Theory of Aesthetics and Teleology (The Critique of Judgment) |
Important Note: After the Introduction, each of the above sections commences with a summary. These will give the reader an idea of what topics are discussed in more detail in each section. They can also be read together to form a briefbird's-eye-view of Kant's theory of aesthetics and teleology.
Kant is an 18th century German philosopher whose work initated dramatic changes in the fields of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and teleology. Like
many Enlightenment thinkers, he holds our mental faculty of reason in high esteem; he believes that it is our reason that invests the world we experience with structure.
In his works on aesthetics and teleology, he argues that it is our faculty of judgment that enables us to have experience of beauty and grasp those experiences as part
of an ordered, natural world with purpose.
Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to that part of this article)
1. Kant's Life and Works
Immanuel Kant is often said to have been the greatest philosopher since
the Greeks. Certainly, he dominates the last two hundred years in the sense that -
although few philosophers today are strictly speaking Kantians - his influence is
everywhere. Moreover, that influence extends over a number of different philosophical
regions: epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, politics, religion. Because of
Kant's huge importance, and the variety of his contributions and influences, this
encyclopedia entry is divided into a number of subsections. What follows here will be a
brief account of Kant's life and works, followed by an overview of those themes that Kant
felt bridged his philosophical works, and made them into one 'critical philosophy'. Kant was born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kalingrad in Russia) in 1724 to
Pietist Lutheran parents. His early education first at a Pietist school and then at the
University of Königsberg was in theology, but he soon became attracted by problems in
physics, and especially the work of Isaac Newton. In 1746 financial difficulties forced
him to withdraw from the University. After nine years supporting himself as a tutor to the
children of several wealthy families in outlying districts, he returned to the University,
finishing his degree and entering academic life, though at first (and for many years) in
the modest capacity of a lecturer. (Only in 1770 was he given a University chair in logic
and metaphysics at Königsberg.) He continued to work and lecture on, and publish widely,
on a great variety of issues, but especially on physics and on the metaphysical issues
behind physics and mathematics. He rarely left his home city, and gradually became a
celebrity there for his brilliant, witty but eccentric character. Kant's early work was in the tradition (although not dogmatically even
then) of the great German rationalist philosopher Leibniz, and especially his follower
Wolff. But by the 1760s, he was increasingly admiring Leibniz's great rival Newton, and
was coming under the additional influences of the empiricist skepticism of Hume and the
ethical and political thought of Rousseau. In this period he produced a series of works
attacking Leibnizian thought. In particular, he now argued that the traditional tools of
philosophy - logic and metaphysics - had to be understood to be severely limited with
respect to obtaining knowledge of reality. (Similar, apparently skeptical, claims were
relatively common in the Enlightenment.) It was only in the late 1760s, and especially in his Inaugural
Dissertation of 1770 that Kant began to move towards the ideas that would make him
famous and change the face of philosophy. In the Dissertation, he argued for three key new
ideas: first, that sensible and conceptual presentations of the world (for example, my
seeing three horses, and my concept of three) must be understood to be two quite distinct
sources of possible knowledge. Second, it follows that knowledge of sensible reality is
only possible if the necessary concepts (such as substance) are already available to the
intellect. This fact, Kant argued, also limits the legitimate range of application of
these concepts. Finally, Kant claimed that sensible presentations were of only
appearances', and not things as they are in themselves. This was because space and time,
which describe the basic structure of all sensible appearances, are not existent in things
in themselves, but are only a product of our organs of sense. Perceiving things in
space and time is a function of the mind of the perceiver. The hypothesis that both key
concepts, and the basic structure of space and time, are a priori in the mind, is a
basic theme of Kant's idealism (see the entry on 'Kant's Metaphysics'). It is important to
recognize that this last claim about space and time also exacerbates the limitation
imposed above by proposing a whole realm of 'noumena' or 'things in themselves' which
necessarily lies beyond knowledge in any ordinary sense. These new and often startling
ideas, with a few important modifications, would form the basis of his philosophical
project for the rest of his life. After publishing quite often in the preceding 15 years, the Dissertation
ushered in an apparently quiet phase in Kant's work. Kant realized that he had
discovered a new way of thinking. He now needed rigorous demonstrations of his new ideas,
and had to pursue their furthest implications. He even needed to find a new philosophical
language to properly express such original thoughts! This took more than a decade of his
life. Except for a remarkable set of correspondence during this period, Kant published
nothing until the massive first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, in 1781
(revised second edition, 1787). Over the next two decades, however, he furiously pursued his new
philosophy into different territories, producing books or shorter publications on
virtually every philosophical topic under the sun. This new philosophy came to be known as
'critical' or 'transcendental' philosophy. Of particular importance were the so called
three Critiques: The Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), Critique of
Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of Judgment (1790). Kant quickly
became famous in the German speaking world, and soon thereafter elsewhere. This fame did
not mean universal praise, however. Kant's work was feverishly debated in all circles -
his work on religion and politics was even censored. And by the time of his death in 1804,
philosophers such as Fichte, Schelling and the Hegel were already striking out in new
philosophical directions. Directions, however, that would have been unthinkable without
Kant.
2. The Central Problems of the Critique of Judgment
Kant's Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) was and continues
to be a surprise - even to Kant, for it emerged out of Kant's philosophical activity
having not been a part of the original plan. (For an account of Kant's first two Critiques,
please see the entry on 'Kant's Metaphysics'.) Some philosophers have even claimed that it
is the product of the onset of senility in Kant. After initial enthusiasm during the
romantic period, the book was relatively ignored until work such as Cassirer's in the
early 20th Century. Especially in the last few decades, however, the Critique of
Judgment is being increasingly seen as a major and profound work in Kant's output. Part of the surprise lies in the diversity of topics Kant deals with. For
much of the previous two centuries the book was read - and it still is largely read in
this way - as a book about aesthetics (the philosophy of the beautiful and the sublime).
In fact this type of reading by no means adequately reflects Kant's explicit themes, and
is forced to ignore much of the text. Here, we shall try to sketch out the range of topics
and purposes (including aesthetics) Kant gives to his third Critique. There are several commonly available translations of the Critique of
Judgment. Here, we will use Werner S. Pluhar's (Hackett, 1987), but will make
reference alternative translations of key terms, especially as found in the widely used
James Creed Meredith translation. To facilitate the use of the variety of available
editions, passages in Kant's text will be indicated by section number, rather than page
number. The basic, explicit purpose of Kant's Critique of Judgment is to
investigate whether the 'power' (also translated as 'faculty' - and we will use the latter
here) of judgment provides itself with an priori principle. In earlier work, Kant had
pretty much assumed that judgment was simply a name for the combined operation of other,
more fundamental, mental faculties. Now, Kant has been led to speculate that the operation
of judgment might be organized and directed by a fundamental a priori principle that is
unique to it. The third Critique sets out to explore the validity and implications
of such a hypothesis. In the third Critique, Kant's account of judgment begins with the
definition of judgment as the subsumption of a particular under a universal (Introduction
IV). If, in general, the faculty of understanding is that which supplies concepts
(universals), and reason is that which draws inferences (constructs syllogisms, for
example), then judgment 'mediates' between the understanding and reason by allowing
individual acts of subsumption to occur (cf. e.g. Introduction III). This leads Kant to a
further distinction between determinate and reflective judgments (Introduction IV). In the
former, the concept is sufficient to determine the particular - meaning that the concept
contains sufficient information for the identification of any particular instance of it.
In such a case, judgment's work is fairly straightforward (and Kant felt he had dealt
adequately with such judgments in the Critique of Pure Reason). Thus the latter
(where the judgment has to proceed without a concept, sometimes in order to form a new
concept) forms the greater philosophical problem here. How could a judgment take place
without a prior concept? How are new concepts formed? And are there judgments that neither
begin nor end with determinate concepts? This explains why a book about judgment
should have so much to say about aesthetics: Kant takes aesthetic judgments to be a
particularly interesting form of reflective judgments. As we shall see, the second half of Kant's book deals with teleological
judgments. Broadly speaking, a teleological judgment concerns an object the possibility of
which can only be understood from the point of view of its purpose. Kant will claim that
teleological judgments are also reflective, but in a different way - that is, having a
different indeterminacy with respect to the concepts typical of natural science. Reflective judgments are important for Kant because they involve the
judgment doing a job for itself, rather than being a mere co-ordinator of concepts
and intuitions; thus, reflective judgments might be the best place to search for
judgment's a priori legislating principle. The principle in question (if it exists), Kant
claims, would assert the suitability of all nature for our faculty of judgment in general.
(In the narrower case of determinate judgments, Kant believes he has demonstrated the
necessity of this 'suitability' - please see the entry on 'Kant's Metaphysics'.) This
general suitability Kant calls the finality or purposiveness/ purposefulness
of nature for the purposes of our judgment. Kant offers a number of arguments to prove the
existence and validity of this principle. First, he suggests that without such a
principle, science (as a systematic, orderly and unified conception of nature) would not
be possible. All science must assume the availability of its object for our ability to
judge it. (A similar argument is used by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason in
discussing the regulative role of rational ideas (see A642-668=B670-696)). Second, without
such a principle our judgments about beauty would not exhibit the communicability, or
tendency to universality even in the absence of a concept, that they do. It is this second
argument that dominates the first half of the Critique of Judgment. As we shall see, Kant uses the particular investigation into judgments
about art, beauty and the sublime partly as a way of illuminating judgment in general.
