LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE (R) First Edition Ver. 4.02
Critique of Judgement Kant Immanuel
1790
THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT
by Immanuel Kant
translated by James Creed Meredith
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1991, World Library, Inc.
PREFACE
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 1790.
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The faculty of knowledge from a priori principles may be called pure
reason, and the general investigation into its possibility and
bounds the Critique of Pure Reason. This is permissible although "pure
reason," as was the case with the same use of terms in our first work,
is only intended to denote reason in its theoretical employment, and
although there is no desire to bring under review its faculty as
practical reason and its special principles as such. That Critique is,
then, an investigation addressed simply to our faculty of knowing
things a priori. Hence it makes our cognitive faculties its sole
concern, to the exclusion of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure
and the faculty of desire; and among the cognitive faculties it
confines its attention to understanding and its a priori principles,
to the exclusion of judgement and reason, (faculties that also
belong to theoretical cognition,) because it turns out in the sequel
that there is no cognitive faculty other than understanding capable of
affording constitutive a priori principles of knowledge. Accordingly
the critique which sifts these faculties one and all, so as to try the
possible claims of each of the other faculties to a share in the clear
possession of knowledge from roots of its own, retains nothing but
what understanding prescribes a priori as a law for nature as the
complex of phenomena-the form of these being similarly furnished a
priori. All other pure concepts it relegates to the rank of ideas,*
which for our faculty of theoretical cognition are transcendent;
though they are not without their use nor redundant, but discharge
certain functions as regulative principles.** For these concepts serve
partly to restrain the officious pretentions of understanding,
which, presuming on its ability to supply a priori the conditions of
the possibility of all things which it is capable of knowing,
behaves as if it had thus determined these bounds as those of the
possibility of all things generally, and partly also to lead
understanding, in its study of nature, according to a principle of
completeness, unattainable as this remains for it, and so to promote
the ultimate aim of all knowledge.
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*[The word is defined in SS 17 & SS 57 Remark I. See Critique of
Pure Reason, "Of the Conceptions of Pure Reason" - Section 1 & 2:
"I understand by idea a necessary conception of reason, to which no
corresponding object can be discovered in the world of sense."
(Ibid., Section 2.) "They contain a certain perfection, attainable
by no possible empirical cognition; and they give to reason a
systematic unity, to which the unity of experience attempts to
approximate, but can never completely attain." (Ibid., "Ideal of
Pure Reason").
**[Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Appendix.]
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{PREFACE ^paragraph 5}
Properly, therefore, it was understanding which, so far as it
contains constitutive a priori cognitive principles, has its special
realm, and one, moreover, in our faculty of knowledge that the
Critique, called in a general way that of pure reason was intended
to establish in secure but particular possession against all other
competitors. In the same way reason, which contains constitutive a
priori principles solely in respect of the faculty of desire, gets its
holding assigned to it by The Critique of Practical Reason.
But now comes judgement, which in the order of our cognitive
faculties forms a middle term between understanding and reason. Has it
also got independent a priori principles? If so, are they
constitutive, or are they merely regulative, thus indicating no
special realm? And do they give a rule a priori to the feeling of
pleasure and displeasure, as the middle term between the faculties
of cognition and desire, just as understanding prescribes laws a
priori for the former and reason for the latter? This is the topic
to which the present Critique is devoted.
A critique of pure reason, i.e., of our faculty of judging on a
priori principles, would be incomplete if the critical examination
of judgement, which is a faculty of knowledge, and as such lays
claim to independent principles, were not dealt with separately.
Still, however, its principles cannot, in a system of pure philosophy,
form a separate constituent part intermediate between the
theoretical and practical divisions, but may when needful be annexed
to one or other as occasion requires. For if such a system is some day
worked out under the general name of metaphysic-and its full and
complete execution is both possible and of the utmost importance for
the employment of reason in all departments of its activity-the
critical examination of the ground for this edifice must have been
previously carried down to the very depths of the foundations of the
faculty of principles independent of experience, lest in some
quarter it might give way, and sinking, inevitably bring with it the
ruin of all.
We may readily gather, however, from the nature of the faculty of
judgement (whose correct employment is so necessary and universally
requisite that it is just this faculty that is intended when we
speak of sound understanding) that the discovery of a peculiar
principle belonging to it-and some such it must contain in itself a
priori, for otherwise it would not be a cognitive faculty the
distinctive character of which is obvious to the most commonplace
criticism-must be a task involving considerable difficulties. For this
principle is one which must not be derived from a priori concepts,
seeing that these are the property of understanding, and judgement
is only directed to their application. It has, therefore, itself to
furnish a concept, and one from which, properly, we get no cognition
of a thing, but which it can itself employ as a rule only-but not as
an objective rule to which it can adapt its judgement, because, for
that, another faculty of judgement would again be required to enable
us to decide whether the case was one for the application of the
rule or not.
