätigung nicht von
Begriffen, sondern von anderer Beitritt erwartet.22
The universal voice is an idea (Idee)23 to which we refer our judging when we make a judgment of taste regarding the beautiful. One can be certain in that one's judgment does in fact refer to this idea by being conscious that one's liking does not depend on the agreeable (sense liking) or the good (liking under a concept). Only then can one count on everyone's assent. Why we are justified in this claim remains to be seen.
It cannot be the case that the feeling of pleasure we associate with the beautiful object comes before the judgment that the object is beautiful. Such a case would be an example of agreeableness in sensation, which by its nature can have only private validity. As we have seen, the judgment that an object is beautiful does not lie in the sensation of it (the agreeable) or in its concept (the good). The judgment that a thing is beautiful is the result of a state of mind (Gemüthszustand). We are aware of this state of mind through the feeling that results from the free play (freies Spiel) of the imagination and the understanding occasioned by the presentation of the object. The subjective condition of the judgment of taste is the universal communicability of this mental state underlying the judgment of taste. Pleasure in the object must be the consequence of this subjective condition, not its antecedent. (AK 5:216-7) We still must ask how this mental state underlying the judgment of taste can be universally communicable.
Objective communication involves cognition. As Kant says here, nothing can be communicated universally except cognition, or a presentation that is referred to cognition as the universal reference point with which everyone's presentational power is compelled to harmonize. But we have been talking about an expected and required agreement from others regarding a judgment that we make without a concept. What is the basis for the universal communicability of the presentation we call beautiful? The presentation is subjectively determined; it does not involve a concept of the object. How can it be communicated universally if only cognitions are universally communicable? The answer is that the subjectively determined basis of this presentation is nothing other than the mental state that we find in the relation between the presentational powers of imagination and understanding insofar as they refer a given presentation to cognition in general. (AK 5:217) In this way the presentation of the beautiful object is referred to cognition as a universal reference point, and we can therefore expect and require the agreement of all other similarly constituted (rational) minds.24
The judgment that a thing is beautiful is a state of mind occasioned by the presentation of the object. When in the presence of the beautiful, the mind's cognitive powers are brought into play, as they would be when in the presence of any object. Knowledge or cognition occurs when the manifold of intuition (das Mannigfaltige der Anschauung)25 is combined by the imagination (Einbildungskraft)26 under a concept given by the understanding (Verstand)27 through its unifying pure concepts of synthesis, the categories. But when the cognitive powers are brought into play by the presentation of a beautiful object, no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition. The cognitive powers are in a free play (freies Spiel). The understanding and the imagination are in free play because there is no determinate concept to restrict them to a particular rule of cognition. This mental state must be a feeling (Gefühl); the mind is aware of the free play of the imagination and the understanding although it cannot subsume this awareness under a concept and obtain actual knowledge of it. Yet it is this free play of the cognitive powers accompanying the presentation of a beautiful object that must be universally communi-cable, since it is only by reference to cognition (in this case cognition in general) that a presentation can be made that holds for everyone. The cognitive powers in their free play harmonize as they refer the given presentation to cognition in general, and cognition in general provides the universal reference point around which we can expect the cognitive powers of any (similarly constituted) subject whatever to harmonize as well. (AK 5:217)
Two comments are in order at this point. First, we should take careful note that the mental state accompanying the presentation of an object we call beautiful is a feeling. We feel the free play of the imagination and the understanding. We feel the mind's freedom when we are in the presence of the beautiful, and, as we shall see, we get a sense of timelessness as well.28 Feeling is clearly something we experience in the spatio-temporal empirical world, yet we feel things that transcend space and time when in the presence of the beautiful. We experience the transcendent, noumenal world when we feel the free play of the cognitive powers, and so it would seem that we have access to the supersensible that does not depend upon the postulates of pure practical reason.
Secondly, we should note that Kant's argument here is perhaps not altogether persuasive;
we should ask, is the free play of the cognitive powers in reference to cognition in general
accompanying the presentation of the beautiful a universally communicable mental state that is
valid for everyone or do we say that the free play of the cognitive powers in reference to
cognition in general must be universally communicable because that is the only way of
presenting that is valid for everyone? The language Kant uses actually suggests the latter. But
this truly metaphysical question and the critique it leads to lie beyond the scope of the present
chapter.29 What is important for us now are the implications of Kant's aesthetic theory as he presents it.
THE PHENOMENON CALLED BEAUTY
The presentation that occurs in a judgment of taste has subjective universal communicability without presupposing a determinate concept. This subjective universal communicability is the communication of the mental state (Gemüthszustand) that exists when the imagination and the understanding are in free play, insofar as they harmonize with each other as required for cognition in general.30 The subjective relation (harmony) between the cognitive powers of imagination and understanding suitable for cognition in general must hold for everyone, i.e., for any other being sharing these cognitive powers. The mental state that is this subjective relation between the imagination and the understanding must be as universally communicable as any determinate cognition since the subjective condition of any cognition rests on the relation between the imagination and the understanding. (Ak 5:217-8)31
The ability to communicate one's mental state (Gemüthszus-tand) generally, even if this is only the state of one's cognitive powers, results in a feeling of pleasure. This can be established empirically and psychologically from our natural propensity to sociability. But the pleasure we feel when making a judgment of taste is something more than this pleasure; the pleasure we feel here we require as necessary when another is in the presence of the object we judge beautiful. It is as if beauty were a characteristic of the object, determined according to concepts, even though beauty is nothing in itself apart from a reference to the subject's feeling. (AK 5:218) How is it possible to communicate that which is nothing in itself apart from a feeling in a subject? Kant clearly thinks that such communication is possible, and the fact that he does supports our thesis that feeling, especially the feeling of the sublime, constitutes a way of knowing (although not "knowledge" in the strict sense) the supersensible.32 We shall return to this point shortly.