Aesthetic judgments exhibit in an exemplary fashion precisely those features of judgment in
general which allow one to explore the transcendental principles of judgment. But Kant
has still higher concerns. The whole problem of judgment is important because judgment,
Kant believes, forms the mediating link between the two great branches of philosophical
inquiry (the theoretical and the practical). It had been noted before (for example, by
Hume) that there seems to be a vast difference between what is, and what ought to be. Kant
notes that these two philosophical branches have completely different topics, but these
topics, paradoxically, have as their object the very same sensible nature. Theoretical
philosophy has as its topic the cognition of sensible nature; practical philosophy has as
its topic the possibility of moral action in and on sensible nature. This problem had arisen before in Kant's work, in the famous Antinomies in
both the first and second Critiques. A key version of the problem Kant poses in the
Antinomies concerns freedom: how can nature be both determined according to the laws of
science, and yet have 'room' for the freedom necessary in order for morality to have any
meaning? Ultimately, for Kant this would be a conflict of our faculty of reason against
itself. For, in its theoretical employment, reason absolutely demands the subjection of
all objects to law; but in its practical (moral) employment, reason equally demands the
possibility of freedom. The problem is solved by returning to the idealism we discussed in
previous section of the introduction. Every object has to be conceived in a two-fold
manner: first as an appearance, subject to the necessary jurisdiction of certain basic
concepts (the Categories) and to the forms of space and time; second, as a thing in
itself, about which nothing more can be said. Even if appearances are rigorously
law-governed, it is still possible that things in themselves can act freely. Nevertheless,
although this solution eliminates the conflict, it does not actually unify the two sides
of reason, nor the two objects (what is and what ought) of reason. Judgment seems to relate to both sides, however, and thus (Kant
speculates) can form the third thing that allows philosophy to be a single, unified
discipline. Kant thus believes that judgment may be the mediating link that can unify
the whole of philosophy, and correlatively, also the link that discovers the unity
among the objects and activities of philosophy. Unfortunately, Kant never makes explicit
exactly how the bulk of his third Critique is supposed to solve this problem;
understandably, it is thus often ignored by readers of Kant's text. Thus, the central
problem of the Critique of Judgment is a broad one: the unity of philosophy in
general. This problem is investigated by that mental faculty which Kant believes is the
key to this unity, namely judgment. And judgment is investigated by the critical inquiry
into those types of judgment in which the a priori principle of judgment is apparent: on
the beautiful, on the sublime, and on teleology. We shall return to the grand issue of the
unity of philosophy at the end of this article. The various themes of the Critique of Judgment have been enormously
influential in the two centuries since its publication. The accounts of genius, and of the
significance of imagination in aesthetics, for example, became basic pillars of
Romanticism in the early 19th Century. The formalism of Kant's aesthetics in general
inspired two generations of formalist aesthetics, in the first half of the 20th Century;
the connection between judgment and political or moral communities has been similarly
influential from Schiller onwards, and was the main subject of Hanna Arendt's last,
uncompleted, project; and Kant's treatment of the sublime has been a principle object of
study by several recent philosophers, such as J.-F. Lyotard. Kant's discussion, in the
second half of the book, of the distinction between the intellectus ectypus and the
intellectus archetypus was an extremely important in the decades immediately after
Kant in the development of German Idealism. And his moral proof for the existence of God
is often ranked alongside the great arguments of Anselm and Aquinas. The following entry is divided into two sections, which correspond for the
most part to the major division of Kant's book between the 'Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment' and the 'Critique of Teleological Judgment'. Part A deals with Kant's account of
beauty, the sublime, and fine art. In the first two of these subjects, Kant's concern is
with what features an aesthetic judgment exhibits, how such a judgment is possible, and is
there any transcendental guarantee of the validity of such a judgment. The treatment of
fine art shifts the focus onto the conditions of possibility of the production of works of
art. Part B deals with Kant's account of teleological judgment, and its relation to the
natural science of biology. However, if the discussion above of the 'Central Problems' of
the Critique of Judgment is correct, a major part of Kant's interest is less in
these particular analyses, than in their broader implications for e.g. morality, the
nature of human thought, our belief in the existence of God, and ultimately for the unity
of philosophy itself. We will be dealing with these implications throughout, but
especially in sections A5, B2, B3 and B4.
A. Kant's Aesthetics
Kant asserted the basic distinction between intuitive or sensible
presentations on the one hand, and the conceptual or rational on the other. (See 'Kant's
Transcendental Idealism' in the article on 'Kant's Metaphysics'.) Therefore, despite his
great admiration for Baumgarten, it is impossible for Kant to agree with Baumgarten's
account of aesthetic experience. (By 'aesthetic' here we mean in Baumgarten's sense of a
philosophy of the beautiful and related notions, and not in Kant's original usage of the
term in the Critique of Pure Reason to mean the domain of sensibility.) In
addition, Kant holds that aesthetic experience, like natural experience leading to
determinate judgments, is inexplicable without both an intuitive and a conceptual
dimension. Thus, for example, beauty is also by no means non-cognitive, as the
British tradition had held. Thus, Kant begins to analyze the experience of beauty, in order to ask as
precisely as possible the question 'how are judgments about beauty possible'. Kant's
initial focus is on judgments about beauty in nature, as when we call a flower, a sunset,
or an animal 'beautiful'. What, at bottom, does such a judgment mean, and how does it take
place as a mental act? In order to begin to answer these questions, Kant needs to clarify
the basic features of such judgments. On Kant's analysis, aesthetic judgments are still
more strange even than ordinary reflective judgments, and must have a number of peculiar
features which at first sight look like nothing other than paradoxes. We will now describe
those features using Kant's conceptual language. Taking up roughly the first fifth of the Critique of Judgment, Kant
discusses four particular unique features of aesthetic judgments on the beautiful (he
subsequently deals with the sublime). These he calls 'moments', and they are structured in
often obscure ways according to the main divisions of Kant's table of categories (See
article on Kant's Metaphysics). The First Moment. Aesthetic judgments are disinterested.
There are two types of interest: by way of sensations in the agreeable, and by way
of concepts in the good. Only aesthetic judgment is free or pure of any such
interests. Interest is defined as a link to real desire and action, and thus also
to a determining connection to the real existence of the object. In the aesthetic
judgment per se, the real existence of the beautiful object is quite irrelevant.
Certainly, I may wish to own the beautiful painting, or at least a copy of it, because I
derive pleasure from it - but that pleasure, and thus that desire, is distinct from and
parasitic upon the aesthetic judgment (see sect;9). The judgment results in pleasure,
rather than pleasure resulting in judgment. Kant accordingly and famously claims that the
aesthetic judgment must concern itself only with form (shape, arrangement, rhythm, etc.)
in the object presented, not sensible content (color, tone, etc.), since the latter has a
deep connection to the agreeable, and thus to interest. Kant is thus the founder of all
formalism in aesthetics in modern philosophy. This claim of the disinterestedness of all
aesthetic judgments is perhaps the most often attacked by subsequent philosophy,
especially as it is extended to include fine art as well as nature. To pick three
examples, Kant's argument is rejected by those (Nietzsche, Freud) for whom all art must
always be understood as related to will; by those for whom all art (as a cultural
production) must be political in some sense (Marxism); by those for whom all art is a
question of affective response expressionists). The Second Moment. Aesthetic judgments behave universally, that is,
involve an expectation or claim on the agreement of others - just 'as if' beauty were a
real property of the object judged. If I judge a certain landscape to be beautiful then,
although I may be perfectly aware that all kinds of other factors might enter in to make
particular people in fact disagree with me, never-the-less I at least implicitly demand
universality in the name of taste. The way that my aesthetic judgments 'behave' is
key evidence here: that is, I tend to see disagreement as involving error somewhere,
rather than agreement as involving mere coincidence. This universality is distinguished
first from the mere subjectivity of judgments such as 'I like honey' (because that is not
at all universal, nor do we expect it to be); and second from the strict objectivity of
judgments such as 'honey contains sugar and is sweet', because the aesthetic judgment
must, somehow, be universal 'apart from a concept' (sect;9). Being reflective judgments,
aesthetic judgments of taste have no adequate concept (at least to begin with), and
therefore can only behave as if they were objective. Kant is quite aware that he is flying
in the face of contemporary (then and now!) truisms such as 'beauty is in the eye of the
beholder'. Such a belief, he argues, first of all can not account for our experience of
beauty itself, insofar as the tendency is always to see 'beauty' as if it were somehow in
the object or the immediate experience of the object. Second, Kant argues that such a
relativist view can not account for the social 'behavior' of our claims about what we find
beautiful. In order to explore the implications of 'apart from a concept', Kant introduces
the idea of the 'free play' of the cognitive faculties (here: understanding and
imagination), and the related idea of communicability. In the case of the judgment of
the beautiful, these faculties no longer simply work together (as they do in
ordinary sensible cognition) but rather each 'furthers' or 'quickens' the other in a kind
of self-contained and self-perpetuating cascade of thought and feeling. We will return to
these notions below. The Third Moment. The third introduces the problem of purpose and
purposiveness (also translated 'end' and 'finality'). An object's purpose is the concept
according to which it was manufactured; purposiveness, then, is the property of at least
appearing to have been manufactured or designed. Kant claims that the beautiful has to be
understood as purposive, but without any definite purpose. A 'definite purpose'
would be either the set of external purposes (what the thing was meant to do or
accomplish), or the internal purpose (what the thing was simply meant to be like). In the
former case, the success of the process of making is judged according to utility; in the
latter, according to perfection. Kant argues that beauty is equivalent neither to utility
nor perfection, but is still purposive. Beauty in nature, then, will appear as purposive
with respect to our faculty of judgment, but its beauty will have no ascertainable purpose
- that is, it is not purposive with respect to determinate cognition. Indeed, this is why
beauty is pleasurable since, Kant argues, pleasure is defined as a feeling that arises on
the achievement of a purpose, or at least the recognition of a purposiveness
(Introduction, VI). The purposiveness of art is more complicated. Although such works may have
had purposes behind their production (the artist wished to express a certain mood, or
communicate a certain idea), nevertheless, these can not be sufficient for the object to
be beautiful. As judges of art, any such knowledge we do have about these real purposes
can inform the judgment as background, but must be abstracted from to form the aesthetic
judgment properly. It is not just that the purpose for the beauty of the beautiful
happens to be unknown, but that it cannot be known. Still, we are left with the
problem of understanding how a thing can be purposive, without having a definite purpose. The Fourth Moment. Here, Kant is attempting to show that aesthetic
judgments must pass the test of being 'necessary', which effectively means, 'according to
principle'. Everyone must assent to my judgment, because it follows from this principle.
But this necessity is of a peculiar sort: it is 'exemplary' and 'conditioned'. By
exemplary, Kant means that the judgment does not either follow or produce a determining
concept of beauty, but exhausts itself in being exemplary precisely of an aesthetic
judgment. With the notion of condition, Kant reaches the core of the matter. He is asking:
what is it that the necessity of the judgment is grounded upon; that is, what does it say
about those who judge? Kant calls the ground 'common sense', by which he means the a priori
principle of our taste, that is of our feeling for the beautiful. (Note: by 'common
sense' is not meant being intelligent about everyday things, as in: 'For a busy
restaurant, it's just common sense to reserve a table in advance.') In theoretical
cognition of nature, the universal communicability of a representation, its objectivity,
and its basis in a priori principles are all related. Similarly, Kant wants to claim that
the universal communicability, the exemplary necessity and the basis in an a priori
principle are all different ways of understanding the same subjective condition of
possibility of aesthetic judgment that he calls common sense. (As we shall see, on the
side of the beautiful object, this subjective principle corresponds to the principle of
the purposiveness of nature.) Thus Kant can even claim that all four Moments of the
Beautiful are summed up in the idea of 'common sense' (CJ sect.22). Kant also suggests
that common sense in turn depends upon or is perhaps identical with the same faculties
as ordinary cognition, that is, those features of humans which (as Kant showed in the Critique
of Pure Reason) make possible natural, determinative experience. Here, however, the
faculties are merely in a harmony rather than forming determinate cognition.