It is chiefly in those estimates that are called aesthetic, and
which relate to the beautiful and sublime, whether of nature or of
art, that one meets with the above difficulty about a principle (be it
subjective or objective). And yet the critical search for a
principle of judgement in their case is the most important item in a
critique of this faculty. For, although they do not of themselves
contribute a whit to the knowledge of things, they still belong wholly
to the faculty of knowledge, and evidence an immediate bearing of this
faculty upon the feeling of pleasure or displeasure according to
some a priori principle, and do so without confusing this principle
with what is capable of being a determining ground of the faculty of
desire, for the latter has its principles a priori in concepts of
reason. Logical estimates of nature, however, stand on a different
footing. They deal with cases in which experience presents a
conformity to law in things, which the understanding's general concept
of the sensible is no longer adequate to render intelligible or
explicable, and in which judgement may have recourse to itself for a
principle of the reference of the natural thing to the unknowable
supersensible and, indeed, must employ some such principle, though
with a regard only to itself and the knowledge of nature. For in these
cases the application of such an a priori principle for the
cognition of what is in the world is both possible and necessary,
and withal opens out prospects which are profitable for practical
reason. But here there is no immediate reference to the feeling of
pleasure or displeasure. But this is precisely the riddle in the
principle of judgement that necessitates a separate division for
this faculty in the critique-for there was nothing to prevent the
formation of logical estimates according to concepts (from which no
immediate conclusion can ever be drawn to the feeling of pleasure or
displeasure) having been treated, with a critical statement of its
limitations, in an appendage to the theoretical part of philosophy.
{PREFACE ^paragraph 10}
The present investigation of taste, as a faculty of aesthetic
judgement, not being undertaken with a view to the formation or
culture of taste (which will pursue its course in the future, as in
the past, independently of such inquiries), but being merely
directed to its transcendental aspects, I feel assured of its
indulgent criticism in respect of any shortcomings on that score.
But in all that is relevant to the transcendental aspect it must be
prepared to stand the test of the most rigorous examination. Yet
even here I venture to hope that the difficulty of unravelling a
problem so involved in its nature may serve as an excuse for a certain
amount of hardly avoidable obscurity in its solution, provided that
the accuracy of our statement of the principle is proved with all
requisite clearness. I admit that the mode of deriving the phenomena
of judgement from that principle has not all the lucidity that is
rightly demanded elsewhere, where the subject is cognition by
concepts, and that I believe I have in fact attained in the second
part of this work.
With this, then, I bring my entire critical undertaking to a
close. I shall hasten to the doctrinal part, in order, as far as
possible, to snatch from my advancing years what time may yet be
favourable to the task. It is obvious that no separate division of
doctrine is reserved for the faculty of judgement, seeing that, with
judgement, critique takes the place of theory; but, following the
division of philosophy into theoretical and practical, and of pure
philosophy in the same way, the whole ground will be covered by the
metaphysics of nature and of morals.
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INTRO
INTRODUCTION.
I. Division of Philosophy.
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Philosophy may be said to contain the principles of the rational
cognition that concepts afford us of things (not merely, as with
logic, the principles of the form of thought in general irrespective
of the objects), and, thus interpreted, the course, usually adopted,
of dividing it into theoretical and practical is perfectly sound.
But this makes imperative a specific distinction on the part of the
concepts by which the principles of this rational cognition get
their object assigned to them, for if the concepts are not distinct
they fail to justify a division, which always presupposes that the
principles belonging to the rational cognition of the several parts of
the science in question are themselves mutually exclusive.
Now there are but two kinds of concepts, and these yield a
corresponding number of distinct principles of the possibility of
their objects. The concepts referred to are those of nature and that
of freedom. By the first of these, a theoretical cognition from a
priori principles becomes possible. In respect of such cognition,
however, the second, by its very concept, imports no more than a
negative principle (that of simple antithesis), while for the
determination of the will, on the other hand, it establishes
fundamental principles which enlarge the scope of its activity, and
which on that account are called practical. Hence the division of
philosophy falls properly into two parts, quite distinct in their
principles-a theoretical, as philosophy of nature, and a practical, as
philosophy of morals (for this is what the practical legislation of
reason by the concept of freedom is called). Hitherto, however, in the
application of these expressions to the division of the different
principles, and with them to the division of philosophy, a gross
misuse of the terms has prevailed; for what is practical according
to concepts of nature bas been taken as identical with what is
practical according to the concept of freedom, with the result that
a division has been made under these heads of theoretical and
practical, by which, in effect, there has been no division at all
(seeing that both parts might have similar principles).
The will-for this is what is said-is the faculty of desire and, as
such, is just one of the many natural causes in the world, the one,
namely, which acts by concepts; and whatever is represented as
possible (or necessary) through the efficacy of will is called
practically possible (or necessary): the intention being to
distinguish its possibility (or necessity) from the physical
possibility or necessity of an effect the causality of whose cause
is not determined to its production by concepts (but rather, as with
lifeless matter, by mechanism, and, as with the lower animals, by
instinct). Now, the question in respect of the practical faculty:
whether, that is to say, the concept, by which the causality of the
will gets its rule, is a concept of nature or of freedom, is here left
quite open.
The latter distinction, however, is essential. For, let the
concept determining the causality be a concept of nature, and then the
principles are technically-practical; but, let it be a concept of
freedom, and they are morally-practical. Now, in the division of a
rational science the difference between objects that require different
principles for their cognition is the difference on which everything
turns. Hence technically-practical principles belong to theoretical
philosophy (natural science), whereas those morally-practical alone
form the second part, that is, practical philosophy (ethical science).