We are conscious of a reciprocal subjective harmony between the cognitive powers of the imagination and the understanding when we make a judgment of taste. We feel our mental state. Is this consciousness the result of mere inner sense and sensation, or is it the result of a consciousness of the intentional activity by which we bring these powers into play? That is to say, is the consciousness passive (aesthetic33 ) or active (intellectual34 )? We might expect Kant to argue that the consciousness is the result of an active mental process rather than a passive being-acted-upon, but the feeling of pleasure and displeasure to which a judgment of taste is referred cannot be intellectual. If the presentation that prompts the judgment of taste were a concept, under which our judgment of the object would unite the imagination and the understanding giving rise to cognition of the object, the consciousness of this relation between the cognitive powers would be intellectual.35 Such a judgment is not made in reference to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure and cannot be a judgment of taste. A judgment of taste determines the object with regard to liking and the predicate of beauty, and so it is only through sensation that the mind can be aware of the unity of the relation in the subject between imagination and understanding (that results from the harmonizing of the two cognitive powers in reference to cognition in general). This sensation is the quickening or animating (Belebung) of the two powers (imagination and understanding) to an activity that is indeterminate but, through the prompting of the given presentation, is an accordant or unanimous activity (einhellige Thätigkeit). The activity is in accord with that required for cognition in general. An objective relation can only be thought, but insofar as it has subjective conditions it can be sensed in the effect it has on the mind. If the relation is not based on a concept, the only way we become conscious of it is through a sensation of this relation's effect. The relation that the presentational powers must have in order to give rise to a power of cognition in general is a relation that is not based on a concept. We can become aware of it through a sensation of this relation's effect, namely the facilitated play of the imagination and the understanding enlivened (beleben) by their reciprocal harmony (wechselseitige Zusammens-timmung). This reciprocal harmony is the harmony necessary for cognition in general. The presentation of this harmony accords with the conditions of universality that is the business of the understanding in general. The cognitive powers are brought into the proportioned attunement (proportionale Stimmung) required for all cognition. This attunement is considered valid for any being so constituted as to judge by means of understanding combined with the senses, that is to say, for all human beings. Hence we can expect that any human being in the presence of an object which occasions the mental state we associate with the beautiful will experience the same sensation. The beautiful, then, is what is liked universally without a concept. (AK 5:218-20)
Beauty is a subjective mental state36 that is the felt effect of the free play of the imagination and the understanding, enlivened by their mutual harmony and occasioned by a given object. Although beauty is a subjective mental state, because it is the result of the free play of the cognitive faculties, we expect the same mental state to occur in any subject possessing the same faculties, and so the mental state is communicable (by presenting another subject with the object that occasioned the mental state). In this way, the experience of the beautiful is objective. Through the free play of the cognitive faculties the mind is aware of its freedom. Through the contemplation of the beautiful, over which we "linger" (weilen), the mind experiences a sense of timelessness.37
What is it in the object that precipitates this free play of the cognitive powers? Nothing more than the way the object is presented, or what Kant calls the form of purposiveness. The judgment of taste is based on the form of purposiveness of an object. Purposiveness (Zweckmäßigkeit) or forma finalis (purposive form) is the causality that a concept has with regard to its object. A purpose (Zweck) is the object of a concept where the concept is regarded as the real basis of the object's possibility (the effect is brought about by some cause through a concept that this cause has of it). We think of a purpose when we think of the form or existence of the object itself as an effect that is only possible through a concept of that effect. That is to say, we think of a purpose when we think of the existence or form of a tree as being possible only through some cause having the concept of "tree." Thinking "tree" involves thinking what a tree is for. The causality that the concept "tree" has with regard to the object that is a tree is purposiveness, i.e, the existence of the tree is thought as being the result of some purpose contained in the concept "tree." The power of desire (Begehrun-gsvermögen) insofar as it can be determined to act in conformity with the presentation of a purpose is the will. However, we sometimes call objects, states of mind (Gemüthszustand) or acts purposive even if their possibility does not necessarily presuppose the presentation of a purpose. We do this because we can explain them only if we assume that they are based on a causality that operates according to purposes. Hence there can be purposiveness without a purpose (Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck) in that we do not claim to know the causes of such purposive form in a will, but we cannot grasp the explanation of its possibility unless we assume a will. We can observe a purposiveness as to form and take note of this purposive form in objects without basing the purposiveness on a purpose (which would require knowledge of the concept). (AK 5:220)
A judgment of taste cannot be based on a subjective purpose, which is purpose regarded as the basis of a liking. Such a liking is based on agreeableness (Annehmlichkeit) and always involves an interest in the existence of the object of pleasure. Neither can the judgment of taste be determined by a presentation of an objective purpose, which is a presentation of the object itself as possible in terms of connection to some other purpose. Such an objective purpose involves a concept of the good. The aesthetic judgment of taste involves only the relation of the presentational powers38 to one another as they are determined by a presentation of an object the judgment determines as beautiful. This relation of the presentational powers is connected to the feeling of a pleasure which the judgment of taste declares to be valid for everyone, since we expect any other being with a similarly constituted mind to ex-perience the same relation of the presentational powers and so the same feeling.39 Since the judgment of taste cannot be based on the agreeableness accompanying the presentation, or a presentation of the object's perfection (which involves the concept of the good)40 , it can only be the subjective purposiveness" (subjective Zweckmäßigkeit) in the presentation of the object without any purpose (subjective or objective) that determines the judgment of taste. That is to say, the subject is conscious of a purposiveness that does not depend on agreeableness or a concept of the good. The subject is conscious of purposiveness without a purpose" and so of the "mere form of purposiveness" (bloße Form der Zweck-mäßigkeit) in the presentation by which the object is given (gegeben) to us. (AK 5:221)
The feeling of pleasure accompanying this relation of the presentational powers is a merely contemplative pleasure. It is the consciousness of a merely formal purposiveness in the play of the subject's cognitive powers accompanying a presentation by which an object is given.41 This consciousness contains a basis for determining the subject's activity regarding the enlivening (Belebung) of his cognitive powers. The consciousness in an aesthetic judgment, then, provides an inner causality that is purposive with regard to cognition in general (it is not restricted to a determinate cognition). The consciousness contains the mere form of the subjective purposiveness of a presentation. The pleasure is not practical in any way, since there is no input from either a pathological basis (agreeableness) or an intellectual basis (the concept of the good). It has a causality in it, however; it keeps the cognitive powers engaged in their occupation without any further aim beyond the contemplation of the presentation itself. We linger (weilen) in our contemplation of the beautiful because this contemplation "reinforces and reproduces itself" (sich selbst stärkt und reproducirt). The mind is actively engaged in this contemplative pleasure, enjoying the free play of the cognitive powers. (AK 5:222) The interpretation being offered in this work holds that Kant's position is that the mind is aware of a sense of timelessness in this contemp-lation; it is this awareness, which is not cognitive, that makes the truly beautiful object endlessly fascinating. Hence the mental state we experience in the presence of an object we call beautiful is the result of the mind's awareness of its freedom and the possibility of a world that exists beyond the constraints of time. The aesthetic experience Kant describes is a consciousness, a non-cognitive awareness, of the supersensible.
How can we support this claim? In his General Comment on the First Division of the Analytic (of the beautiful), Kant defines taste as an ability to judge an object in reference to the "free lawfulness of the imagination" (freie Gesetzmäßigkeit der Einbildungskraft). In a judgment of taste the imagination must be considered in its freedom. Its power here is productive and spon-taneous, as opposed to reproductive. In apprehending a given object of sense the imagination does not have free play, since it is tied to the determinate form of the sensed object. But the object may offer the imagination just the sort of form in the combination of its manifold as the imagination would design in harmony with the understanding's lawfulness if it were left to itself and free. To say that the imagination is free (autonomous) and lawful in itself is a contradiction, however. Only the understanding provides a law. When the imagination must proceed according to a determinate law (the categories) its product is determined by concepts. As we have seen, however, if the liking is determined by concepts, it is a liking for the good and not the beautiful. It is only a lawfulness without a law (the form of lawfulness itself) and a subjective harmony of the imagination and the understanding without an objective harmony (which would result in a cognition) that is compatible with the free lawfulness of the understanding42 and with the peculiarity of a judgment of taste. Here the form of lawfulness itself is compared to the form of purposiveness itself; the imagination is free and active in the judgment of taste. The mind is conscious of its freedom.