2. The Deduction of Taste
Overview: There are two aspects to Kant's basic answer to the
question of how aesthetic judgments happen. First, some of Kant's earlier work seemed to
suggest that our faculty or ability to judge consisted of being a mere processor of other,
much more fundamental mental presentations. These were concepts and intuitions
('intuition' being Kant's word for our immediate sensible experiences - see entry on
'Kant's Metaphysics'). Everything interesting and fundamental happened in the formation of
concepts, or in the receiving of intuitions. But now Kant argues that judgment itself, as
a faculty, has an fundamental principle that governs it. This principle asserts the
purposiveness of all phenomena with respect to our judgment. In other words, it assumes in
advance that everything we experience can be tackled by our powers of judgment. Normally,
we don't even notice that this assumption is being made, we just apply concepts, and be
done with it. But in the case of the beautiful, we do notice. This is because the
beautiful draws particular attention to its purposiveness; but also because the beautiful
has no concept of a purpose available, so that we cannot just apply a concept and be done
with it. Instead, the beautiful forces us to grope for concepts that we can never
find. And yet, nevertheless, the beautiful is not an alien and disturbing experience - on
the contrary, it is pleasurable. The principle of purposiveness is satisfied, but in a new
and unique way. Asking what this new and unique way is takes us to the second aspect. Kant
argues that the kinds of 'cognition' (i.e. thinking) characteristic of the contemplation
of the beautiful are not, in fact, all that different from ordinary cognition about things
in the world. The faculties of the mind are the same: the 'understanding' which is
responsible for concepts, and the 'sensibility' (including our imagination) which is
responsible for intuitions. The difference between ordinary and aesthetic cognition is
that in the latter case, there is no one 'determinate' concept that pins down an
intuition. Instead, intuition is allowed some 'free play', and rather than being subject
to one concept, it instead acts in 'harmony' with the lawfulness in general of the
understanding. It is this ability of judgment to bring sensibility and understanding to a
mutually reinforcing harmony that Kant calls 'common sense'. This account of common sense
explains how the beautiful can be purposive with respect to our ability to judge, and yet
have no definite purpose. Kant believes common sense also answers the question of why
aesthetic judgments are valid: since aesthetic judgments are a perfectly normal function
of the same faculties of cognition involved in ordinary cognition, they will have the same
universal validity as such ordinary acts of cognition. The idea of a harmony between or among the faculties of cognition is
turning out to be the key idea. For such a harmony, Kant claims, will be purposive, but
without purpose. Moreover, it will be both universal and necessary, because based upon
universal common sense, or again, because related to the same cognitive faculties which
enable any and all knowledge and experience. Lastly, because of the self-contained nature
of this harmony, it must be disinterested. So, what does Kant think is going on in such
'harmony', or in common sense for that matter, and does he have any arguments which make
of these idea more than mere metaphors for beauty? Up to now, we have had no decent argument for the existence of common
sense as a principle of taste. At best, common sense was plausible as a possible
explanation of, for example, the tendency to universality observed in aesthetic judgments.
(As Kant admits in sect.17). Such a demand for universality could be accounted for nicely
if we assumed an a priori principle for taste, which might also explain the idea of
universal communicability. This argument, however, is rather weak. Kant believes he has an
ingenious route to proving the case with much greater certainty. Throughout the Four Moments of the Beautiful, Kant has dropped many
important clues as to the transcendental account of the possibility of aesthetic judgment:
in particular, we have talked about communicability, common sense and the harmony of the
cognitive sub-faculties. Kant then cuts off to turn to the sublime, representing a
different problem within aesthetic judgment. He returns to beauty in sect.30, which forms
the transition to the passages tantalizingly called the Deduction. These transitional
passages feel much like a continuation of the Four Moments; we will treat them as such
here, since also Kant claims that the sublime does not need a Deduction. The Deduction in fact appears in two versions in Kant's texts (sect.9 and
21 being the first; sect.30-40 the second, with further important clarification in the
'Dialectic' sect.55-58). Here, we will discuss only the second. Both explicitly are
attempting to demonstrate the universal communicability and thus intersubjective validity
of judgments of taste. Which for Kant is the same as saying that there is a 'common sense'
- by which he means that humans all must have a kind of sensing ability which operates the
same way. Briefly, the argument begins by asserting that aesthetic judgments must be
judgments in some sense; that is, they are mental acts which bring a sensible particular
under some universal (Kant's Introduction, IV). The four moments of the beautiful are then
explicitly seen as being limitations on the conditions under which this judgment can take
place (no interest, purposive without determining purpose, etc.); all these Kant
summarizes by saying that the judgments are formal only, lacking all 'matter'. By this, he
means that although the judgment is a judgment of the presentation of a particular
(singular) object, no particular determination of either sensible intuition, or
understanding forms a necessary part of the judgment. (In ordinary cognition of the
world, this lack of restriction would be entirely out of place. It would be nonsense to
judge whether a particular thing was a sofa without restricting my judgment to that
particular thing, and to the concept of a sofa.) However, considered in general
(that is, in their essence as sub-faculties) the faculties of imagination and
understanding are likewise not restricted to any presentation or kind of sense, or
any concept. This means that Kant is describing the 'proportion' between understanding and
intuition as something like the always present possibility of the faculties being freed to
mutually enact their essence. Because such faculties in general are required for all theoretical
cognition whatsoever, regardless of its object (as Kant claims to have proven in the first
Critique), they can be assumed present a priori, in the same form and in the same
way, in all human beings. The presence of the cognitive sub-faculties in their various
relations is equivalent with the principle of the universal communicability and validity
(i.e. common sense) of any mental states in which these faculties are involved a priori.
Therefore, an aesthetic judgment must be seen to be an expression of this principle. The
key move is obviously to claim that the aesthetic judgment rests upon the same unique
conditions as ordinary cognition, and thus that the former must have the same
universal communicability and validity as the latter. It is just that, presented with the
beautiful, our cognitive faculties are released from the limitations that characterize
ordinary thought, and produce what above we called a cascade of thoughts and feelings. It is difficult to know what to make of this argument (with the various
other versions of it scattered throughout the text) and the hypothesis it purports to
prove. For one thing, Kant's work here is so heavily reliant upon the results of the first
Critique as to not really be able to stand on its own, while at the same time it is
not clear at several points whether the first and third Critiques are fully
compatible. For another, does not all this talk about the faculties 'in general' seem as
if Kant is hypostatising these faculties, as really existent things in the mind that act,
rather than simply as an expression for certain capacities? However, there is no doubting
the fascinating and profound implications of what Kant is proposing. For example, the
notions of common sense and communicability are closely akin to key political
ideas, leading several commentators to propose that what Kant is really writing about are
the foundations of any just politics (see e.g. sect.60). Or again, the 'freedom' of the
imagination is explicitly linked by Kant to the freedom characteristic of the moral will,
allowing Kant to construct a deeply rooted link between beauty and the moral (sect.59).
Finally, of course, there is K
3. The Sublime
Overview: For Kant, the other basic type of aesthetic experience is
the sublime. The sublime names experiences like violent storms or huge buildings
which seem to overwhelm us; that is, we feel we 'cannot get our head around them'. This is
either mainly 'mathematical' - if our ability to intuit is overwhelmed by size (the huge
building) - or 'dynamical' - if our ability to will or resist is overwhelmed by force
(e.g. the storm). The problem for Kant here is that this experience seems to directly
contradict the principle of the purposiveness of nature for our judgment. And yet, Kant
notes, one would expect the feeling of being overwhelmed to also be accompanied by a
feeling of fear or at least discomfort. Whereas, the sublime can be a pleasurable
experience. All this raises the question of what is going on in the sublime Kant's solution is that, in fact, the storm or the building is not the
real object of the sublime at all. Instead, what is properly sublime are ideas of reason:
namely, the ideas of absolute totality or absolute freedom. However huge the building, we
know it is puny compared to absolute totality; however powerful the storm, it is nothing
compared to absolute freedom. The sublime feeling is therefore a kind of 'rapid
alternation' between the fear of the overwhelming and the peculiar pleasure of seeing that
overwhelming overwhelmed. Thus, it turns out that the sublime experience is purposive
after all - that we can, in some way, 'get our head around it'. Since the ideas of reason (particularly freedom) are also important for
Kant's moral theory, there seems to be an interesting connection between the sublime and
morality. This Kant discusses under the heading of 'moral culture', arguing for example
that the whole sublime experience would not be possible if humans had not received a moral
training that taught them to recognize the importance of their own faculty of reason. Traditionally, the sublime has been the name for objects inspiring
awe, because of the magnitude of their size/height/depth (e.g. the ocean, the pyramids of
Cheops), force (a storm), or transcendence (our idea of God). Vis-à-vis the
beautiful, the sublime presents some unique puzzles to Kant. Three in particular are of
note. First, that while the beautiful is concerned with form, the sublime may even be (or
even especially be) formless. Second, that while the beautiful indicates (at least
for judgment) a purposiveness of nature that may have profound implications, the sublime
appears to be 'counter-purposive'. That is, the object appears ill-matched to, does
'violence' to, our faculties of sense and cognition. Finally, although from the above one
might expect the sublime experience to be painful in some way, in fact the sublime does
still involve pleasure - the question is 'how?'. Kant divides the sublime into the 'mathematical' (concerned with things
that have a great magnitude in and of themselves) and the 'dynamically' (things that have
a magnitude of force in relation to us, particularly our will). The mathematical
sublime is defined as something 'absolutely large' that is, 'large beyond all
comparison' (sect.25). Usually, we apply some kind of standard of comparison, although
this need not be explicit (e.g. 'Mt. Blanc is large' usually means 'compared with other
mountains (or perhaps, with more familiar objects), Mt. Blanc is large'). The absolutely
large, however, is not the result of a comparison Now, of course, any object is measurable - even the size of the universe,
no less a mountain on Earth. But Kant then argues that measurement not merely mathematical
in nature (the counting of units), but fundamentally relies upon the 'aesthetic' (in the
sense of 'intuitive' as used in the first Critique) grasp of a unit of measure.