{INTRO ^paragraph 5}
All technically-practical rules (i.e., those of art and skill
generally, or even of prudence, as a skill in exercising an
influence over men and their wills) must, so far as their principles
rest upon concepts, be reckoned only as corollaries to theoretical
philosophy. For they only touch the possibility of things according to
concepts of nature, and this embraces, not alone the means
discoverable in nature for the purpose, but even the will itself (as a
faculty of desire, and consequently a natural faculty), so far as it
is determinable on these rules by natural motives. Still these
practical rules are not called laws (like physical laws), but only
precepts. This is due to the fact that the will does not stand
simply under the natural concept, but also under the concept of
freedom. In the latter connection its principles are called laws,
and these principles, with the addition of what follows them, alone
constitute the second at practical part of philosophy.
The solution of the problems of pure geometry is not allocated to
a special part of that science, nor does the art of land-surveying
merit the name of practical, in contradistinction to pure, as a second
part of the general science of geometry, and with equally little, or
perhaps less, right can the mechanical or chemical art of experiment
or of observation be ranked as a practical part of the science of
nature, or, in fine, domestic, agricultural, or political economy, the
art of social intercourse, the principles of dietetics, or even
general instruction as to the attainment of happiness, or as much as
the control of the inclinations or the restraining of the affections
with a view thereto, be denominated practical philosophy-not to
mention forming these latter in a second part of philosophy in
general. For, between them all, the above contain nothing more than
rules of skill, which are thus only technically practical-the skill
being directed to producing an effect which is possible according to
natural concepts of causes and effects. As these concepts belong to
theoretical philosophy, they are subject to those precepts as mere
corollaries of theoretical philosophy (i.e., as corollaries of natural
science), and so cannot claim any place in any special philosophy
called practical. On the other hand, the morally practical precepts,
which are founded entirely on the concept of freedom, to the
complete exclusion of grounds taken from nature for the
determination of the will, form quite a special kind of precepts.
These, too, like the rules obeyed by nature, are, without
qualification, called laws-though they do not, like the latter, rest
on sensible conditions, but upon a supersensible principle-and they
must needs have a separate part of philosophy allotted to them as
their own, corresponding to the theoretical part, and termed practical
philosophy capable
Hence it is evident that a complex of practical precepts furnished
by philosophy does not form a special part of philosophy,
co-ordinate with the theoretical, by reason of its precepts being
practical-for that they might be, notwithstanding that their
principles were derived wholly from the theoretical knowledge of
nature (as technically-practical rules). But an adequate reason only
exists where their principle, being in no way borrowed from the
concept of nature, which is always sensibly conditioned, rests
consequently on the supersensible, which the concept of freedom
alone makes cognizable by means of its formal laws, and where,
therefore, they are morally-practical, i. e., not merely precepts
and its and rules in this or that interest, but laws independent of
all antecedent reference to ends or aims.
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II. The Realm of Philosophy in General.
{INTRO ^paragraph 10}
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The employment of our faculty of cognition from principles, and with
it philosophy, is coextensive with the applicability of a priori
concepts.
Now a division of the complex of all the objects to which those
concepts are referred for the purpose, where possible, of compassing
their knowledge, may be made according to the varied competence or
incompetence of our faculty in that connection.
Concepts, so far as they are referred to objects apart from the
question of whether knowledge of them is possible or not, have their
field, which is determined simply by the relation in which their
object stands to our faculty of cognition in general. The part of this
field in which knowledge is possible for us is a territory
(territorium) for these concepts and the requisite cognitive
faculty. The part of the territory over which they exercise
legislative authority is the realm (ditio) of these concepts, and
their appropriate cognitive faculty. Empirical concepts have,
therefore, their territory, doubtless, in nature as the complex of all
sensible objects, but they have no realm (only a dwelling-place,
domicilium), for, although they are formed according to law, they
are not themselves legislative, but the rules founded on them are
empirical and, consequently, contingent.
Our entire faculty of cognition has two realms, that of natural
concepts and that of the concept of freedom, for through both it
prescribes laws a priori. In accordance with this distinction, then,
philosophy is divisible into theoretical and practical. But the
territory upon which its realm is established, and over which it
exercises its legislative authority, is still always confined to the
complex of the objects of all possible experience, taken as no more
than mere phenomena, for otherwise legislation by the understanding in
respect of them is unthinkable.
{INTRO ^paragraph 15}
The function of prescribing laws by means of concepts of nature is
discharged by understanding and is theoretical. That of prescribing
laws by means of the concept of freedom is discharged by reason and is
merely practical. It is only in the practical sphere that reason can
prescribe laws; in respect of theoretical knowledge (of nature) it can
only (as by the understanding advised in the law) deduce from given
logical consequences, which still always remain restricted to
nature. But we cannot reverse this and say that where rules are
practical reason is then and there legislative, since the rules
might be technically practical.
Understanding and reason, therefore, have two distinct jurisdictions
over one and the same territory of experience. But neither can
interfere with the other. For the concept of freedom just as little
disturbs the legislation of nature, as the concept of nature
influences legislation through the concept of freedom. That it is
possible for us at least to think without contradiction of both
these jurisdictions, and their appropriate faculties, as co-existing
in the same subject, was shown by the Critique of Pure Reason, since
it disposed of the objections on the other side by detecting their
dialectical illusion.
Still, how does it happen that these two different realms do not
form one realm, seeing that, while they do not limit each other in
their legislation, they continually do so in their effects in the
sensible world? The explanation lies in the fact that the concept of
nature represents its objects in intuition doubtless, yet not as
things in-themselves, but as mere phenomena, whereas the concept of
freedom represents in its object what is no doubt a thing-in-itself,
but it does not make it intuitable, and further that neither the one
nor the other is capable, therefore, of furnishing a theoretical
cognition of its object (or even of the thinking subject) as a
thing-in-itself, or, as this would be, of the supersensible idea of
which has certainly to be introduced as the basis of the possibility
of all those objects of experience, although it cannot itself ever
be elevated or extended into a cognition.