A presentation of freedom is the sine qua non of any beautiful object. If the free play of our presentational powers43 is to be sustained (unterhalten), any regularity that has an air of restraint is to be avoided as much as possible. Anything that shows stiff re-gularity runs counter to taste because it does not allow us to enjoy the contemplation of it for any length of time. It bores us. It lacks the elements of timelessness and freedom that bring about the state of mind we call beautiful. On the other hand, whatever lends itself to unstudied and purposive play by the imagination is always new to us. We never tire of looking at such an object; as we have seen, the merely contemplative pleasure reinforces and reproduces itself without limit. Through this state of mind we get a sense of timeless-ness and freedom.44 We become aware, through a consciousness, and so an experience, of the supersensible. Hence the interpretation advanced in this work is that for Kant the aesthetic experience is a doorway to the noumenal. And so the song of a bird offers more to our taste than human song or music precisely because it cannot be brought under a rule of music; it seems to contain freedom. And while the changing shapes of a fireplace or a brook can charm the imagination by sustaining its free play we do not say they are beautiful; the sense of freedom and timelessness that makes an object beautiful is absent. (AK 5:242-3)
Turning to Kant's discussion of art generally and fine art in particular, we see that freedom is also the sine qua non condition of art. We should not call anything art except a production through freedom, i.e., a production through a power of choice that bases its acts on reason. Nature, then, does not produce art. (Although if we posit God we could regard nature as a production of such a power of choice,45 and Kant will say in the Opus postumum that organized beings presuppose exactly this kind of rational choice, i.e., God.) Art is distinguished from science and craft; art is not something we are able to do as soon as we understand the rules. There is a need for some constraint (rules) in art, for example prosody and meter in poetry, but it is a free spirit (Geist) that animates a work of art. (AK 5:303-4) Considering art in general, Kant distinguishes mechanical art from aesthetic art. Mechanical art makes a possible object actual adequately to our cognition of the object. We recognize it, but get no pleasure from it. Art that intends to arouse in us a feeling of pleasure is aesthetic art, which comprises agreeable art and fine art. Art is agreeable if its purpose is that the pleasure should accompany presentations that are mere sensations; art is fine if its purpose is that the pleasure should accompany presentations that are ways of cognizing. Fine art is a way of presenting that is purposive (without a purpose) and furthers the culture of our mental powers to facilitate social communication.46 The standard of fine art is the reflective power of judgment rather than sensation proper. (AK 5:305-6)
Natural beauty is a beautiful thing; artistic beauty is a beautiful presentation of a thing.47 (AK 5:311) The beautiful presentation of an object is actually only the form of a concept's exhibition by which the concept is universally communicated. (AK 5:312) Although we are conscious that fine art is art and not a product of nature (since nature does not produce art), the purposiveness in its form must seem free from all constraint of chosen rules just as if it were a product of nature. This is necessary if the presentation is to evoke the feeling of freedom in the play of our cognitive powers that results from the mental state we call beautiful. Although the purposiveness in a product of fine art is intentional, it must not seem intentional; fine art must look like nature even though we know it is art. This is because it is nature that presents us with purposiveness without a purpose. Nature appears to be purposive but we cannot know if in fact it is purposive, much less what the purpose is. Purposiveness without a purpose (lawfulness without a law) presents the form of purposiveness that enlivens the cognitive powers in their free play and produces the feeling of pleasure we experience when in the presence of the beautiful. Genius (Genie) is the talent that can give a rule that looks like freedom to fine art.48 (AK 5:306-7)
Spirit (Geist) in the context of Kant's aesthetics is the ability to exhibit aesthetic ideas. (AK 5:313-4)
Spirit is the ability that genius has in order to express aesthetic ideas in such a way that they may
communicate the mental attunement the ideas produce. (AK 5:317) An aesthetic idea is a
presentation of the imagination that prompts much thought, but to which no determinate thought
or concept whatsoever can be adequate.49 An aesthetic idea strives towards something that lies
beyond the bounds of experience;50 they are inner intuitions to which no concept can be completely
adequate. In the process of creating aesthetic ideas we feel our freedom from the law of
association (under which the imagination operates in its empirical use). (AK 5:314) An aesthetic
idea is a presentation that makes us add to a concept the thoughts of much that is ineffable, but
the feeling of which quickens (beleben) our cognitive powers, connecting language with spirit.
(AK 5:316) Fine art exhibits aesthetic ideas; when it does so successfully, we say it is beautiful;
we never tire of contemplating it; it give us a sense of the free and timeless aspects of our nature.
THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE MORAL
In addition to the experience of the supersensible that the mental state we experience in the presence of a beautiful object gives us in terms of a sense of timelessness and of our freedom, Kant connects the beautiful to the supersensible through the moral.51 Although the judgment of taste by means of which we declare something to be beautiful must not have any interest as its deter-mining basis, after the judgment has been made on purely aesthetic grounds an interest can be connected with it, albeit indirectly.52 This interest can be empirical or intellectual. By "empirical" (empirisch) interest Kant means that the interest is based on some inherent inclination of human nature. By "intellectual" (intellectuell) interest he means that the interest is based on the will's property of being determinable a priori by reason, or, in other words, the will's moral property. (AK 5:296) As we shall see, beauty is a symbol of morality.
The beautiful can only be of empirical interest in society.53 The inherent inclination Kant has in mind is the urge to live in society. This natural inclination to society is furthered by "sociability" (Geselligkeit), which is enhanced by taste" (Geschmack). Taste is an ability to judge whatever allows us to communicate our feeling to everyone else, and this ability enhances our fitness and propensity for society. Kant thinks that outside of society no one would seek to adorn himself or his dwelling; only in society does one seek such refinements. We judge someone refined if he has the inclination and the skill to communicate his pleasure to others, and one is not satisfied with an object unless one can feel one's liking for it in community with others. We enjoy a beautiful object much more when we are in the company of others who agree with us that the object is beautiful than we would if we were alone. And we expect a concern for universal communication of pleasure on the basis of our very humanity. (AK 5:297) Taste is a kind of common sense (sensus communis) which is accomplished by our putting ourselves in the position of everyone else and comparing our judgments to the merely possible judgments of others. We do this by leaving out as much as possible of the material, or sensation, from the presentational state which precipitates our judgment, paying attention only to its formal features. When we do this we expect agreement from everyone, i.e., any being possessing similar mental faculties (any rational being). (AK 5:293-4) Initially, only charms" (Reiz) are important in societies, but as civilization evolves beautiful forms overtake charm in importance. When civilization reaches its peak, the universal communicability is the principle interest of refined taste, rather than charm. Sensations (charms) are valued only to the extent that they are universally communicable. This interest in universal communication promotes sociability, and hence we have, Kant tells us, through our natural inclination to society, an indirect empirical interest in the beautiful.54 (AK 5:297)
Kant is looking for a transition from the agreeable to the good. Put another way, Kant seeks to find a transition from the sensible to the supersensible,55 which is the underlying problem of the third Critique. Since the attachment of the beautiful to our inclination to society is empirical, our interest in the beautiful based on this inclination can provide only a very ambiguous transition from the agreeable to the good. But if we consider a judgment of taste in its pure form, we may discover something that has reference to it a priori, if only indirectly. That is, we may discover an intellectual interest in the beautiful. If such an interest were to reveal itself, taste would reveal how our ability to make judgments of taste provides a transition from "sense enjoyment" (Sinnengenuß) to moral feeling" (Sittengefühl)56 . We would then have better guid-ance in using taste purposively (to promote moral feeling), and we would also be able to show that judgment is a mediating link" (Mittelglied) in the chain of our a priori powers upon which all legislation must depend. (AK 5:297-8) By demonstrating an intellectual, i.e., an a priori57 interest in the beautiful, Kant finds a link between the agreeable and the good, or the sensible and the supersensible. This supports his case that judgment is the mediating link between the understanding, the proper application of which is the giving of rules to (our experience of) nature (the sensible), and reason, the application of which is to provide principles for the use of our freedom (the supersensible). In the judgment of taste we experience this link to the supersensible through feeling, rather than merely postulating the supersensible as a necessary consequence of pure practical reason.