Dealing with a unit of measure, whether it be a millimeter or a kilometer, requires a
number (how many units) but also a sense of what the unit is. This means that there will
be absolute limits on properly aesthetic measurement because of the limitations of the
finite, human faculties of sensibility. In the first place, there must be an absolute unit
of measure, such that nothing larger could be 'apprehended'; in the second place, there
must be a limit to the number of such units that can be held together in the imagination
and thus 'comprehended' (sect.26). An object that exceeds these limits (regardless of its
mathematical size) will be presented as absolutely large - although of course it is still
so with respect to our faculties of sense. However, we must return to the second and third peculiar puzzles of the
sublime. As we saw above with respect to the beautiful, pleasure lies in the achievement
of a purpose, or at least in the recognition of a purposiveness. So, if the sublime
presents itself as counter-purposive, why and how is pleasure associated with it? In other
words, where is the purposiveness of the sublime experience? Kant writes, This problem constitutes Kant's principle argument that something else
must be going on in the sublime experience other than the mere overwhelmingness of some
object. As Kant will later claim, objects of sense (oceans, pyramids, etc.) are called
'sublime' only by a kind of covert sleight-of-hand, what he calls a 'subreption'
(sect.27). In fact, what is actually sublime, Kant argues, are ideas of our own reason.
The overwhelmingness of sensible objects leads the minds to these ideas. Now, such presentations of reason are necessarily unexhibitable by sense.
Moreover, the faculty of reason is not merely an inert source of such ideas, but
characteristically demands that its ideas be presented. (This same demand is what
creates all the dialectical problems that Kant analyses in, for example, the Antinomies.)
Kant claims that the relation of the overwhelming sensible object to our sense is
in a kind of 'harmony' (sect.27) or analogy to the relation of the rational idea of absolute
totality to any sensible object or faculty. The sublime experience, then, is a
two-layer process. First, a contrapurposive layer in which our faculties of sense fail to
complete their task of presentation. Second, a strangely purposive layer in which this
very failure constitutes a 'negative exhibition' ('General Comment' following sect.29) of
the ideas of reason (which could not otherwise be presented). This 'exhibition' thus also
provides a purposiveness of the natural object for the fulfillment of the demands of
reason. Moreover, and importantly, it also provides a new and 'higher' purposiveness to
the faculties of sense themselves which are now understood to be properly positioned with
respect to our 'supersensible vocation' (sect.27) - i.e. in the ultimately moral hierarchy
of the faculties. Beyond simply comprehending individual sensible things, our faculty of
sensibility, we might say, now knows what it is for. We will return to this point
shortly. The consequence of this purposiveness is exactly that 'negative pleasure'
(sect.23) for which we had be searching. The initial displeasure of the 'violence' against
our apparent sensible interests is now matched by a 'higher' pleasure arising from the
strange purposiveness Kant has discovered. Interestingly, on Kant's description, neither
of these feelings wins out - instead, the sublime feeling consists of a unique 'vibration'
or 'rapid alternation' of these feelings (sect.27). The dynamically sublime is similar. In this case, a 'might' or power is
observed in nature that is irresistible with respect to our bodily or sensible selves.
Such an object is 'fearful' to be sure, but (because we remain disinterested) is not an
object of fear. (Importantly, one of Kant's examples here is religion: God is fearful but
the righteous man is not afraid. This is the difference, he says, between a rational
religion and mere superstition.) Again, the sublime is a two-layered experience. Kant
writes that such objects 'raise the soul's fortitude above its usual middle range and
allow us to discover in ourselves an ability to resist which is of a quite different
kind...' (sect.28). In particular, nature is called 'sublime merely because it elevates
the imagination to the exhibition of those cases wherein the mind can be made to feel [sich
fühlbar machen] the sublimity, even above nature, that is proper to its vocation'
(sect.28, translation modified). In particular, the sublimity belongs to human freedom
which is (by definition) unassailable to the forces of nature. Such a conception of
freedom as being outside the order of nature, but demanding action upon that order, is the
core of Kant's moral theory. Thus we can begin to see the intimate connection between the
sublime (especially here the dynamically sublime) and morality This connection (for the sublime in general) becomes even more explicit in
Kant's discussion of what he calls 'moral culture'. (sect.29) The context is to ask about
the modality of judgments on the sublime - that is, to they have the same implicit demand
on the necessary assent of others that judgments on the beautiful have? Kant's answer is
complicated. There is an empirical factor which is required for the sublime: the mind of
the experiencer must be 'receptive' to rational ideas, and this can only happen in a
culture that already understands morality as being a function of freedom or, more
generally, conceives of human beings as having a dimension which in some way transcends
nature. The sublime, properly speaking, is possible only for members of such a moral
culture (and, Kant sometimes suggests, may reciprocally contribute to the strengthening of
that culture). So, the sublime is subjected to an empirical contingency. However, Kant
claims, we are justified in demanding from everyone that they necessarily have the transcendental
conditions for such moral culture, and thus for the sublime, because these conditions
are (as in the case of the beautiful) the same as for theoretical and practical thought in
general. The claims about moral culture show that, for Kant, aesthetics in general is not
an isolated problem for philosophy but intimately linked to metaphysical and moral
questions. This is one more reason why it is important not to assume that the Critique
of Aesthetic Judgment is a book merely about beauty and sublimity. Moreover,
this 'link' has an even greater significance for Kant: it shows reflective judgment in
action as it were relating together both theoretical and practical reason, for this was
the grand problem he raised in his Introduction. Kant's treatment of the sublime raises many difficulties. For example,
only the dynamically sublime has any strict relationship to the moral idea of freedom.
This raises the question of whether the mathematical and dynamically sublime are in fact
radically different, both in themselves as experiences, and in their relation to 'moral
culture'. Again, Kant gives an interesting account of how magnitude is estimated in
discussing the mathematical sublime, but skips the parallel problem in the dynamically
sublime (how does one estimate force?). Finally, many readers have found the premise of
the whole discussion implausible: that in the sublime experience, what is properly sublime
and the object of respect should be the idea of reason, rather than nature.
4. Fine Art and Genius
Overview: Thus far, Kant's main focus for the discussion of beauty
and the sublime has been nature. He now turns to fine art. Kant assumes that the cognition
involved in judging fine art is similar to the cognition involved in judging natural
beauty. Accordingly, the problem that is new to fine art is not how it is judged by a
viewer, but how it is created. The solution revolves around two new concepts: the 'genius'
and 'aesthetic ideas'. Kant argues that art can be tasteful (that is, agree with aesthetic
judgment) and yet be 'soulless' - lacking that certain something that would make it more
than just an artificial version of a beautiful natural object. What provides soul in fine
art is an aesthetic idea. An aesthetic idea is a counterpart to a rational idea: where the
latter is a concept that could never adequately be exhibited sensibly, the former is a set
of sensible presentations to which no concept is adequate. An aesthetic idea, then, is as
successful an attempt as possible to 'exhibit' the rational idea. It is the talent of
genius to generate aesthetic ideas, but that is not all. First, the mode of expression
must also be tasteful - for the understanding's 'lawfulness' is the condition of the
expression being in any sense universal and capable of being shared. The genius must also
find a mode of expression which allows a viewer not just to 'understand' the work
conceptually, but to reach something like the same excited yet harmonious state of mind
that the genius had in creating Starting in sect.43, Kant addresses himself particularly to fine art
for the first time. The notion of aesthetic judgment already developed remains central.
But unlike the investigation of beauty in nature, the focus shifts from the transcendental
conditions for judgment of the beautiful object to the transcendental conditions of the
making of fine art. In other words: how is it possible to make art? To solve this, Kant
will introduce the notion of genius. But that is not the only shift. Kant stands right in the middle of a
complete historical change in the central focus of aesthetics. While formerly,
philosophical aesthetics was largely content to take its primary examples of beauty and
sublimity from nature, after Kant the focus is placed squarely on works of art. Now, in
Kant, fine art seems to 'borrow' its beauty or sublimity from nature. Fine art is
therefore a secondary concept. On the other hand, of course, in being judged
aesthetically, nature is seen 'as if' purposeful, designed, or a product of an
intelligence. So, in this case at least, the notion of 'nature' itself can be seen as
secondary with respect to the notions of design or production, borrowed directly from art.
Thus, the relation between nature and art is much more complex than it seems at first.
Kant's work thus forms an important part of the historical change mentioned above.
Moreover, it is clear from a number of comments that Kant makes about 'genius' that he is
an aesthetic conservative reacting against, for example, the emphasis on the individual,
impassioned artist characteristic of the 'Sturm und Drang' movement. But,
historically, his discussion of the concept contributed to the escalation of the concept
in the early 19th Century. So, in order to understand how art is possible, we have to first
understand what art is, and what art production is, vis-á-vis natural objects and
natural 'production'. First, then, what does Kant mean by 'nature'? (1) On the one hand,
in expressions like 'the nature of X' (e.g. 'the nature of human cognition'), it means
those properties which belong essentially to X. This can either be an empirical claim or,
more commonly in Kant, a priori. On the other hand, nature as itself an object has several
meanings for Kant. Especially: (2) If I say 'nature as opposed to art' I mean that realm
of objects not presented as the objects of sensible will - that is, which are quite simply
not made or influenced by human hands. (3) If I say 'nature as an object of cognition' I
mean any object capable of being dealt with 'objectively' or 'scientifically'. This
includes things in space outside of us, but also aspects of sensible human nature that are
the objects of sciences such as psychology. (4) Nature is also the object of reflective
judgments and is that which is presupposed to be purposive or pre-adapted with respect to
judgment. Kant begins by giving a long clarification of art. As a general
term, again, art refers to the activity of making according to a preceding notion.
If I make a chair, I must know, in advance, what a chair is. We distinguish art from
nature because (though we may judge nature purposive) we know in fact there is no prior
notion behind the activity of a flower opening. The flower doesn't have an idea of opening
prior to opening - the flower doesn't have a mind or a will to have or execute ideas with.