Our entire cognitive faculty is, therefore, presented with an
unbounded, but, also, inaccessible field-the field of the
supersensible-in which we seek in vain for a territory, and on
which, therefore, we can have no realm for theoretical cognition, be
it for concepts of understanding or of reason. This field we must
indeed occupy with ideas in the interest as well of the theoretical as
the practical employment of reason, but, in connection with the laws
arising from the concept of freedom, we cannot procure for these ideas
any but practical reality, which, accordingly, fails to advance our
theoretical cognition one step towards the supersensible.
Albeit, then, between the realm of the natural concept, as the
sensible, and the realm of the concept of freedom, as the
supersensible, there is a great gulf fixed, so that it is not possible
to pass from the to the latter (by means of the theoretical employment
of reason), just as if they were so many separate worlds, the first of
which is powerless to exercise influence on the second: still the
latter is meant to influence the former-that is to say, the concept of
freedom is meant to actualize in the sensible world the end proposed
by its laws; and nature must consequently also be capable of being
regarded in such a way that in the conformity to law of its form it at
least harmonizes with the possibility of the ends to be effectuated in
it according to the laws of freedom. There must, therefore, be a
ground of the unity of the supersensible that lies at the basis of
nature, with what the concept of freedom contains in a practical
way, and although the concept of this ground neither theoretically nor
practically attains to a knowledge of it, and so has no peculiar realm
of its own, still it renders possible the transition from the mode
of thought according to the principles of the one to that according to
the principles of the other.
{INTRO ^paragraph 20}
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III. The Critique of Judgement as a means of
connecting the two Parts of Philosophy
in a whole.
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{INTRO ^paragraph 25}
The critique which deals with what our cognitive faculties are
capable of yielding a priori has properly speaking no realm in respect
of objects; for it is not a doctrine, its sole business being to
investigate whether, having regard to the general bearings of our
faculties, a doctrine is possible by their means, and if so, how.
Its field extends to all their pretentions, with a view to confining
them within their legitimate bounds. But what is shut out of the
division of philosophy may still be admitted as a principal part
into the general critique of our faculty of pure cognition, in the
event, namely, of its containing principles which are not in
themselves available either for theoretical or practical employment.
Concepts of nature contain the ground of all theoretical cognition a
priori and rest, as we saw, upon the legislative authority of
understanding. The concept of freedom contains the ground of all
sensuously unconditioned practical precepts a priori, and rests upon
that of reason. Both faculties, therefore, besides their application
in point of logical form to principles of whatever origin, have, in
addition, their own peculiar jurisdiction in the matter of their
content, and so, there being no further (a priori) jurisdiction
above them, the division of philosophy into theoretical and
practical is justified.
But there is still further in the family of our higher cognitive
faculties a middle term between understanding and reason. This is
judgement, of which we may reasonably presume by analogy that it may
likewise contain, if not a special authority to prescribe laws,
still a principle peculiar to itself upon which laws are sought,
although one merely subjective a priori. This principle, even if it
has no field of objects appropriate to it as its realm, may still have
some territory or other with a certain character, for which just
this very principle alone may be valid.
But in addition to the above considerations there is yet (to judge
by analogy) a further ground, upon which judgement may be brought into
line with another arrangement of our powers of representation, and one
that appears to be of even greater importance than that of its kinship
with the family of cognitive faculties. For all faculties of the soul,
or capacities, are reducible to three, which do not admit of any
further derivation from a common ground: the faculty of knowledge, the
feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and the faculty of desire.* For
the faculty of cognition understanding alone is legislative, if (as
must be the case where it is considered on its own account free of
confusion with the faculty of desire) this faculty, as that of
theoretical cognition, is referred to nature, in respect of which
alone (as phenomenon) it is possible for us to prescribe laws by means
of a priori concepts of nature, which are properly pure concepts of
understanding. For the faculty of desire, as a higher faculty
operating under the concept of freedom, only reason (in which alone
this concept has a place) prescribes laws a priori. Now between the
faculties of knowledge and desire stands the feeling of pleasure, just
as judgement is intermediate between understanding and reason. Hence
we may, provisionally at least, assume that judgement likewise
contains an a priori principle of its own, and that, since pleasure or
displeasure is necessarily combined with the faculty of desire (be
it antecedent to its principle, as with the lower desires, or, as with
the higher, only supervening upon its determination by the moral law),
it will effect a transition from the faculty of pure knowledge,
i.e., from the realm of concepts of nature, to that of the concept
of freedom, just as i its logical employment it makes possible the
transition from understanding to reason.