The connection of the beautiful to the moral is not new to Kant. Previous thinkers58 have considered an interest in the beautiful generally a sign of good moral character. Others have pointed to virtuosi of taste who are vain, obstinate, given to ruinous passions, and so can hardly be associated with good moral characters. Not only does this indicate to Kant that the feeling for the beautiful is distinct in kind from moral feeling (moralisches Gefühl), but that it is impossible to reconcile the beautiful with moral interest by an alleged intrinsic affinity between the two. (AK 5:298) Nevertheless, the feeling of the beautiful is connected to moral feeling. To take a direct interest in the beautiful forms of nature (not nature's charms, which are empirical) is always the mark of "a good soul" (einer guten Seele), and if this interest is readily associated with the contemplation of nature it indicates at least a mental attunement" (Gemüthstimmung) favorable to moral feeling. By "direct interest" Kant means a liking of nature's product for its form and its existence, even though no charm of sense is involved. Hence the interest is direct but remains intellectual. (AK 5:299)
We have in the aesthetic power of judgment an ability to judge forms without using concepts, in which we feel a liking that we also make a rule for everyone, even though the judgment is not based on an interest and does not in itself give rise to one. We also have an intellectual power of judgment, which is an ability for determining a priori the mere forms of practical maxims the liking of which59 we make a law for everyone. This judgment too is not based on any interest, but it gives rise to one (the moral interest). The pleasure or displeasure in the first judgment is that of taste; of the second judgment it is that of moral feeling. Moral feeling causes reason to have a direct interest in the objective reality of its ideas, in other words, moral feeling causes reason to have an interest that nature should at least show a trace or give a hint that it contains some basis for us to assume that there is a lawful harmony between the products of nature and that liking of ours that is independent of all interest, the judgment of taste.60 As was shown at the beginning of the present chapter, reason must take an interest in any manifestation in nature of such a harmony, and so the mind cannot contemplate the beauty of nature without having its interest aroused. This interest in the beautiful in nature shares a kinship with the moral, hence whoever takes an interest in the beautiful in nature can only do so to the extent that he has already solidly established an interest in the morally good. If someone is directly interested in the beauty of nature we have reason to believe that he has at least a predisposition to a good moral attitude.61 (AK 5:300-1) Here the aesthetic judgment is described in terms of a kinship with moral feeling. Nature displays itself as art, i.e., nature seems (to us) to display itself in terms of a lawful arrangement and not merely as the result of chance; nature displays itself as purposiveness without a purpose (which is the form of the beautiful). Since we do not find this purpose anywhere outside us, we look for it in ourselves. We look for it in that which constitutes the ultimate purpose of our existence (was den letzten Zweck unseres Daseins ausmacht): our moral vocation (moralische Bestimmung).62 (AK 5:301)
Our liking for beautiful productions in a pure judgment of taste is not connected with a direct interest because art either achieves its effect by imitating nature and being regarded as natural beauty, or we see that it intentionally aimed at our liking, in which case it interests us only in its purpose and not in itself. We are only able to take direct interest in the beautiful as such if it is nature or if we consider it to be nature. This holds especially if we require others to take a direct interest, which we do. We consider someone's way of thinking course and ignoble if he has no feeling for the beautiful in nature. (AK 5:302-3)
The beautiful and the moral, then, are connected through the interest reason has in the reality of its ideas. While the empirical interest in the beautiful is indirect, the intellectual interest is direct63 . The link between the agreeable and the good is only ambiguously established through our empirical interest in the beautiful, but our intellectual interest in the beautiful shows that taste is able to directly establish a link between the agreeable and the good, the sensible and the supersensible, via its kinship with moral feeling.
Kant makes an even more explicit connection between the moral and the beautiful in §59, On Beauty as a Symbol of Morality.64 We must first ask what Kant means by symbol" (Symbol).65 A symbol is analogous to what Kant called a schema" in the first Critique. Intuitions are required to establish that our concepts have reality. If the concepts are empirical, the intuitions are called "examples" (Beispiele). If the concepts are pure concepts of the understanding, the intuitions conveyed by means of the imagination and which are therefore abstract are called schemata" (Schemata). A schema is what mediates and so makes possible the subsumption of intuitions under concepts of the understanding, or, a schema is what makes possible the application of concepts of the understanding to intuitions. It does so by sharing features of both a concept and an intuition.66 But no intuition can be adequate to a rational concept (an idea of reason), and so we cannot establish their objective reality for the sake of theoretical cognition.67 All hypotyposis" (exhibition, subiectio ad adspectum68 ) consists in making a concept sensible and is either schematic" or symbolic."69 In schematic hypotyposis a concept of the understanding is formed and the intuition corresponding to it is given a priori. In symbolic hypotyposis there is a concept which only reason can think, to which no sensible intuition can be adequate. This concept is supplied with an intuition that judgment treats in a way that is only analogous to the procedure it follows in schematizing. The treatment of this intuition agrees with the procedure of uniting a concept of the understanding with a sensible intuition merely in the rule followed rather than in terms of the intuition itself. The treatment agrees merely in terms of the form of the reflection rather than its content. (AK 5:351) In that part of the Opus postumum published in 1804 with the title What Real Progress has Metaphysics Made in Germany since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff?, under the heading "How to Provide Objective Reality for Pure Concepts of Understanding and Reason," Kant explains more fully: When the concept cannot be represented immediately (as is the case with a rational concept), but only indirectly or mediately through its implications or consequences (Folgen) the act of exhibition may be called the symbolization of the concept. In fact, concepts of the sensible are schematized; concepts of the supersensible are symbolized. The latter is an aid or expedient (Nothülfe) we use for concepts of the supersensible (ideas of reason) which as such cannot be exhibited and given in any possible experience, but which necessarily belong to knowledge, even if only possible as practical knowledge. The symbol of an idea (or concept of reason) is a presentation of the object by analogy. We present the object of the idea (e.g., God) in terms of the relation which some other object (e.g., human being) has to its effects or consequences and which is the same relation that we consider the object itself as having to its consequences, even though the objects themselves are of wholly different orders. For example, we may present organized things in nature to their cause as we present a clock in relation to its human maker. The relation of each to causality in general as a category is the same in both cases. The intrinsic character of the subject that has this relation and these effects remains unknown; we cannot exhibit it, we can only exhibit the relation. (AK 20:279-80)
Symbolic presentation is a kind of intuitive presentation; it is not to be contrasted to intuitive presentation. Intuitive presentations are either schematic or symbolic; both are hypotyposes or exhibitions and not mere characterizations or designations of concepts by sensible signs. Hence all intuitions supplied for a priori concepts are either schemata or symbols. Schemata contain direct exhibitions of the object, symbols contain indirect exhibitions of the object. Schematic exhibition is demonstrative, symbolic exhibition uses an analogy (for which we use empirical intuitions as well). Judgment performs a double function in symbolic exhibition; it applies the concept to the object of a sensible intuition, and then it applies the rule by which it reflects on that intuition to an entirely different object, of which the former object is only the symbol. (AK 5:352) The symbolic exhibition (hypotyposis) expresses concepts not by means of a direct intuition but only according to an analogy with one. The symbolic exhibition is a transfer of our reflection on an object of intuition to an entirely different concept to which perhaps no intuition can ever directly correspond. If we may call a mere way of presenting a cognition, which is permissible for determining an object practically, then all our cognition of God is symbolic, i.e., cognition by analogy. Whoever regards our cognition of God as schematic falls into anthropomorphism.70 (AK 5:352-3)
With this understanding of symbol" in place, then, Kant asserts that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good (das Schöne ist das Symbol des Sittlich-Guten), and that it is only because we refer (Rücksicht) the beautiful to the morally good (which we all do naturally, and require others to do as a duty) that our liking includes a claim to everyone else's assent. The mind is conscious of being ennobled by this reference to rise above a mere receptivity for pleasure derived from sense impressions. The morally good is the intelligible that taste has in view. (AK 5:353) In §57 Kant explains that pure reason falls into three kinds of antinomy corresponding to the three mental powers of cognition, the feeling of pleasure and displeasure and the power of desire. Each of the three higher cognitive powers (understanding, judgment and reason) to which the mental powers are referred must have its a priori principles (lawfulness, purposiveness and final purpose71 , respectively). When reason passes judgment on these a priori principles and their use, it demands the unconditioned for every given conditioned, which we can never find if we regard the sensible as representing things in themselves. Three antinomies arise: for the cognitive power, an antinomy of reason concerning the theoretical use of the understanding when this use is extended up to the unconditioned; for the feeling of pleasure and displeasure an antinomy of reason concerning the aesthetic use of judgment; and for the power of desire an antinomy of reason concerning the practical use of our intrinsically legislative reason. All of these antinomies are alike in that they force" (zwingen) reason to abandon the otherwise very natural presupposition that objects of sense are things in themselves. Reason is forced to regard objects of sense as mere appearances that are based on a supersensible substrate, the concept of which is only an idea and precludes cognition proper.72 The solution to all three antinomies is to rely on the assumption of a supersensible substrate for the given objects, taking the latter as appearances only. The sensible must be regarded as only the mere appearance of things based on an intelligible substrate of nature outside and within us. This intelligible (but not sensible) substrate should be taken as the thing itself. When we do this we are led to three ideas: first, the idea of the supersensible in general as the substrate of nature; second, the idea of the same supersensible considered as the principle of nature's subjective purposiveness for our cognitive power; and third, the idea of the same supersensible regarded as the principle of the purposes of freedom and of the harmony of these purposes in the moral sphere.73 (AK 5:345-6) The principle of nature's subjective purposiveness for our cognitive power is what Kant has in mind when he says that the morally good is the intelligible that taste has in view. It is with this intelligible, the morally good, that our higher cognitive powers harmonize, and without it contradictions would continually arise from the contrast between the nature of these powers and the claims that taste makes.74
Kant offers four points of the analogy between the beautiful and the morally good. First, we like the beautiful directly but not in its concept; rather we like the beautiful directly upon reflecting on the intuition. The morally good we like directly in its concept. Secondly, we like the beautiful without any interest, and while our liking for the morally good is necessarily connected with an interest, the interest does not precede our judgment about the liking; it is produced by the liking. Thirdly, in judging the beautiful we present the freedom of the imagination and hence the freedom of our power of sensibility as harmonizing with the lawfulness of the understanding. In a moral judgment we think the freedom of the will as the will's harmony with itself according to universal laws of reason. Finally, we present the subjective principle for judging the beautiful as universal, i.e., valid for everyone, but as unknowable through any universal concept. The morally good we also declare to be universally valid for all subjects through its objective principle, which we also declare to be knowable through a universal concept (the form of law as such). Moral judgments are capable of having determinate constitutive principles, and the possibility of a moral judgment depends on our basing moral maxims on those principles and their universality. (AK 5:354) The beautiful object becomes an indirect (analogous) presentation of a good will.75 Through this analogous presentation of the concept of a good will, the pleasure we experience in the presence of the beautiful becomes an experience of the intelligible moral world, a world which practical reason can only postulate. The aesthetic experience of the beautiful has metaphysical significance for Kant.76
The beautiful, then, is analogous to the morally good. Kant is not saying that the beautiful
is morally good, only that the beautiful is like the morally good. It symbolizes the morally good.