Art also means something different from science - as Kant says, it is a skill
distinguished from a type of knowledge. Art involves some kind of practical
ability, irreducible to determinate concepts, which is distinct from a mere comprehension
of something. The latter can be fully taught; the former, although subject to training to
be sure, relies upon native talent. (Thus, Kant will later claim, there can be no such
thing as a scientific genius, because a scientific mind can never be radically
original. See sect.46.) Further, art is distinguished from labor or craft -
the latter being something satisfying only for the payoff which results and not for the
mere activity of making itself. Art (not surprisingly, like beauty) is free from
any interest in the existence of the product itself. Arts are subdivided into mechanical and aesthetic. The former are those
which, although not handicrafts, never-the-less are controlled by some definite concept of
a purpose to be produced. The latter are those wherein the immediate object is merely
pleasure itself. Finally, Kant distinguishes between agreeable and fine art. The former
produces pleasure through sensation alone, the latter through various types of cognitions This taxonomy of fine art defines more precisely the issue for Kant. What,
then, 'goes on' in the mind of the artist? It is clearly not just a matter of applying
good taste, otherwise all art critics would be artists, all musicians composers, and so
forth. Equally, it is not a question of simply expressing oneself using whatever means
come to hand, since such productions might well lack taste. We feel reasonably secure that
we know how it is possible for, for example, clockmakers to make clocks, or glass-blowers
to blow glass (which doesn't mean that we can make clocks or blow glass, but that as a
kind of activity, we understand it). We have also investigated how it is for someone looking
at a work of beauty to judge it. But it is not yet clear how, on the side of
production, fine art gets made. Kant sums up the problem in two apparent paradoxes. The first of these is
easy to state. Fine art is a type of purposeful production, because it is made; art in
general is production according to a concept of an object. But fine art can have no
concept adequate to its production, else any judgment on it will fail one of the key
features of all aesthetic judgments: namely purposiveness without a purpose. Fine art
therefore must both be, and not be, an art in general. To introduce the second paradox, Kant notices that we have a problem with
the overwrought - that which draws attention to itself as precisely an artificial
object or event. 'Over-the-top' acting is a good example. Kant expresses this point by
saying that, in viewing a work of art we must be aware of it as art, but it must
never-the-less appear natural. Where 'natural' here stands for the appearance of
freedom from conventional rules of artifice; this concept is derived from the second sense
of 'nature' given above. The paradox is that art (the non-natural) must appear to be
natural. Kant must overcome these paradoxes and explain how fine art can be
produced at all. In sect.46, the first step is taken when Kant, in initially defining
'genius', conflates 'nature' in the first sense above with nature in the third sense. He
writes, In other words, that which makes it possible to produce (fine art) is not
itself produced - not by the individual genius, nor (we should add) through his or her
culture, history, education, etc. From the definition of genius as that talent through
which nature gives the rule to art follows (arguably!) the following key propositions.
First, fine art is produced by individual humans, but not as contingent individuals.
That is, not by human nature in the empirically known sense. Second, fine art as
aesthetic (just like nature as aesthetic) can have no definite rules or concepts for
producing or judging it. But genius supplies a rule, fully applicable only in the one,
concrete instance, precisely by way of the universal structures of the genius' mental
abilities (which again, is 'natural' in sense one). Third, the rule supplied by genius is more a rule governing what to
produce, rather than how. Thus, while all fine art is a beautiful 'presentation' of
an object (sect.48), this partly obscures the fact that genius is involved in the original
creation of the object to be presented. The 'how' is usually heavily informed by training
and technique, and is governed by taste. Taste, Kant claims, is an evaluative faculty, not
a productive one (sect.48). Thus, the end of sect.47, he will distinguish between
supplying 'material' and elaborating the 'form'. Fourth, because of this, originality
is a characteristic of genius. This means also that fine art properly is never an imitation
of previous art, though it may 'follow' or be 'inspired by' previous art (sect.47). Fifth,
as we mentioned above, fine art must have the 'look of nature' (sect.45). This is because
the rule of its production (that concept or set of concepts of an object and of the 'how'
of its production which allows the genius to actually make some specific something) is radically
original. Thus, fine art is 'natural' in sense two, in that it lies outside the cycle
of production and re-production within which all other arts in general are caught up (and
thus, again, cannot be imitated). This leads Kant to make some suggestive, but never fully
worked out, comments about artistic influences and schools, the role of culture, of
technique and education, etc. (See e.g. sect.49-50) Having made the various distinctions between the matter and the form of
expression in genius' work, or again between the object and its presentation, Kant applies
these to a brief if eccentric comparative study of the varieties of fine art (sect.51-53).
According to the manner of presentation, he divides all fine arts into the arts of speech
(especially poetry, which Kant ranks the highest of the arts), the arts of visual form
(sculpture, architecture and painting), and the arts involving a play of sensible tones
(music). The last pages of this part of Kant's book are taken up with a curious collection
of comments on the 'gratifying' (non-aesthetic but still relatively free activities),
especially humor. However, we have not yet clarified what kind of thing the 'rule' supplied
by genius is; therefore we have not yet reached an understanding of the nature of the
'talent' for the production of fine art that is genius. Genius provides the matter for fine art, taste provides the form. The
beautiful is always formal, as we have already discovered. So, what distinguishes one
'matter' from another, such that genius might be required? What genius does, Kant says, is
to provide 'soul' or 'spirit' ('Seele', sect.49) to what would otherwise be
uninspired. This peculiar idea seems to be used in a sense analogous to saying that
someone 'has soul', meaning to have nobility or a deep and exemplary moral character, as
opposed to being shallow or even in a sense animal-like; but Kant also, following the
Aristotelian tradition, means that which makes something alive rather than mere material.
There can be an uninspired fine art, but it is not very interesting (pure beauty,
mentioned above, may be an example). There can also, Kant warns, be inspired nonsense,
which is also not very interesting. Genius inspires art works - gives them spirit - and
does so by linking the work of art to what Kant will call aesthetic ideas. This is defined in the third paragraph of sect.49. The aesthetic idea is a
presentation of the imagination to which no thought is adequate. This is a 'counterpart'
to rational ideas (which we encountered above in talking of the sublime), which are
thoughts to which nothing sensible or imagined can be adequate. Each is excessive, we
might say, but on different sides of our cognitive apparatus. Aesthetic ideas are seen to
be 'straining' after the presentation of rational ideas - this is what gives them their
excess over any set of ordinary determinate concepts. In the judgment of the beautiful, we had a harmony between the imagination
and the understanding, such that each furthered the extension of the other. Kant is now
saying: certainly that is true for all judgments of taste, whether of natural or
artificial objects. And yet we can distinguish between such a harmony which happens on the
experiencing of a beautiful form simply, or a harmony which happens on the experiencing of
a beautiful form that itself is the expression of something yet higher but that cannot
in any other way be expressed. (The notion of 'expression' is important: what Kant is
describing is an aesthetic process, rather than a process of understanding something with
concepts, and then communicating that understanding.) Inspired fine art is beautiful, but in
addition is an expression of the state of mind which is generated by an aesthetic
idea. The relevant passages in sect.49 are both confused and compressed. Kant
seems to have two different manners in which aesthetic ideas can be the spirit of fine
art. First, the aesthetic idea is a presentation of a rational idea (one of Kant's
examples is the moral idea of cosmopolitan benevolence). Of course, we know that there is
no such adequate presentation. An obvious example might be a novelist or playwright's
attempt to portray a morally upright character: because, for Kant, an important part of
our moral being transcends the world of phenomena, there must always be a mis-match
between the idea and the portrayal of the character. Here the aesthetic idea seems to
function by prompting an associated or coordinated surplus of thought that is directly analogous
to the associated surplus of imaginative presentations demanded by rational ideas. (We saw
a similar relation between the demand of rational ideas and imaginative activity in Kant's
analysis of the sublime. Indeed, arguably there is an analogy here to the concept of
'negative exhibition'.) In practice, this will often involve what Kant calls 'aesthetic
attributes': more ordinary, intermediate images: 'Thus Jupiter's eagle with the lightning
in its claws is an attribute of the mighty king of heaven'. Second, the aesthetic idea can be an impossibly perfect or complete
presentation of a possible empirical experience and its concept (death, envy, love, fame
are Kant's examples). Here the aesthetic idea is not presenting a particular rational idea
so much as a general function of reason: the striving for a maximum, a totality or the end
of a series (as in Kant's account of the mathematical sublime). And again, the effect is
an associated 'expansion' of the concept beyond its determinate bounds. In either case,
the aesthetic idea is not merely a presentation, but one which will set the imagination
and understanding into a harmony, creating the same kind of self-sustaining and
self-contained feeling of pleasure as the beautiful. Kant's theory of genius - for all its vagueness and lack of philosophical
rigor - has been enormously influential. In particular, the radical separation of the
aesthetic genius from the scientific mind; the emphasis on the near-miraculous expression
(through aesthetic ideas and attributes) of the ineffable, excited state of mind; the link
of fine art to a 'metaphysical' content; the requirement of radical originality; the
raising of poetry to the head of all arts - all these claims (though not all of them
entirely unique to Kant) were commonplaces and wide-spread for well over a century after
Kant. Indeed, when modernists protested (often paradoxically) against the concept of the
artist by using 'automatic writing' or 'found objects' it is, for the most part, this
concept of the artist-genius that they are reacting against.