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{INTRO ^paragraph 30}
*Where one has reason to suppose that a relation subsists between
concepts that are used as empirical principles and the faculty of pure
cognition a priori, it is worth while attempting, in consideration
of this connection, to give them a transcendental definition-a
definition, that is, by pure categories, so far as these by themselves
adequately indicate the distinction of the concept in question from
others. This course follows that of the mathematician, who leaves
the empirical data of his problem indeterminate, and only brings their
relation in pure synthesis under the concepts of pure arithmetic,
and thus generalizes his solution.-I have been taken to task for
adopting a similar procedure and fault had been found with my
definition of the faculty of desire as a faculty which by means of its
representations is the cause of the cause of the actuality of the
objects of those representations: for mere wishes would still be
desires, and yet in their case every one is ready to abandon all claim
to being able by means of them alone to call their object into
existence. -But this proves no more than the presence of desires in
man by which he is in contradiction with himself. For in such a case
he seeks the production of the object by means of his representation
alone, without any hope of its being effectual, since he is
conscious that his mechanical powers (if I may so call those which are
not psychological), which would have to be determined by that
representation, are either unequal to the task of realizing the object
(by the intervention of means, therefore) or else are addressed to
what is quite impossible, as, for example, to undo the past (O mihi
praeteritos, etc.) or, to be able to annihilate the interval that,
with intolerable delay, divides us from the wished for moment. -Now,
conscious as we are in such fantastic desires of the inefficiency of
our representations (or even of their futility), as causes of their
objects, there is still involved in every wish a reference of the same
as cause, and therefore the representation of its causality, and
this is especially discernible where the wish, as longing, is an
affection. For such affections, since they dilate the heart and render
it inert and thus exhaust its powers, show that a strain is kept on
being exerted and re-exerted on these powers by the representations,
but that the mind is allowed continually to relapse and get languid
upon recognition of the impossibility before it. Even prayers for
the aversion of great, and, so far as we can see, inevitable evils,
and many superstitious means for attaining ends impossible of
attainment by natural means, prove the causal reference of
representations to their objects-a causality which not even the
consciousness of inefficiency for producing the effect can deter
from straining towards it. But why our nature should be furnished with
a propensity to consciously vain desires is a teleological problem
of anthropology. It would seem that were we not to be determined to
the exertion of our power before we had assured ourselves of the
efficiency of our faculty for producing an object, our power would
remain to a large extent unused. For as a rule we only first learn
to know our powers by making trial of them. This deceit of vain
desires is therefore only the result of a beneficent disposition in
our nature.
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Hence, despite the fact of philosophy being only divisible into
two principal parts, the theoretical and the practical, and despite
the fact of all that we may have to say of the special principles of
judgement having to be assigned to its theoretical part, i.e., to
rational cognition according to concepts of nature: still the Critique
of Pure Reason, which must settle this whole question before the above
system is taken in hand, so as to substantiate its possibility,
consists of three parts: the Critique of pure understanding, of pure
judgement, and of pure reason, which faculties are called pure on
the ground of their being legislative a priori.
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IV. Judgement as a Faculty by which Laws are
{INTRO ^paragraph 35}
prescribed a priori.
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Judgement in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as
contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule,
principle, or law) is given, then the judgement which subsumes the
particular under it is determinant. This is so even where such a
judgement is transcendental and, as such, provides the conditions a
priori in conformity with which alone subsumption under that universal
can be effected. If, however, only the particular is given and the
universal has to be found for it, then the judgement is simply
reflective.
The determinant judgement determines under universal
transcendental laws furnished by understanding and is subsumptive
only; the law is marked out for it a priori, and it has no need to
devise a law for its own guidance to enable it to subordinate the
particular in nature to the universal. But there are such manifold
forms of nature, so many modifications, as it were, of the universal
transcendental concepts of nature, left undetermined by the laws
furnished by pure understanding a priori as above mentioned, and for
the reason that these laws only touch the general possibility of a
nature (as an object of sense), that there must needs also be laws
in this behalf. These laws, being empirical, may be contingent as
far as the light of our understanding goes, but still, if they are
to be called laws (as the concept of a nature requires), they must
be regarded as necessary on a principle, unknown though it be to us,
of the unity of the manifold. The reflective judgement which is
compelled to ascend from the particular in nature to the universal
stands, therefore, in need of a principle. This principle it cannot
borrow from experience, because what it has to do is to establish just
the unity of all empirical principles under higher, though likewise
empirical, principles, and thence the possibility of the systematic
subordination of higher and lower. Such a transcendental principle,
therefore, the reflective judgement can only give as a law from and to
itself. It cannot derive it from any other quarter (as it would then
be a determinant judgement). Nor can it prescribe it to nature, for
reflection on the laws of nature adjusts itself to nature, and not
nature to the conditions according to which we strive to obtain a
concept of it-a concept that is quite contingent in respect of these
conditions.
Now the principle sought can only be this: as universal laws of
nature have their ground in our understanding, which prescribes them
to nature (though only according to the universal concept of it as
nature), particular empirical laws must be regarded, in respect of
that which is left undetermined in them by these universal laws,
according to a unity such as they would have if an understanding
(though it be not ours) had supplied them for the benefit of our
cognitive faculties, so as to render possible a system of experience
according to particular natural laws. This is not to be taken as
implying that such an understanding must be actually assumed (for it
is only the reflective judgement which avails itself of this idea as a
principle for the purpose of reflection and not for determining
anything); but this faculty rather gives by this means a law to itself
alone and not to nature.
{INTRO ^paragraph 40}
Now the concept of an object, so far as it contains at the same time
the ground of the actuality of this object, is called its end, and the
agreement of a thing with that constitution of things which is only
possible according to ends, is called the finality of its form.
Accordingly the principle of judgement, in respect of the form of
the things of nature under empirical laws generally, is the finality
of nature in its multiplicity. In other words, by this concept
nature is represented as if an understanding contained the ground of
the unity of the manifold of its empirical laws.