The experience of the beautiful is like the moral experience. Additional evidence of this is that
the names that we use to describe beautiful objects seem to presuppose that we judge the objects
morally. We use words like "majestic," "magnificent," "cheerful," even "innocent," "humble," or
"tender" because beautiful objects arouse sensations in us (sensations which, as we have seen, are
the result of a mental state) that are somehow analogous to the consciousness (Bewußtsein) we
have in a mental state (Gemüthszustand) produced by moral judgments. The judgment of taste, in
reference to the beautiful, is significant to Kant's moral metaphysics in that it provides us with a
transition from the sensible to the supersensible realm of the morally good. Kant writes:
Taste enables us, as it were, to make the transition from sensible charm to a habitual moral interest without making too violent a leap; for taste presents the imagination as admitting, even in its freedom, of determination that is purposive for the understanding, and it teaches us to like even objects of sense freely, even apart from sensible charm.
Der Geschmack macht gleichsam den Übergang vom Sinnenreiz zum habituellen moralischen Interesse ohne einen zu gewaltsamen Sprung möglich, indem er die Einbildungskraft auch in ihrer Freiheit als zweckmäßig für den Verstand bestimmbar vorstellt und sogar an Gegenständen der Sinne auch ohne Sinnenreiz ein freies Wohlgefallen finden lehrt.77
NOTES
1. As Dostal points out, those who object that Kant's notion of the sublime as evoking the supersensible and the moral illegitimately compromises the autonomy bestowed on aesthetic judgment in the exposition of the beautiful are mistaken in that they refuse to take seriously the systematic task that Kant sets for the Critique of Judgment within the critical project, thus ignoring Kant's larger project and context. Robert Dostal, "The Sublime and the Project of a Critique of Judgment," 94-5. As Kant himself says (KrV B673 ff., B765-6, B866-7), philosophy must be systematic. The present section is intended to bring out this systematic importance of the third Critique, while a core concern of the overall work is to show that the larger project and context of Kantian philosophy is always moral.
2. The first "Introduction" may be found on pages 193-251 in volume 20 of the Akademie edition. The "Introduction" in the published work is referred to as the second "Introduction." According to Zammito, the first "Introduction" was composed by May, 1789; the second in March, 1790. Zammito, 265. This second, shorter Introduction retains the same overview of the powers of the mind but lacks the detailed presentation of the first Introduction, and as we have shown, the threefold classification ultimately goes back to Baumgarten's Metaphysica (4th ed. 1757). As will be shown below, in the second "Introduction" Kant puts more explicit emphasis on the role that nature must play in supporting the end of freedom, a theme that is important to the thesis of the present work.
3. For an analysis of Kant's treatment of the human faculty of judgment as such and its link to feeling, cognition and the will, see Irmgard Scherer, The Crisis of Judgment in Kant's Three Critiques: In Search of a Science of Aesthetics, New Studies in Aesthetics, ed. Robert Ginsberg, vol. 16 (New York: Peter Lang, 1995). Judgment serves as the link between the sensible and supersensible realms in consciousness that require inclusion and a reconciliation in Kant's architectonic system in order to resolve the antinomic features of reason. Ibid., 10. As Scherer points out, the unknowable supersensible realm that is the result of reason's demand for absolute completeness of its system affects profoundly the possibility and status of philosophical discourse. Ibid., 30. Hence the importance of judgment to Kant's overall system and of the sublime as a possible doorway to the supersensible realm.
4. See §22 of the first Critique (KrV B146), and recall Kant's famous formulation: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." "Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Ans-chauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind." (KrV A51/B75)
5. We shall see now the conclusion of a key development that has been taking place in Kant's thought at least since the mid-1770's. Recall our account of Kant's lectures on Metaphysics in Chapter 2 above. In Reflection 988, Kant asks how an objectively valid judg-ment that is not determined by any concept of an object is possible. His answer, which seems to be consistent with his remarks during his lectures on Metaphysics, appears to be that such a judgment is possible because the judgment refers itself to objects in general through forces of the mind in general. There is no determinate concept, as we have seen above (Chapter 2), but only a feeling of the movement of the mind. This movement is capable of being com-municated through a concept in general, which implies the ground of the judgment. The pleasure is in this judgment, not in the object of it. (AK 15:432) In the so-called Jäsche Logic, a manual pre-senting passages out of Kant's lectures on Logic edited by Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche, a student of Kant's, and published in 1800, we are told that logic differs essentially from aesthetics in that aesthetics, as a mere critique of taste has no "canon" (law) but only a "norm" (model or standard of judging) which consists in general agreement. Aesthetics contains the rules of the agreement of cognition with the laws of sensibility, while logic contains the rules of the agreement of cognition with the laws of the understanding and reason. (AK 9:15) Although the Jäsche Logic must be used with some caution, Jäsche did have Kant's own copy of Meier's Excerpts from the Doctrine of Reason containing Kant's handwritten notes (which is published in AK vol. 16). Lectures on Logic, 530.
6. Recall Kant's solution to the Third Antinomy in the first Critique. Transcendental freedom is an idea of reason, to which no object of experience can correspond. We can never infer from experience the existence of anything that cannot be thought in accordance with the laws of experience, which are the pure intuitions of space and time (to do so would be to hypostatize an idea of reason). But what freedom means is precisely the operation of a cause outside the spatio-temporal laws of our experience. Reason believes it can begin a series of conditions in the field of rule-governed spatio-temporal experience by means of a sensibly unconditioned, i.e., free, cause. Kant is careful to remind the reader that it is impossible to prove the existence of freedom, or indeed even its possibility. The best we can do is show that causality through freedom is at least not incompatible with nature. (KrV A558/B586)
7. Zammito considers this shift in emphasis between the first "Introduction" and the final, published version to be the best way to illuminate the nature of what he calls the ethical turn" in the genesis of the third Critique. Zammito, 265. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the moral role of the sublime is already explicit in the first "Introduction."
8. As Aristotle observes in Book I Chapter 4 (1095a20-25) of the Nicomachean Ethics, while everyone may agree that happiness is the good, hardly anyone agrees as to what happiness is, and even the same person identifies it with different things at different times.
9. G. Felicitas Munzel has written a new book on the role of culture in our moral development, entitled Kant's Concept of Moral Character: The Critical Link of Morality, Anthropology and Reflective Judgment (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), which seeks to develop the importance of culture in Kant's moral philosophy. One can only regret that the book has not yet emerged from the press.