5. Idealism, Morality and the Supersensible
Overview: Let us return to the notion of beauty as tackled in
sections A1 and A2. Viewed from the position
of our knowledge of nature, the supposed purposiveness of nature looks like nonsense. Not
only does our scientific knowledge seem to have no room for the concept of a purpose, but
many and perhaps all beautiful natural objects can be accounted for on purely scientific
terms. Thus, any principle of purposiveness can only be understood as ideal. That is, such
a principle says more about the particular nature of our cognitive faculties than it says
about what nature really is. But the principle of purposiveness is still valid from the point of
view of the activities of judgment. This in turn means that, for judgment, the
question is valid as to how this natural purposiveness is to be explained. The only
possible account is that the appearance of purposiveness in nature is conditioned by the
supersensible realm underlying nature. But this means that beauty is a kind of revelation
of the hidden substrate of the world, and that this substrate has a necessary sympathy
with our highest human projects. To this, Kant adds a series of important analogies
between the activity of aesthetic judgment and the activity of moral judgment. These
analyses lead Kant to claim that beauty is the 'symbol of morality'. Above, at the end of section A1, we saw Kant claim that his whole
account of the transcendental possibility of judgments on the beautiful could be summed up
in the notion of common sense. This principle of common sense is the form that the general
a priori principle of the purposiveness of nature for judgment takes when we are trying to
understand the subjective conditions of aesthetic judgments of beauty. That is,
where the principle is taken as a rule governing the conditions of aesthetic judgments in
the subject, then it is properly called 'common sense'. But where the principle is taken
to be functioning like a concept of an object (the beautiful thing), then it is to
be seen as the principle of the purposiveness of all nature for our judgment (see
sect.55-58). But nature, understood scientifically, is not purposive. This strange
situation gives rise to what Kant calls a 'dialectic' - merely apparent knowledge claims
or paradoxes that arise from the misuse of a faculty. Just as in the 'dialectic' sections
in the first two Critiques (see the entry on 'Kant's Metaphysics'), he Kant solves
the problem by way of an appeal to the rational idea of the supersensible. Dialectical
problems, for Kant, always involves a confusion between the rational ideas of the
supersensible (which have at best a merely regulative validity) and natural concepts
(which have a validity guaranteed but restricted to appearances). This particular form of
dialectical problem involves two contradictory, but apparently necessary, truth claims
Kant calls such a situation an antinomy. (See Introduction 2 above, and
the entry on Kants Metaphysics.) A similar dialectical problem will
arise in the 'Critique of Teleological Judgment' where we will resume our discussion of
these issues. For the moment it is enough to observe that the Antinomy of Taste seems to
involve two contradictory claims about the origin of beautiful objects. However, it could be the case that nature as the object of scientific laws
('nature', as Kant is fond of saying, according to the 'immanent' principles of the
understanding), is itself responsible for the beautiful forms in nature (Kant's example is
the formation of beautiful crystals, understood perfectly through the science of
chemistry). This possibility demonstrates the idealism of the principle of
purposiveness. Kant thus writes, 'we ... receive nature with favor, [it is] not nature
that favors us' (sect.58). He writes, But at the same time, this idealism also necessarily raises the question
of what conditions beautiful appearances: if we are asking for a concept that accounts (on
the side of the ideal object) for this purposiveness, it must be what Kant calls the realm
of the 'supersensible' that is 'underlying' all nature and all humanity. As we know, no
other concept (e.g. a natural concept) is adequate to grasping the beautiful object as
beautiful. So, in forming an aesthetic judgment, which judges a beautiful object as
purposive without purpose, we must assume the legitimacy of the rational concept of an
underlying supersensible realm in order to account for that purposiveness. This assumption
is valid only within and only for that judgment, and thus is certainly not a matter of
knowledge. Thus, Kant can borrow the notion of aesthetic idea from his account of fine art
and, speaking from the point of view of reflective judgment, say that beauty in general is
always the expression of aesthetic ideas (sect.51). From the point of view of judgment,
everything happens as if the unfolding beauty of the natural world is like the product of
a genius. This piques the interest of reason - for judgment has, as it were, found
phenomenal evidence of the reality of reason's more far-reaching claims about the
supersensible (see B3 below). The profundity of beauty, for Kant, consists of precisely
this assumption by judgment; it allows him to make further connections between beauty and
morality, and (as we shall see) ultimately to suggest the unity of all the disciplines of
philosophy. The last major section of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment
famously considers the relation between beauty and morality, which recalls the earlier
treatment of the sublime and moral culture. Here, Kant claims that beauty is the 'symbol'
of morality (sect.59). A symbol, he argues, is to be defined as a kind of presentation of
a rational idea in an intuition. The 'presentation' in question is an analogy between how
judgment deals with or reflects upon the idea and upon the symbolic intuition. Thus, if
'justice' is symbolized by a blind goddess with a scale, it is not because all judges are
blind! Rather, 'blindness' and 'weighing' function as concepts in judgments in a way
analogous to how the concept of 'justice' functions. In showing how beauty in general is
the symbol of morality, Kant lists four points: (1) Both please directly and not through
consequences; (2) Both are disinterested; (3) Both involve the idea of a free conformity
to law (free conformity of the imagination in the case of beauty, of the will in the case
of morality); (4) Both are understood to be founded upon a universal principle. The
importance of this section is two-fold: first, historically, Kant is giving a
philosophical underpinning to the notion that taste should be related to and, through
cultivation, also promotes morality. This is a claim that is often rolled out even
today. Second, the link to morality is a detailing out of the basic link between
aesthetics in general and the pure concepts of reason (ideas). First aesthetic judgments
(both the sublime and the beautiful), and then teleological judgments will form the bridge
between theoretical and practical reason, and (Kant hopes) bring unity to philosophy. We
shall return to this in section B4.
B. Kant's Teleology
1. Objective Purposiveness and Science
Overview: The second part of Kant's book deals with a special form
of judgment called 'teleological judgment'. The word 'teleology' comes from the Greek word
'telos' meaning end or purpose. A teleological judgment, on Kants account, is a
judgment concerning an object the possibility of which can only be grasped from the
point of view of its purpose. The purpose in question Kant calls an 'intrinsic purpose'.
In such a case, we have to say that, strictly speaking, the object was not made according
to a purpose that is different from the object (as the idea of vegetable soup in
the mind of the cook is different from the soup itself), but that the object itself
embodies its purpose. Kant is talking mainly about living organisms (which he calls
'natural purposes'), which are both cause and effect, both blueprint and product, of
themselves. The problem here is that such a notion is paradoxical for human thought in
general, and certainly incompatible with scientific thought. This raises two issues. First, the paradoxical nature of any concept of a
natural purpose means that our minds necessarily supplement judgment with the concept of
causation through purposes - i.e. the concept of art, broadly speaking. In other words,
for lack of any more adequate resources, we think natural purposes on an analogy with the
production of man-made objects according to their purpose. Second, just as with aesthetic
judgments, Kant does not claim that such judgments ever achieve knowledge. Kant argues
that teleological judgments are required, even in science - but not to explain organisms,
rather simply to recognize their existence, such that biological science can then set
about trying to understanding them on its own terms. The word 'teleology' comes from the Greek word 'telos' meaning end
or purpose. A teleological judgment, on Kants account, is a judgment concerning an
object the possibility of which can only be grasped from the point of view of its purpose. The second half of Kant's book (the 'Critique of Teleological Judgment')
is much less often studied and referred to. This is of course related to the fact that
Kant's aesthetics has been hugely influential, while his teleology has sparked less
contemporary interest; and also the fact that, in the Introduction to the whole text, Kant
writes that 'In a critique of judgment, [only] the part that deals with aesthetic judgment
belongs to it essentially.' (Introduction VIII). This is because, as we saw above, in
aesthetic judgment the faculty of judgment is, as it were, on its own - although certainly
the action of judgment there has implications for our faculty of reason. In teleological
judgment, on the other hand, the action of judgment - although still reflective - is much
more closely linked to ordinary theoretical cognition of nature. Judgment in its
teleological function is not, let us say, laid bare in its purity. However, it would be
wrong to ignore the 'Critique of Teleological Judgment' either on the grounds of its
lesser influence, or especially on the assumption that its content is intrinsically less
interesting. The main difference between aesthetic and teleological judgments is the
'reality' of the purpose for the object. Whereas the object of aesthetic judgment was
purposive without a purpose, the objects of teleological judgment do have purposes for
which a concept or idea is to hand. There are, Kant claims, two types of real purposes:
first, an 'extrinsic purpose which is the role a thing may play in being a means to
some end. An example would be an object of art in the general sense: a shoe for example,
or a landscaped garden - something that was made for a purpose, and where the purpose is
the reason behind it being made. However, just as in the critique of aesthetic judgment, such ordinary
examples are not (apparently) troubling and are thus not what Kant has in mind. So, Kant
notes that there is a second type of real purpose, an 'intrinsic purpose. In this
case, rather than the purpose being primarily understood as behind the
production of a thing, a thing embodies its own purpose. These are what Kant calls
'natural purposes' (also translated as 'physical ends'), and the key examples are living
organisms (sect.65). Such an organism is made up of parts - individual organs, and below that,
individual cells. These parts, however, are 'organized' - they are determined to be the
parts that they are - according to the form or 'purpose' which is the whole creature. The
parts reciprocally produce and are produced by the form of the whole. Nor is the idea of
the whole separate to the organism and its cause (for then the creature would be an art
product.) A mechanical clock may be made up or organized parts, but this organization is
not the clock itself, but rather the concept of the clock in the mind of the craftsperson
who made it. The organism is such insofar as it intrinsically and continually produces
itself; the clock is not an organism because it has to be made according to a concept
of it. But how does this principle relate to the sciences of nature? Such an
account of organisms as teleological is not original to Kant. It extends back to
Aristotle, and, despite increasing hostility to Aristotle's physics since the Renaissance,
remained a commonplace in European biology through the 18th century and beyond. Kant is
very careful to distinguish himself from the rationalist position which, he claims, takes
teleology as a constitutive principle - that is, as a principle of scientific knowledge.
Importantly, Kant claims that such a teleological causation is utterly alien to
natural causation as our understanding is able to conceive it. However, since natural
mechanical causal connections are necessary, this means that a physical end has to be
understood to be contingent with respect to such 'mechanical' natural laws. Reason,
however, always demands necessity in its objects (the principle of reason here is akin to
Leibniz's notion of the principle of sufficient reason; see entry on Leibniz's
Metaphysics). Accordingly, reason provides the idea of causation according to ends
(on the analogy of art being the product of a will). As we know, however, a purely rational
concept has no constitutive validity with respect to objects of experience. Instead,
Kant claims, teleological judgment is merely reflective, and its principle merely
regulative. The teleological judgment gives no knowledge, in other words, but simply
allows the cognitive faculty to recognize a certain class of empirical objects (living
organisms) that then might be subjected (so far as that is possible) to further,
empirical, study. In effect, Kant is saying that, were it not for the reflective judgment
and the principle of its functioning here (the rational idea of an 'intrinsic' end or
purpose), the ability to experience something as alive (and thus subsequently to study it
as the science of biology) would be impossible. Ordinary scientific judgments will be
unable to fully explore and explain certain biological phenomena, and thus teleological
judgments have a limited scientific role. Such judgments only apply (with the above mentioned constraints) to
individual things on the basis of their inner structure, and are not an attempt to account
for their existence per se. Nevertheless, even this suggests to reason by analogy
the idea of the whole of nature as a purposive system, which could only be explained if
based upon some supersensible foundation although it is hardly necessary in every
instance to take the investigation so far (sect.85). In fact, the whole of nature is not
given to us in this way, Kant admits, and therefore this extended idea is not as essential
to science as the narrower one of natural purposes (sect.75). Nevertheless, the idea may
be useful in discovering phenomena and laws in nature that might not have been recognized
on a mechanical understanding alone. (Recent ecological thought, for example, has often
tended to think of whole eco-systems as if they were in themselves organisms, and whole
species of plants and animals (as well as the physical environment they inhabit) are their
'organs'. Such an approach may be fruitful for understanding the inter-connectedness of
the system, but also may be dangerous if taken too far - when it begins to see as necessary
what in fact has to be considered as contingent.) Thus Kant believes he has discovered a role, albeit a limited one, for
teleological judgments within natural science. In fact, of course, the whole conception of
biological science was moving away from such notions, first with the theory of evolution,
and subsequently with the idea of genetics. Nevertheless, there is something fascinating
about Kant's conception of a natural purpose, which seems to capture something of the
continuing scientific and philosophical difficulties in understanding what 'life' in
general is.