The finality of nature is, therefore, a particular a priori concept,
which bas its origin solely in the reflective judgement. For we cannot
ascribe to the products of nature anything like a reference of
nature in them to ends, but we can only make use of this concept to
reflect upon them in respect of the nexus of phenomena in nature-a
nexus given according to empirical laws. Furthermore, this concept
is entirely different from practical finality (in human art or even
morals), though it is doubtless thought after this analogy.
-
V. The Principle of the formal finality of Nature is a
transcendental Principle of Judgement.
{INTRO ^paragraph 45}
-
A transcendental principle is one through which we represent a
priori the universal condition under which alone things can become
objects of our cognition generally. A principle, on the other band, is
called metaphysical where it represents a priori the condition under
which alone objects whose concept has to be given empirically may
become further determined a priori. Thus the principle of the
cognition of bodies as substances, and as changeable substances, is
transcendental where the statement is that their change must have a
cause: but it is metaphysical where it asserts that their change
must have an external cause. For, in the first case, bodies need
only be thought through ontological predicates (pure concepts of
understanding) e.g., as substance, to enable the proposition to be
cognized a priori; whereas, in the second case, the empirical
concept of a body (as a movable thing in space) must be introduced
to support the proposition, although, once this is done, it may be
seen quite a priori that the latter predicate (movement only by
means of an external cause) applies to body. In this way, as I shall
show presently, the principle of the finality of nature (in the
multiplicity of its empirical laws) is a transcendental principle. For
the concept of objects, regarded as standing under this principle,
is only the pure concept of objects of possible empirical cognition
generally, and involves nothing empirical. On the other band, the
principle of practical finality, implied in the idea of the
determination of a free will, would be a metaphysical principle,
because the concept of a faculty of desire, as will, has to be given
empirically, i.e., is not included among transcendental predicates.
But both these principles are, none the less, not empirical, but a
priori principles; because no further experience is required for the
synthesis of the predicate with the empirical concept of the subject
of their judgements, but it may be apprehended quite a priori.
That the concept of a finality of nature belongs to transcendental
principles is abundantly evident from the maxims of judgement upon
which we rely a priori in the investigation of nature, and which yet
have to do with no more than the possibility of experience, and
consequently of the knowledge of nature-but of nature not merely in
a general way, but as determined by a manifold of particular laws.
These maxims crop up frequently enough in the course of this
science, though only in a scattered way. They are aphorisms of
metaphysical wisdom, making their appearance in a number of rules
the necessity of which cannot be demonstrated from concepts. "Nature
takes the shortest way (lex parsimoniae); yet it makes no leap, either
in the sequence of its changes, or in the juxtaposition of
specifically different forms (lex continui in natura); its vast
variety in empirical laws is for all that, unity under a few
principles (principia praeter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda)";
and so forth.
If we propose to assign the origin of these elementary rules, and
attempt to do so on psychological lines, we go straight in the teeth
of their sense. For they tell us, not what happens, i.e., according to
what rule our powers of judgement actually discharge their
functions, and how we judge, but how we ought to judge; and we
cannot get this logical objective necessity where the principles are
merely empirical. Hence the finality of nature for our cognitive
faculties and their employment, which manifestly radiates from them,
is a transcendental principle of judgements, and so needs also a
transcendental deduction, by means of which the ground for this mode
of judging must be traced to the a priori sources of knowledge.
Now, looking at the grounds of the possibility of an experience, the
first thing, of course, that meets us is something necessary-namely,
the universal laws apart from which nature in general (as an object of
sense) cannot be thought. These rest on the categories, applied to the
formal conditions of all intuition possible for us, so far as it is
also given a priori. Under these laws, judgement is determinant; for
it bas nothing else to do than to subsume under given laws. For
instance, understanding says: all change has its cause (universal
law of nature); transcendental judgement has nothing further to do
than to furnish a priori the condition of subsumption under the
concept of understanding placed before it: this we get in the
succession of the determinations of one and the same thing. Now for
nature in general, as an object of possible experience, that law is
cognized as absolutely necessary. But besides this formal
time-condition, the objects of empirical cognition are determined, or,
so far as we can judge a priori, are determinable, in divers ways,
so that specifically differentiated natures, over and above what
they have in common as things of nature in general, are further
capable of being causes in an infinite variety of ways; and each of
these modes must, on the concept of a cause in general, have its rule,
which is a law, and, consequently, imports necessity: although owing
to the constitution and limitations of our faculties of cognition we
may entirely fail to see this necessity. Accordingly, in respect of
nature's merely empirical laws, we must think in nature a
possibility of an endless multiplicity of empirical laws, which yet
are contingent so far as our insight goes, i.e., cannot be cognized
a priori. In respect of these we estimate the unity of nature
according to empirical laws, and the possibility of the unity of
experience, as a system according to empirical laws, to be contingent.