10. Salim Kemal, Kant and Fine Art: An Essay on Kant and the Philosophy of Fine Art and Culture (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1986), 83. Kemal's book provides a detailed account of Kant's understanding of the relationship between fine art, culture and morality.
11. See e.g. AK 5:132 on the postulates of pure practical reason.
12. Which depend on cognition (of the moral law).
13. Drawing on this definition, Makkreel offers an interpretation of reflective judgment in which it becomes the basis of a "reflective interpretation" whereby the interpretation of nature becomes hermeneutical rather than systematic. Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant.
14. "All interest ruins a judgment of taste and deprives it of its impartiality. . . . Any taste remains barbaric if its liking requires that charms and emotions be mingled in, let alone if it makes these the standard of its approval. . . . A pure judgment of taste is one that is not influenced by charm or emotion (though these may be connected with a liking for the beautiful), and whose determining basis is therefore merely the purposiveness of the form." "Alles Interesse verdirbt das Geschmacksurtheil und nimmt ihm seine Unpartheilichkeit. . . . Der Geschmack ist jederzeit noch barbarisch, wo er die Beimischung der Reize und Rührungen zum Wohlgefallen bedarf, ja wohl gar diese zum Maßstabe seines Beifalls macht. . . . Ein Geschmacksurtheil, auf welches Reiz und Rührung keinen Einfluß haben (ob sie sich gleich mit dem Wohlgefallen am Schönen verbinden lassen), welches also bloß die Zweckmäßigkeit der Form zum Bestimmungsgrunde hat, ist ein reines Geschmacksurtheil." Pluhar, Critique of Judgment, 68-9 (AK 5:223).
15. Kant distinguishes here between sensation as the receptivity through the senses of the presentation of a thing, which belongs to the cognitive power and the sensation that occurs when something determines the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. In the former case, the presentation is referred to the object; in the latter case it is referred solely to the subject and is not used for cognition. The distinction is between sensation as an objective presentation of sense and the sensation that we call a feeling (of pleasure and displeasure). Kant wants to use the word "sensation" (Empfindung) for an objective sensation such as the green color of a meadow, and the word feeling" (Gefühl) for the subjective sensation that is the agreeableness that comes from the sight of the green meadow. (AK 5:206) He does not always maintain this distinction, however, as Pluhar points out (p. 48 n. 12).
16. We should note here that Kant remarks that in order to consider something good we have to know what sort of the thing the object is meant to be. We must have a determinate concept of it. Beauty, however, needs no determinate concept. The liking for the beautiful depends on a reflection regarding the object that leads to some concept, although which one it is is indeterminate. The agreeable depends entirely on sensation and does not involve reflection, nor does it involve the concept of a purpose.
17. As has already been noted, the solution will involve the idea of intellectual pleasure or intellectual feeling. See Chapter 2 above. In the Metaphysik L2 notebook, tentatively assigned by Ameriks and Naragon to 1790-1, we read that pleasure and displeasure are not cognitions at all. the faculty of the "discrimination of representations" (which would seem to be judgment), insofar as the representations modify the subject, is the faculty of pleasure and displeasure. We also have an intellectual pleasure and displeasure, although we have no word for it. The discrimination of good and evil belongs to intellectual pleasure. With intellectual pleasure and displeasure we must view the feeling not as the ground but rather as the effect of the satisfaction. The feeling of the promotion of life is pleasure, and the feeling of the hindrance of life is displeasure. The beautiful pleases according to the laws of sensibility, the good pleases according to the laws of the understanding. But the discrimination of the beautiful belongs also under the understanding and not merely to the senses. Lectures on Metaphysics, 346 (AK 28:586). We see, then, that Kant's lectures on Metaphysics reveal essentially the same position in 1790 as was evident in 1782-2 in the Metaphysik Mrongrovius notebook cited above in Chapter 2, which seemed to reveal a relationship between the beautiful and the good and a pleasure that is founded in the aesthetic judgment without reference to an object.
18. "Geschmack ist das Beurtheilungsvermögen eines Gegenstandes oder einer Vorstellungsart durch ein Wohlgefallen oder Mißfallen ohne alles Interesse. Der Gegenstand eines solchen Wohlgefallens heißt schön." Pluhar, 53 (AK 5:211).
19. Except in the case of pure practical laws, i.e., moral laws. But, as moral, these carry an interest with them, while none is connected to pure judgments of taste. AK 5:211-2
20. As noted in the Introduction above, Kant's claim to the subjective universality of the aesthetic judgment is the focus of Paul Guyer's book, Kant and the Claims of Taste.
21. This would be a "rationalistic" (Rationalism) critique of taste. A judgment of taste given a posteriori through the senses would be an "empiricist" (Empirism) one. AK 5:346.
22. Pluhar, 60 (AK 5:216).
23. An idea of reason, presumably. Where does this universal voice come from? What kind of idea is it? An electronic search of a data base consisting of Kant's published works and of the epistolary Academy volumes 10-13 reveals that this (AK 5:216) is the only occurrence of the phrase allgemeine Stimme in Kant's published works. Kants gesammelte Schriften, Herausgegeben von der Königlich Prueßischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften Volumes 1-9,10,11,12,13, floppy disk edition (Bonn: Institut für angewandte Kommunikation und Sprachforschung, 1988-94). Some light may be shed on the issue by considering the lectures on Metaphysics, in which Kant talks about a "universal sense" and a universal judgment" (Chapter 2 above) Hence the most likely interpretation would seem to be that the universal voice" here has its equivalent in the lectures on Metaphysics in terms of the universal or communal sense mentioned there that arises among human beings in community with each other and upon which the judgment of taste depends. See also Chapter 2 above. Guyer entitles the fourth chapter of his book Kant and the Claims of Taste "A Universal Voice" but does not focus on the term itself; he takes it to stand for Kant's claim that the judgment of taste is intersubjectively valid, the consistency of which claim is the focus of Guyer's book. This supports the inter-pretation offered here. The idea that aesthetic judgment somehow involves a universal goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who says in the Poetics that the poet's job is to make his plot plausible by relying on general psychological truths: "From what we have said it will be seen that the poet's function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e., what is possible as being probable or necessary." Chapter 9, 1451a37-9. The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2322-3.
24. An important precursor of the idea that the perception of beauty involves a normative judgment is St. Augustine. We can perceive the ordered object as being what it ought to be, and that the disordered object falls short; and so the painter can make corrections as he goes along and the critic can judge (De Vera Religione xxxii, 60). But this rightness or wrongness cannot merely be sensed (De Musica VI, xii, 34); the spectator must bring with him a concept of ideal order, given to him by a "divine illumination" from which it follows that judgment of beauty is objectively valid and that there can be no relativity in it (De Trinitate IX, vi, 10; De Libero Arbitrio II, xvi, 41). Paul Edwards, ed. Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. and The Free Press, 1967), s.v. Aesthetics, History of," by Monroe C. Beardsley. Augustine puts the question whether we have to call something beautiful because we like it or whether we like it because it is beautiful under the section headed "On the Agreeable and the Beautiful" in De Vera Religione lix, 166.