2. 'The Peculiarity of the Human Understanding'
Overview: Why is it the case that a proper concept of a natural
purpose is impossible for us, and has to be supplemented with the concept of production
according to a separate purpose? It is because of a fundamental 'peculiarity' of the human
understanding, according to Kant. Our minds he describes as 'intellectus ectypus',
cognition only by way of 'images'. That is why it is impossible for us to
understand something that is at the same time object and purpose. Kant then claims that
this characterization of the human intellect raises the possibility of another form of
intellect, the 'intellectus archetypus', or cognition directly through the
original. In such a case, there would be no distinction between perceiving a thing,
understanding a thing, and the thing existing. This is as close as our finite minds can
get to understanding the mind of God. However, in dealing with the limited role discussed above, there is
an implicit danger. If reason does not pay sufficient critical attention to the
reflection involved the result is an antinomy (sect.70) between the basic scientific
principle of the understanding - to seek to treat everything as necessary in being
subject to natural laws - and the teleological principle - that there are some objects
that are cannot be treated according to these laws, and are thus radically contingent
with respect to them. Kant's basic solution to this antinomy is given immediately
(sect.71): the problem is simply that reason has forgotten that the second of these
principles is not constitutive of its object that is, does not account of
the objects existence. There could only be an antinomy if both principles were
understood to be so constitutive. Kant, however, continues for several sections the
discussion of the antinomy and its solution, in the end proposing a remarkable new
solution. In sect.77, Kant is at pains to point out that the teleological,
reflective judgment is a necessity for human minds because of a peculiarity of such minds.
(This discussion recalls the treatment of idealism in the 'Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment' above.) In our understanding of the world (and for any other understanding we
could imagine the workings of), the universal principle (law of nature) never fully
determines any particular thing in all its real detail. Thus these details, although
necessary in themselves as part of the order of nature, must be contingent with respect to
our universal concept. It is simply beyond our understanding that there should be a
concept that, in itself, determines as necessary all the features of any particular
thing. (At this point, Kant is clearly influenced by Leibniz's idea of the 'complete
concept' - please see the entry on Leibniz's Metaphysics.) As Kant explains it, an object
so understood would be a whole that conditions all its parts. But a living organism would be just such a whole. As we have seen, to
understand its possibility we have to apply (through reflective judgment) the rational
idea of an intrinsic purpose. Here, as we have just seen, the problem of the contingency
with respect to natural law is exacerbated. But this idea is of a presentation of such a
whole, and the presentation is conceived of as a purpose which conditions or
leads to the production of the parts. Ours, in other words, is an understanding
which always 'requires images (it is an intellectus ectypus)' (sect.77). This peculiarity of our understanding poses the possibility of another
form of intelligence, the intellectus archetypus, an intelligence which is not
limited to this detour of presentations in its thinking and acting. Such an understanding
would not function in a world of appearances, but directly in the world of
things-in-themselves. Its power of giving the universal (concepts and ideas) would not be
a separate power from its power of forming intuitions of particular things; concept and
thing, thought and reality would be one. From the point of view of such an understanding,
what we humans must conceive as the contingency of natural purposes with respect to
the universal concept, is only an appearance. For the intellectus archetypus, such
natural purposes would indeed be necessary, in the same sense as events subject to
mechanical natural law. Thus, the notion of an intellectus archetypus - and the
corresponding distinction for us between appearances and things-in-themselves - gives Kant
a more complete way of solving the above antinomy. Because of the limitation of our
understanding, we are incapable of knowing the details of the necessity of all
natural processes. The idea of a natural purpose is an essential additional principle
which partly corrects for this limitation, but also produces the antinomy. But the
contingency introduced by the new principle is (or, rather, may be) only a
contingency for us (as intellectus ectypus), and therefore the principle of natural
purposes does not contradict the demand of reason for necessity. Such an idea clearly takes us in the direction of theology - the study of
the divine being, and that being's relation to creation. But it is above all important to
remember that, at this point, Kant is not claiming that there is, or must be, or that he
can prove there to be, such a being. Thus, for example, given Kant's concern with
purposiveness and design, one might think he would make a case for the so-called 'argument
from design' (the argument to the existence of a creator from the apparently designed
quality of creation). But, in fact, Kant believes this to be an extraordinarily weak
argument (see for example sect.sect.85, 90 and 'General Comment on Teleology'), though
interesting. Kant, however, thinks he has an argument which is related to it, and which
(within certain limits) works much better. It is this argument which occupies most of the
second half of the 'Critique of Teleological Judgment'.
3. The Final Purpose and Kant's Moral Argument for the Existence of God
Overview: The notion of the intellectus archetypus is clearly
heading in the direction of philosophical theology. Kant's book culminates with his most
sustained presentation and discussion of his Moral Proof for the Existence of God. Kant's work already included some very famous critiques of other such
proofs. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he provides some of the standard attacks on
the cosmological and especially the ontological arguments. And in the Critique of
Judgment, he argues that the argument from design, at least as normally stated, is
very weak. Kant's own proof, he thinks, avoids the problems typical of other arguments,
precisely because it does not conclude by stating that we know the existence of
God. This is because Kant is quite happy with the idea that God's existence could never be
necessary for theoretical reason. But he then asks whether practical reason - i.e. the
moral side of our intellect - has the same limitation. In Kant's account of practical reason, the moral law is conceived of as duty.
Acting from the mere pure and universal form of the moral law is everything, the
consequences of action do not enter into the equation (see entry on 'Kant's Metaphysics').
However, Kant claims that the moral law obligates us to consider the final purpose
or aim of all moral action. This final purpose of moral action Kant calls the 'highest
good' (summum bonum). This means the greatest possible happiness for all moral
beings. Importantly, this goal is not the ground of morality - unlike ordinary
instances of desire or action, wherein I act precisely because I want to reach the goal.
Moral action is grounded in duty - but, subsequently, so to speak, we must be assured that
the final purpose is actually possible. Just as moral action must be possible through freedom, so the summum
bonum must be possible through moral action. But the possibility of the summum
bonum as the final purpose in nature appears to be questionable. Therefore, if our
moral action is to make sense, there must be someone working behind the scenes. This could
only be activity of a 'moral author of the world' which would make it at least possible
for the summum bonum to be reached. Moral action, therefore, assumes the existence
of a God. But that the postulation of God lies 'within' moral action in this way
automatically discounts the 'moral proof' from any theoretical validity. After an extended discussion of the ins and outs of the role of
teleological judgments in science, from sect.78 to around sect.82, Kant's discussion
begins to shift to a quite different topic. In sect.82 he argues in this way: it might
seem, he says, that certain features of nature have as an extrinsic purpose their
relations to other features: the nectar for the honey, the river for the irrigation of
land near its bank, etc. (Ultimately, again, these might be seen as part of the intention
or design of the intelligent cause of creation.) This, Kant says, is a perfectly
understandable way of speaking sometimes, and even helps us to cognize certain natural
processes, but has no objective foundation in science. There is always another way
of looking at things for which what we thought was a purpose is in fact only a means to
something else entirely (e.g. the nectar is simply a way of attracting bees for the
purposes of pollination). It is sometimes even claimed (often on a religious basis) that human
beings are the real, 'ultimate' purpose of nature, and all other things have, in the end,
the benefit and use of humans as an extrinsic end. But 'in the chain of purposes man is
never more than a link' (sect.83). Nature per se does not, then, contain or pursue
any such purposes, not even for man. But Kant is not quite yet finished with these kinds
of problems, and introduces in sect.84 the idea of a 'final purpose'. As we have discovered on several previous occasions, for Kant human beings
are not merely natural beings. The human capacity for freedom is both a cause which
acts according to purposes (the moral law) represented as necessary, and yet which has to
be thought as independent of the chain of natural causation/purposes. Kant then writes,
carefully, '... if things in the world ... require a supreme cause that acts in terms of
purposes, then man [qua free] is the final purpose of creation' (sect.84). (As Kant
emphasizes on several occasions - e.g. in the last part of sect.91 - it is the fact of
freedom that forms the incontrovertible first premise of the argument he is about to put
forward.) Put more grandly, 'without man [as a moral being] all of creation would be a
mere wasteland, gratuitous and without a final purpose' (sect.86). Thus, the question that
really 'matters', Kant writes, 'is whether we do have a basis, sufficient for reason
(whether speculative or practical), for attributing a final purpose to the supreme
cause [in its] acting in terms of purposes' (sect.86). Certainly, the argument will not
involve a 'speculatively' (i.e. theoretically) sufficient basis. Kant's 'moral proof for the existence of God' is given beginning in
sect.87. Actually, this proof first appeared in the Critique of Practical Reason a
few years previously (see entry on Kant's Metaphysics), and is in fact assumed through the
Critique of Pure Reason. But Kant's most detailed discussion is in the third Critique.
The rational idea of purposiveness, although never constitutive, seems to
be relevant everywhere so far: in Kant's account of the possibility of science in his
Introduction, in the account of beauty (and in a different way in the sublime), and in the
treatment of teleological judgments. Because these are one and all reflective judgments,
they entail neither a theoretical nor a practical conclusion as to what might be behind
these purposes. Even where teleological judgments about purposes in nature leads us to
consider the possibility of a world author, this approach leaves quite indeterminate (and
thus useless for the purposes of religion or theology) our idea of that world author (thus
Kant's ultimate criticism of what he calls 'physicotheology' in sect.85). But, Kant asks,
is there any reason requiring us to assume nature is purposive with respect to practical
reason? In Kant's account of practical reason, the moral law is conceived of as duty.
Acting from the mere pure and universal form of the moral law is everything, the
consequences of action do not enter into the equation. However, as Kant makes clear in the
Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, the practical faculties in general have
to do with desire - i.e. purposes motivating action - and the free will is termed the
'higher' faculty of desire. Kant claims that the moral law necessarily obligates us to
consider the final purpose of moral action. However, it is not to be considered as
the ground of morality, as would normally be the case in desire, when the presentation of
the result (my aim) causes the action (action leading to that aim). This final purpose
linked to the higher, moral, faculty of desire Kant calls the 'highest good' (summum
bonum). Conceived of as a state of natural beings, this means the greatest
possible happiness for all moral beings. Kant is using this inter-implication of moral law and final purpose of
moral action as a premise of his argument. The obvious question that arises is why, given
the stress Kant always makes on the absolutely unconditioned nature of moral freedom, he
should feel able to make this claim. It would seem as if precisely the purity of the free
will would make any connection to purposes immoral. Kant writes that, even speaking
practically, we must consider ourselves In other words, practical reason is a human faculty - where, as always for
Kant, being human is defined in terms of a unity of a lower, sensible nature together with
a higher, supersensible dimension. Our sensibly conditioned will is not a different thing
from our free will, but is the same faculty considered now as phenomenal psychology, now
as noumenal activity. This must be the case if our actions in the phenomenal world are to
be considered moral in any sense of the word. But this sensibly conditioned will does
require attention to be paid to consequences to the object of our action. Free will
may determine itself unconditionally through the mere form of the moral law, but it
remains the faculty of will, that is the higher faculty of desire, and thus retains
the essential link to purposes. Just as moral action must be possible through freedom, so the summum
bonum must be possible through moral action. The impossibility of achieving this end
would make a nonsense of moral action, because it would in effect mean that free will was
no longer will, that practical reason was no longer practical (because it could not be
said to act). Kant is claiming that it is just part of the meaning of an action - even a
purely and formally determined action, i.e. one not conditioned by its purpose - to
also posit the possibility of achieving its purpose. But the possibility of the summum bonum as the final purpose in
nature is not at all obvious. Indeed, a cynic might claim that moral action makes no
difference at all - that the good man is no more happy for it, and that 'nice guys finish
last'. Kant writes, The obvious inference then is that the 'causality of nature' cannot be the
'only causality' - and there must also be the moral causality of a moral author of the
world which would make it at least possible for the summum bonum to be reached.