But, now, such a unity is one which must be necessarily presupposed
and assumed, as otherwise we should not have a thoroughgoing
connection of empirical cognition in a whole of experience. For the
universal laws of nature, while providing, certainly, for such a
connection among things generically, as things of nature in general,
do not do so for them specifically as such particular things of
nature. Hence judgement is compelled, for its own guidance, to adopt
it as an a priori principle, that what is for human insight contingent
in the particular (empirical) laws of nature contains nevertheless
unity of law in the synthesis of its manifold in an intrinsically
possible experience-unfathomable, though still thinkable, as such
unity may, no doubt, be for us. Consequently, as the unity of law in a
synthesis, which is cognized by us in obedience to a necessary aim
(a need of understanding), though recognized at the same time as
contingent, is represented as a finality of objects (here of
nature), so judgement, which, in respect of things under possible (yet
to be discovered) empirical laws, is merely reflective, must regard
nature in respect of the latter according to a principle of finality
for our cognitive faculty, which then finds expression in the above
maxims of judgement. Now this transcendental concept of a finality
of nature is neither a concept of nature nor of freedom, since it
attributes nothing at all to the object, i.e., to nature, but only
represents the unique mode in which we must proceed in our
reflection upon the objects of nature with a view to getting a
thoroughly interconnected whole of experience, and so is a
subjective principle, i.e., maxim, of judgement. For this reason, too,
just as if it were a lucky chance that favoured us, we are rejoiced
(properly speaking, relieved of a want) where we meet with such
systematic unity under merely empirical laws: although we must
necessarily assume the presence of such a unity, apart from any
ability on our part to apprehend or prove its existence.
{INTRO ^paragraph 50}
In order to convince ourselves of the correctness of this
deduction of the concept before us, and the necessity of assuming it
as a transcendental principle of cognition, let us just bethink
ourselves of the magnitude of the task. We have to form a connected
experience from given perceptions of a nature containing a maybe
endless multiplicity of empirical laws, and this problem has its
seat a priori in our understanding. This understanding is no doubt a
priori in possession of universal laws of nature, apart from which
nature would be incapable of being an object of experience at all. But
over and above this it needs a certain order of nature in its
particular rules which are only capable of being brought to its
knowledge empirically, and which, so far as it is concerned are
contingent. These rules, without which we would have no means of
advance from the universal analogy of a possible experience in general
to a particular, must be regarded by understanding as laws, i.e., as
necessary-for otherwise they would not form an order of
nature-though it be unable to cognize or ever get an insight into
their necessity. Albeit, then, it can determine nothing a priori in
respect of these (objects), it must, in pursuit of such empirical
so-called laws, lay at the basis of all reflection upon them an a
priori principle, to the effect, namely, that a cognizable order of
nature is possible according to them. A principle of this kind is
expressed in the following propositions. There is in nature a
subordination of genera and species comprehensible by us: Each of
these genera again approximates to the others on a common principle,
so that a transition may be possible from one to the other, and
thereby to a higher genus: While it seems at outset unavoidable for
our understanding to assume for the specific variety of natural
operations a like number of various kinds of causality, yet these
may all be reduced to a small number of principles, the quest for
which is our business; and so forth. This adaptation of nature to
our cognitive faculties is presupposed a priori by judgement on behalf
of its reflection upon it according to empirical laws. But
understanding all the while recognizes it objectively as contingent,
and it is merely judgement that attributes it to nature as
transcendental finality, i.e., a finality in respect of the
subject's faculty of cognition. For, were it not for this
presupposition, we should have no order of nature in accordance with
empirical laws, and, consequently, no guiding-thread for an experience
that has to be brought to bear upon these in all their variety, or for
an investigation of them.
For it is quite conceivable that, despite all the uniformity of
the things of nature according to universal laws, without which we
would not have the form of general empirical knowledge at all, the
specific variety of the empirical laws of nature, with their
effects, might still be so great as to make it impossible for our
understanding to discover in nature an intelligible order, to divide
its products into genera and species so as to avail ourselves of the
principles of explanation and comprehension of one for explaining
and interpreting another, and out of material coming to hand in such
confusion (properly speaking only infinitely multiform and ill-adapted
to our power-of apprehension) to make a consistent context of
experience.
Thus judgement, also, is equipped with an a priori principle for the
possibility of nature, but only in a subjective respect. By means of
this it prescribes a law, not to nature (as autonomy), but to itself
(as heautonomy), to guide its reflection upon nature. This law may
be called the law of the specification of nature in respect of its
empirical laws. It is not one cognized a priori in nature, but
judgement adopts it in the interests of a natural order, cognizable by
our understanding, in the division which it makes of nature's
universal laws when it seeks to subordinate to them a variety of
particular laws. So when it is said that nature specifies its
universal laws on a principle of finality for our cognitive faculties,
i.e., of suitability for the human understanding and its necessary
function of finding the universal for the particular presented to it
by perception, and again for varieties (which are, of course, common
for each species) connection in the unity of principle, we do not
thereby either prescribe a law to nature, or learn one from it by
observation-although the principle in question may be confirmed by
this means. For it is not a principle of the determinant but merely of
the reflective judgement. All that is intended is that, no matter what
is the order and disposition of nature in respect of its universal
laws, we must investigate its empirical laws throughout on that
principle and the maxims founded thereon, because only so far as
that principle applies can we make any headway in the employment of
our understanding in experience, or gain knowledge.
-
VI. The Association of the Feeling of Pleasure
{INTRO ^paragraph 55}
with the Concept of the Finality of Nature.