25. Intuition (Anschauung) is that through which the mind is in immediate contact or relation to a given object. The manifold of intuition simply means the total of all the "bits" of data that together comprise the object (or more generally the empirical world). Sensibility alone yields intuitions. (KrV A19/B33) The pure forms of sensible intuition are the a priori intuitions of space and time. (KrV A39/B56)
26. Imagination (Einbildung, Einbildungskraft) synthesizes the manifold given in pure intuition. (KrV A78/B104) It associates the discrete parts of the manifold with one another. Imagination brings the manifold of intuition into the form of an image. Imagination is also the faculty that (re)presents the image of an object in its absence. (KrV A115 ff.; B151)
27. Understanding (Verstand) is the faculty of rules. Although Kant defines the understanding in different ways, as a spontaneity of knowledge, as a power of thought, as a faculty of concepts and as a faculty of judgments, he states that once these definitions are adequately understood they are identical and so the understanding may be characterised as the faculty of rules. (KrV A126). In the A version of the Transcendental Deduction, Kant says that we ourselves introduce the order and regularity in the appearances which we call nature (KrV A125), and that, however exaggerated and absurd it may sound, the understanding is itself the source of the laws of nature and so the formal unity of nature. This assertion is in keeping with experience, which is the object of the understanding. While empirical laws (of nature) do not derive their origin from pure understanding, all empirical laws are only special determinations of the pure laws of understanding under which, and according to the norm of which, they first become possible. (KrV A127-8) The explicit claim that the understanding is the source of the laws of nature is abandoned when Kant reformulates the Transcendental Deduction in the B edition, but the understanding remains the faculty of rules or principles a priori of the possibility of experience. See e.g. B294, B359. In the third Critique Kant says that the understanding (in part) prescribes the laws that reason uses as a basis a priori to nature (AK 5:386), and we find similar language in the Opus postumum. In any event, it is the understanding that enables us to think the object of sensible intuition (KrV A51/B75) by giving unity to the pure synthesis of the imagination according to a priori rules. These a priori rules are the categories, which Kant believes constitute a complete list of all the original pure concepts of synthesis contained in the understanding. (KrV A78/B104 ff.) Underlying all of this of course are the a priori intuitions of space and time which ground (by giving a rule to) all sensible intuitions.
28. That is to say, we feel our freedom from the constraints of time, the condition of inner sense. This is not an awareness of a concept, which would have to be spatio-temporal; it is a feeling of freedom, and in that sense it is a feeling of timelessness. Recall that self-consciousness, or apperception, is not under the constraints of space and time. Allison takes up the issue of timelessness in his book Kant's Theory of Freedom. Given his interpretation of Transcendental Idealism in terms of "epistemic condition," he argues that the causal principle of freedom is epistemologically but not ontologically privileged. Timelessness is therefore understood as the independence from the conditions of time that allows for the possibility of the conception of a regulative function of an intelligible character and not actual timelessness. Henry E. Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 52. The argument of the present work is that through the aesthetic experience we get a sense of timelessness in terms of our intelligible character as moral agents, and so it is not incompatible with Allison's view.
29. Kant's lectures on Metaphysics would seem to support this view. See Chapter 2 above.
30. Imagination and understanding do not always harmonize; the feeling of the sublime results from a tension between imagination and the other cognitive powers.
31. We recall that a determinate cognition is the result of the synthesis of intuition of the manifold by the imagination under a concept of the understanding. If we were engaged upon a critique of Kant's aesthetics, we might ask exactly how a mental state (Gemüthszustand) is communicable without a concept. Kant tries to get around this problem by referring the mental state to cognition in general" (Erkenntniß uberhaupt) which he holds is somehow objective in the sense that the minds of more than one subject can refer to it. Kant will say that the ability to communicate one's mental state carries with it a pleasure, which can be established empirically and psychologically. But the explanation of the ability itself has yet to be given.
32. As we have noted, exactly how this communication is possible is not fully explained at this point; Kant must first establish "whether and how aesthetic judgments are possible a priori." (AK 5:218)
33. Here we understand "aesthetic" in its original meaning, as related to sense perception (from the Greek aisthésthai, to sense) as opposed to its modern use, coined by Baumgarten, as a "science of sensitive cognition." See AK 20:222, where Kant remarks that it has become customary to use the term to refer to a sensible presentation referred not to the cognitive power but to the power of pleasure and displeasure. Pluhar, 410.
34. Kant's description of the intellectual moment of the disjunction is active: ". . . through consciousness of the intentional activity by which we bring these powers into play." ". . . durch das Bewußtsein unserer absichtlichen Thätigkeit, womit wir jene ins Spiel setzen." (AK 5:218, emphasis added.)
35. It would be an "objective schematism of judgment;" the subject of the first Critique. See The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding, A137/B176 ff.
36. That beauty is a subjective mental state is consistent with the position advanced by Kant in the lectures on Metaphysics at least since the mid-1770's. Recall Chapter 2 above.
37. This is best understood in light of Kant's position in the lectures on Metaphysics wherein pleasure and displeasure are understood in terms of promoting or hindering life, which is in turn understood as "activity." The highest degree of activity and life is freedom, which may be understood as freedom from the constraints of the spatio-temporal empirical world, or, in other words, timelessness. What agrees with the highest degree of freedom, and thus the spiritual life (which is also timeless) Kant tells us, is intellectual pleasure. Intellectual pleasure in the lectures on Metaphysics would seem to correspond to the disinterested pleasure connected to the experience of the beautiful in the third Critique. See Chapter 2 above.
38. Kant seems to use both presentational powers" (Vorstellungskräfte) and cognitive powers" (Erkenntnißvermö-gen) to refer to imagination and understanding, although we might expect understanding to be a cognitive rather than a presentational power. To assume that presentational powers" refer to intuition and imagination, and that cognitive powers" refer to imagination and understanding would be terminologically consistent but would be inconsistent with what Kant has been saying about the free play of the imagination and the understanding. Yet the use of the different terms indicates a subtlety that we may have overlooked; certainly one would not expect Kant to be simply careless in his use of the terms. He does not say explicitly what the presentational powers are (although Pluhar inserts imagination and understanding" after presentational powers" on p. 61 of his translation) while he does explicitly describe the cognitive powers as imagination and under-standing, and he does use the phrase free play of the presentational powers" (freies Spiel der Vorstellungskräfte) (e.g. AK 5:242). It is most likely that the powers referred to are the imagination and the understanding in both cases, but that the different terms refer to their different functions as presentational (Vorstellungskraft) or cognitive (Erkenntnißvermögen), depending on their employment.
39. The universal communicability of the feeling that accompanies the presentation of certain objects is the empirical criterion for what is beautiful. This criterion suggests that such a taste stems from a deeply hidden basis common to all human beings that underlies their agreement in judging the forms under which objects are given them. (AK 5:232)
40. An aesthetic judgment based on charm or the agreeable character of an object is empirical. An aesthetic judgment that asserts an object to be beautiful is pure. Only pure (formal) aesthetic judgments are properly judgments of taste. (AK 5:223-4) A judgment that an object is good is not an aesthetic judgment at all. Such a judgment involves a concept, and an aesthetic judgment is unique in that it provides "absolutely no cognition" of an object. Only a logical judgment provides cognition. (AK 5:228)
41. Note that here cognitive power" (Erkenntnißvermögen) is connected to presentation (Vorstellung).
42. "The free lawfulness of the understanding which has also been called purposiveness without a purpose." ". . . der freien Gesetzmäßigkeit des Verstandes (welche auch Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck genannt worden). . . ." (AK 5:241)
43. freies Spiel der Vorstellungskräfte.
44. This is the sense of timelessness referred to above. See Chapter 3.
45. Kant does say we do sometimes judge nature as "superhuman" (übermenschlich) art when we take into account a thing's objective purposiveness, but such judgments are no longer purely aesthetic judgments of taste. (AK 5:311)
46. This point broaches an interesting topic that lies outside the scope of the present work, namely the cultivation of taste as a preparation for and promoter of moral feeling.
47. Not necessarily a beautiful thing. Fine art describes beautifully what we would find in nature to be disagreeable or ugly. The devastation of war, diseases and other harmful things can be described or presented in a painting very beautifully. (AK 5:312)
48. Kant remarks here that since genius is a natural endowment, we could say that genius is the innate mental predispo-sition (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art. (AK 5:307)
49. Aesthetic ideas may be called unexpoundable presentations (inexponible Vorstellung) of the imagination in its free play. (AK 5:343)
50. And in this way they are like ideas of reason.
51. As Dostal points out, one objection to an interpretation of the Kantian sublime as being important to his moral metaphysics is that §59, in which Kant explicitly takes up the topic of the relationship between aesthetics and morality and makes the beautiful the symbol of the morality, completely ignores the sublime. This is indicative of the way the sublime almost entirely disappears from consideration after those sections (§§23-29) that explicitly treat it. Nevertheless, one must be careful not to ignore Kant's notorious penchant for the architectonic. Dostal, "The Sublime and the Project of a Critique of Judgment," 95. §59 is effectively the last section of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (§60 is an Appendix); having dealt with the aesthetic judgment, Kant turns to teleological judgment, which is a topic for another work.