Without the postulate of such a moral author - who, as we saw above, must have our free
morality in mind as a final purpose, if anything - our free moral action could not be
represented as possible. Moral action, precisely as both moral and as action,
within itself assumes the existence of a God. Of course, in acting morally we may not be
conscious either of the summum bonum as final purpose, nor of the necessary
postulation of God as moral author of the world - we are just doing what is right.
Nevertheless, when that duty is fully understood, these necessary implications will be
found within it. But that the postulation of God is 'within' moral action in this way
automatically discounts the 'moral proof' from any theoretical validity.
Theoretical philosophy must continue to operate within its legitimate grounds, treating so
far as possible all of nature as intelligible in terms of mechanical cause and effect and
requiring neither purpose nor creator. This distinction is extremely important for Kant,
as despite the link to morality and the 'fact' of our freedom, the 'moral proof' does not
make of religion anything but a matter of faith (e.g. sect.91). This involves noting that
the conception of God involved in the moral proof is and must be bound up with how things
are cognizable by us. (This of course continues the treatment of the intellectus
ectypus begun in sect.77 and of the idealism of reflective judgment in sect.58.) Kant
writes, As for objects that we have to think a priori (either as consequences or as
grounds) in reference to our practical use of reason in conformity with duty, but that are
transcendent for the theoretical use of reason: they are mere matters of faith.
[...] To have faith ... is to have confidence that we shall reach an aim that we
have a duty to further, without our having insight into whether achieving it is possible.
(sect.91) The summum bonum, God as moral author (and the immortality of the
soul, treated in the Critique of Practical Reason) are all such objects of faith.
For Kant, this stress on faith keeps religion pure of the misunderstandings involved in,
for example, fanaticism, demonology or idolatry (sect.89). Kant spends the last fifth of
the 'Critique of Teleological Judgment' dealing with how his proof is to be understood,
the nature and limitations of its validity, and various metaphysical and religious
implications, including those for his own conception of critical philosophy. Kant's argument and later variations are generally considered to be one of
the great arguments for the existence of a God. Obviously, questions can be raised about
its validity. For example, whether the possibility of the final purpose is somehow
necessarily linked to any moral action. However, the typical objection - that the argument
is insufficient to give any knowledge - is just irrelevant, since Kant is not interested
in knowledge at this point.
4. The Problem of the Unity of Philosophy and its Supersensible Objects
Overview: Let us conclude by looking at Kant's grand conception for
his Critique of Judgment. The problem of the unity of philosophy is the problem of how thought
oriented towards knowledge (theoretical reason) can be a product of the same faculty as
thought oriented towards moral duty (practical reason). The problem of the unity of the objects
of philosophy is the problem of how the ground of that which we know (the supersensible
ground of nature) is the same as the ground of moral action (the supersensible ground of
that nature in which the summum bonum is possible - together with freedom within
the subject). Kant only makes some rather vague suggestions about how proof of these
unities is to be established - but it is clear that he believes the faculty of judgment is
the key We will briefly look at the second of these problems. The central move is
the a priori principle of nature's purposiveness for judgment. This amounts to the
assumption that judgment will always be possible, even in cases like aesthetic judgment
where no concept can be found. As we discussed in A5, this principle makes a claim (though
only from the 'point of view' of judgment) about the supersensible ground of nature. This
claim leads to two assertions. First, that the supersensible ground of beauty in nature is
the same as the undetermined ground of nature as an object of science. Second, it is also
capable of moral determination and thus also the same as the supersensible ground of moral
nature. Together, these two prove the unity of the supersensible objects of philosophy. Let us very briefly look at the grand problem Kant poses for himself
in the Critique of Judgment. The problem comes down to the implications of the
abyss that Kant opened up between theoretical and practical philosophy; or, as
we may as well put it, between the side of our being that knows or tries to know the
world, and the side that wills (or fails to will) according to moral law. Although this
issue dominates Kants two introductions to his book, the book itself contains only
occasional references to it, and certainly no clear statement of a solution. But arguably
there is sufficient material to suggest what Kants solution might have been. The following quotation contains the kernel." The understanding,
inasmuch as it can give laws to nature a priori, proves that we cognize nature only
as appearance, and hence at the same time points to a supersensible substrate of nature;
but it leaves this substrate entirely undetermined" (Introduction IX,
translation modified). Kant is referring to the first Critique and especially to
his solution to the Antinomies therein. The solution there merely required that we
recognize the distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves. But this solution
required nothing further of the latter other than its mere negative definition: that it
not be subject to the conditions of appearance. Kant continues, Judgment, through its a priori principle of
judging nature [purposively; in other words judging nature] in terms of possible
particular laws of nature, provides natures supersensible substrate (within as well
as outside us) with determinability by the intellectual faculty [i.e.
reason]. He is referring here particularly to the principle of reflective judgment
(and especially aesthetic judgments on the beautiful) that nature will exhibit a
purposiveness with respect to our faculty of judgment, that 'particular' laws of nature
will always be 'possible'. This purposiveness can only be accounted for if judgment
assumes a supersensible that determines this purposiveness. This supersensible is the
same supersensible substrate underlying nature as the object of theoretical
reason. It is no longer merely indeterminate. But because the particular laws are as yet
only 'possible' - and this is exacerbated in aesthetic judgment with the notion of
purposiveness without purpose - the substrate remains left open, it is
determinable but not determined. That is to say, judgment
conceives of the supersensible as capable of receiving a determinate purpose, should there
be good reasons for assuming there to be such a purpose. Kant continues, But reason, through its a priori practical
law, gives this same substrate determination. The determination in question is the
one Kant introduced in the moral proof for the existence of God: that is, from the point
of view of our moral selves, the same supersensible is the ground of
phenomenal natures co-operation in our moral projects. It carries the summum
bonum as its final purpose. Kant accordingly concludes: Thus judgment makes the transition from
the domain of the concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom. Judgment has
also made the transition such that the supersensible objects of reason have to been seen
as the same. Moreover, Judgment has, on the side of the subjective mind, made
it conceivable to reason that its theoretical and practical employments are not only
compatible (that was proved already in the Antinomy concerning freedom) but also capable
of co-ordination towards moral purposes. Because, on the one hand, aesthetic judgment were
found to be not fundamentally different from ordinary theoretical cognition of nature (see
A2 above), and on the other hand, aesthetic judgment has a deep similarity to moral
judgment (A5). Thus, Kant has demonstrated that the physical and moral universes - and the
philosophies and forms of thought that present them - are not only compatible, but
unified.
Works by Kant. The standard edition of the collected works in German is Kant's gesammelte
Schriften, Edited by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenshaften, Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter. Equally widely available is the Werkausgabe in zwölf Bänden, edited by Wilhelm
Weischedel, Frankfurt am Mein: Suhrkamp. There are alternative, perfectly acceptable,
translations of most of the following. Cambridge University Press, at the time of writing,
is about half-way through publishing the complete works in English. Other Primary and Secondary Works For a treatment of various themes in
Kant, please also see the introductions to the above editions. Dr. Douglas Burnham
[W]e express ourselves entirely incorrectly when we call this or that
object of nature sublime ... for how can we call something by a term of approval if we
apprehend it as in itself contrapurposive? (sect.23)
Genius is the talent (natural endowment) that gives the rule to art. Since
talent is an innate productive ability of the artist and as such belongs itself to nature,
we could also put it this way: Genius is the innate mental predisposition (ingenium)
through which nature gives the rule to art. (sect.46)
Just as we must assume that objects of sense as appearances are ideal if
we are to explain how we can determine their forms a priori, so we must presuppose an
idealistic interpretation of purposiveness in judging the beautiful in nature and in
art... (sect.58)
Kant defines a 'final purpose' as 'a purpose that requires no other purpose as a
condition of its possibility' (sect.84). This is no longer an extrinsic purpose that
nature might have. Still, it is clear that, again, there can be no intrinsic final purpose
in nature -all natural products and events are conditioned, including the world around us,
our own bodies and even our mental life. (And living beings, qua natural purposes,
are conditioned by themselves.) So, what kind of thing would such a final purpose be? Kant
writes, '... the final purpose of an intelligent cause must be of such a kind that in the
order of purposes it depends upon no condition other than just the idea of it' (sect.84).
... as beings of the world and hence as beings connected with other things
in the world; and those same moral laws enjoin us to direct our judging to those other
things [regarded] either as purposes or as objects for which we ourselves are the final
purpose (sect.87).
.. the concept of the practical necessity of [achieving] such a purpose
by applying our forces does not harmonize with the theoretical concept of the physical
possibility its being achieved, if the causality of nature is the only causality (of a
means [for achieving it]) that we connect with our freedom. (sect.87)
Selected Bibliography
Aesthetics and Teleology. Ed., Eric Matthews and Eva Schaper. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
Critique of Judgment. Trans., Werner Pluhar. (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1987)
Critique of Judgment. Trans., James Creed Meredith. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988)
Critique of Practical Reason. Trans., Ed., Lewis White Beck. (Oxford:
Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993)
Critique of Pure Reason. Trans., Werner Pluhar. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996)
Burnham, Douglas. An Introduction to Kant's Critique of Judgment. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press [in the US, Columbia University
Press], 2000)
Caygill, Howard. The Art of Judgement.(Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)
Cohen, Ted and Guyer, Paul. Essays in Kant's Aesthetics. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982)
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1974)
Crawford, Paul. The Kantian Sublime. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)
Gibbons, Sarah L. Kant's Theory of Imagination.(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Guyer, Paul, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1979)
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Experience of Freedom.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
Henrich, Dieter. Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992)
Kemal, Salim. Kant and Fine Art. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)
Kemal, Salim. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. (London: St Martin's Press, 1992)
Makkreel, Rudi. Imagination and Understanding in Kant. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. (London: Macmillan, 1987)
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics.(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1979)
Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgement.(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
Author Information:
Email: H.D.Burnham@staffs.ac.uk
Staffordshire University, UK