52. Kant will say that the empirical interest is indirect, but the intellectual interest is direct. What he means is that the interest is not directly connected to the judgment. Once the judgment of taste is made on the basis of the form of purposiveness without a purpose, the liking can then be connected to a pleasure in the existence of the object. He writes: ". . . it does not follow from [the fact that a judgment of taste by which we declare something to be beautiful must not have an interest as its determining basis] that, after the judgment has been made as a pure aesthetic one, an interest cannot be connected with it. This connection, however, must always be only indirect." A few lines further we read ". . . and all interest consists in pleasure in the existence of an object." ". . . daraus folgt nicht [daß das Geschmacksurtheil, wodurch etwas für schön erklärt wird, kein Interesse zum Bestimmungsgrunde haben müsse], daß, nachdem es als reines ästhetisches Urtheil gegeben worden, kein Interesse damit verbunden werden könne." ". . . noch eine Lust an der Existenz desselben (als worin alles Interesse besteht). . . ." (AK 5:296) This supports the argument being advanced here that the aesthetic judgment is related to our moral interest, in that there is no contradiction between the disinterested aesthetic judgment and our moral interest. See Chapter 2 above.
53. Here Kant develops the theme we have noted in the lectures on Metaphysics in Chapter 2 above.
54. Compare Kant's remarks in his lectures on Metapysics: "Taste is therefore a faculty for judging through satisfaction or dissatisfaction, according to the communal and universally valid sense. But taste is still always only a judging through the relation of the sense, and on that account this faculty is a faculty of pleasure and displeasure." "Der Geschmack ist daher ein Vermögen der Beurtheilung durch Wohlgefallen oder Mißfallen, nach dem gemeinschaftlichen und allgemein gültigen Sinne. Es ist aber doch der Geschmack immer nur eine Beurtheilung durchs Verhältniß der Sinne, und deßwegen ist dieses Vermögen ein Vermögen der Lust und Unlust." Lectures on Metaphysics, 65 (AK 28:249).
55. We will see that we are justified in equating the good with the supersensible here if we recall how Kant has defined the good in the third Critique. The good presupposes "objective purposiveness," which requires the concept of a purpose, either in terms of what the thing is meant to be (qualitative perfection), or the completeness any thing may have as a thing of its kind (quantitative perfection). (AK 5:226-7) Neither "purpose" in this sense nor perfection" are objects of any possible experience; they are "ideas of reason," which always concern the supersensible. (KrV A310/B367 ff.) A rational idea can never become cognition because it contains a concept of the supersensible to which no adequate intuition can ever be given. (AK 5:342)
56. As noted above, Kant apparently uses Sittengefühl (sittliche Gefühl) and moralische Gefühl interchangeably. Both terms are translated moral feeling" in this work.
57. A priori in the sense that the interest is free of all inclination, which must be empirical. Not, of course, a priori in the sense of coming before the judgment of taste, which remains disinterested. Kant will, however, describe a "direct" intellectual interest as well. See AK 5:299.
58. Kant probably has in mind here Plato, Shaftesbury, Wolff, Baumgarten and Meier.
59. Kant holds that there is a pleasure associated with a will that is determined. "The state of mind of a will determined by some-thing or other is in itself already a feeling of pleasure and is identical with it. . . ." "Der Gemüthszustand aber eines irgend wodurch bestimmten Willens ist an sich schon ein Gefühl der Lust und mit ihm identisch . . ." (AK 5:222)
60. A liking we recognize a priori as a law for everyone, although we cannot base this law on proofs. (AK 5:300)
61. Cf. Anthropology §69, AK 7:244. As Sidney Axinn points out, the section we are considering, §42 entitled "On Intellectual Interest in the Beautiful," is easily forgotten by critics who argue that the idea that there is a relationship between an interest in beauty in nature and the interest in the morally good described in §59 entitled "On Beauty as the Symbol of Morality" has no precursors and is an anamoly. Sidney Axinn, "On Beauty as the Symbol of Morality," Akten des Siebenten Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, Kurfüstliches Schloß zu Mainz, 1990. Band II.1: Sektionsbeiträge Sektionen A-F. Herausgegeben von Gerhard Funke (Boon: Bouvier Verlag, 1991): 615-621. The present study has shown that there is no conflict between moral interest and a disinterested liking for the beautiful.
62. Hence Kant rescues the sublime from enthusiasm, fanaticism, or mysticism by reestablishing in the sublime a purposiveness through the negative presenation of our moral vocation. Mankind's final purpose is not to fit in the world, but to realize a higher vocation. Dostal, "The Sublime and the Project of a Critique of Judgment," 98. Zammito does a good job pointing out Kant's lifelong concern with the dangers of mysticism in his book The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Kant will further develop the theme of purposiveness and of our moral purpose in nature in the Analytic of Teleological Judgment. See, for example, §84, in which we read that in the world there is only one kind of being whose causality is teleological, i.e., directed to purposes that are unconditioned by and independent of conditions in nature, and yet necessary. This being is the human being considered as noumenon. (AK 5:435) The final purpose of mankind is to bring morality to the world of nature. John Atwell, drawing on Lewis White Beck, develops this point in his article "Man as the Creator of the Value of Life." John Atwell, "Man as Creator of the Value of Life," Akten des Siebenten Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, Kurfüstliches Schloß zu Mainz, 1990. Band II.1: Sektionsbeiträge Sektionen A-F. Herausgegeben von Gerhard Funke (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1991): 491-499.
63. Both interests are only indirectly connected to the judgment of taste.
64. Axinn draws on a comment by Hannah Arendt (Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982; 76) to argue that the relationship between beauty and morality seems obvious. Arendt's comment was that both the aesthetic object and the human being have no obvious purpose, and Axinn uses this point to argue that in the Kantian account of the beautiful as the result of an object that has no purpose and yet has the form of a purpose, we find an analogy with ourselves. Axinn, "On Beauty as the Symbol of Morality," 621. The present work will have more to say about purposiveness without a purpose" below.
65. A cogent analysis of the term is offered by Munzel in her article "'The Beautiful is the Symbol of the Morally-Good': Kant's Philosphical Basis of Proof for the Idea of the Morally-Good."
66. Pluhar, p. 110. See KrV A137-47/B176-87.
67. See AK 5:342
68. Submission to inspection.
69. See also Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant, 123-5, on the difference between schema and symbol in Kant.
70. And whoever omits everything intuitive falls into deism, which allows us to cognize nothing whatsoever, not even from a practical point of view. (AK 5:353)
71. Purposiveness that is also law (obligation) in the first introduction. (AK 20:245-6)
72. Interestingly, Kant remarks here that if there were no such antinomy, reason could never bring itself to accept such a principle that so greatly narrows the area in which it can speculate. (AK 5:344)
73. As Zammito remarks, in the third Critique Kant does at times come close to sounding like a Hegelian Idealist. Zammito adduces the argument of Patrick Riley who argues that in the present discussion of the supersensible (§57 and Comments) Kant is approaching Hegel in recognizing the reality of reason. Zammito, The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment, 344. As will be shown in Chapter 5 below these arguments are not without reason. The Opus postumum seems to indicate that Kant was moving in the direction of Fichte, Schelling and the later German Idealism.
74. In other words, the antinomy of taste will arise. The antinomy of taste and its solution is described in §56 and §57, AK 5:338 ff.
75. Ted Cohen shows that the logical form of Kant's account of the beautiful and a good will parallel each other in his essay "Why Beauty is a Symbol of Morality" in Essays in Kant's Aesthetics, ed. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 221-36.
76. This interpretation is developed by Robert L. Zimmerman in his article "Kant: The Aesthetic Judgment" reprinted in Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert Paul Wolff, Modern Studies in Philosophy Series (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), 385-406.
77. Pluhar, 230 (AK 5:354).