-
The conceived harmony of nature in the manifold of its particular
laws with our need of finding universality of principles for it
must, so far as our insight goes, be deemed contingent, but withal
indispensable for the requirements of our understanding, and,
consequently, a finality by which nature is in accord with our aim,
but only so far as this is directed to knowledge. The universal laws
of understanding, which are equally laws of nature, are, although
arising from spontaneity, just as necessary for nature as the laws
of motion applicable to matter. Their origin does not presuppose any
regard to our cognitive faculties, seeing that it is only by their
means that we first come by any conception of the meaning of a
knowledge of things (of nature), and they of necessity apply to nature
as object of our cognition in general. But it is contingent, so far as
we can see, that the order of nature in its particular laws, with
their wealth of at least possible variety and heterogeneity
transcending all our powers of comprehension, should still in actual
fact be commensurate with these powers. To find out this order is an
undertaking on the part of our understanding, which pursues it with
a regard to a necessary end of its own, that, namely, of introducing
into nature unity of principle. This end must, then, be attributed
to nature by judgement, since no law can be here prescribed to it by
understanding.
The attainment of every aim is coupled with a feeling of pleasure.
Now where such attainment has for its condition a representation a
priori-as here a principle for the reflective judgement in general-the
feeling of pleasure also is determined by a ground which is a priori
and valid for all men: and that, too, merely by virtue of the
reference of the object to our faculty of cognition. As the concept of
finality here takes no cognizance whatever of the faculty of desire,
it differs entirely from all practical finality of nature.
As a matter of fact, we do not, and cannot, find in ourselves the
slightest effect on the feeling of pleasure from the coincidence of
perceptions with the laws in accordance with the universal concepts of
nature (the categories), since in their case understanding necessarily
follows the bent of its own nature without ulterior aim. But, while
this is so, the discovery, on the other hand, that two or more
empirical heterogeneous laws of nature are allied under one
principle that embraces them both, is the ground of a very appreciable
pleasure, often even of admiration, and such, too, as does not wear
off even though we are already familiar enough with its object. It
is true that we no longer notice any decided pleasure in the
comprehensibility of nature, or in the unity of its divisions into
genera and species, without which the empirical concepts, that
afford us our knowledge of nature in its particular laws, would not be
possible. Still it is certain that the pleasure appeared in due
course, and only by reason of the most ordinary experience being
impossible without it, bas it become gradually fused with simple
cognition, and no longer arrests particular attention. Something,
then, that makes us attentive in our estimate of nature to its
finality for our understanding-an endeavour to bring, where
possible, its heterogeneous laws under higher, though still always
empirical, laws-is required, in order that, on meeting with success,
pleasure may be felt in this their accord with our cognitive
faculty, which accord is regarded by us as purely contingent. As
against this, a representation of nature would be altogether
displeasing to us, were we to be forewarned by it that, on the least
investigation carried beyond the commonest experience, we should
come in contact with such a heterogeneity of its laws as would make
the union of its particular laws under universal empirical laws
impossible for our understanding. For this would conflict with the
principle of the subjectively final specification of nature in its
genera, and with our own reflective judgement in respect thereof.
{INTRO ^paragraph 60}
Yet this presupposition of judgement is so indeterminate on the
question of the extent of the prevalence of that ideal finality of
nature for our cognitive faculties, that if we are told that a more
searching or enlarged knowledge of nature, derived from observation,
must eventually bring us into contact with a multiplicity of laws that
no human understanding could reduce to a principle, we can reconcile
ourselves to the thought. But still we listen more gladly to others
who hold out to us the hope that the more intimately we come to know
the secrets of nature, or the better we are able to compare it with
external members as yet unknown to us, the more simple shall we find
it in its principles, and the further our experience advances the more
harmonious shall we find it in the apparent heterogeneity of its
empirical laws. For our judgement makes it imperative upon us to
proceed on the principle of the conformity of nature to our faculty of
cognition, so far as that principle extends, without deciding-for
the rule is not given to us by a determinant judgement-whether
bounds are anywhere set to it or not. For, while in respect of the
rational employment of our cognitive faculty, bounds may be definitely
determined, in the empirical field no such determination of bounds
is possible.
-
VII. The Aesthetic Representation of the
Finality of Nature.
-
{INTRO ^paragraph 65}
That which is purely subjective in the representation of an
object, i.e., what constitutes its reference to the subject, not to
the object, is its aesthetic quality. On the other hand, that which in
such a representation serves, or is available, for the determination
of the object (for or purpose of knowledge), is its logical
validity. In the cognition of an object of sense, both sides are
presented conjointly. In the sense-representation of external
things, the quality of space in which we intuite them is the merely
subjective side of my representation of them (by which what the things
are in themselves as objects is left quite open), and it is on account
of that reference that the object in being intuited in space is also
thought merely as phenomenon. But despite its purely subjective
quality, space is still a constituent of the knowledge of things as
phenomena. Sensation (here external) also agrees in expressing a
merely subjective side of our representations of external things,
but one which is properly their matter (through which we are given
something with real existence), just as space is the mere a priori
form of the possibility of their intuition; and so sensation is,
none the less, also employed in the cognition of external objects.
But that subjective side of a representation which is incapable of
becoming an element of cognition, is the pleasure or displeasure
connected with it; for through it I cognize nothing in the object of
the representation, although it may easily be the result of the
operation of some cognition or other. Now the finality of a thing,
so far as represented in our perception of it, is in no way a
quality of the object itself (for a quality of this kind is not one
that can be perceived), although it may be inferred from a cognition
of things. In the finality, therefore, which is prior to the cognition
of an object, and which, even apart from any desire to make use of the
representation of it for the purpose of a cognition, is yet
immediately connected with it, we have the subjective quality
belonging to it that is incapable of becoming a constituent of
knowledge. Hence we only apply the term final to the object on account
of its representation being immediately coupled with the feeling of
pleasure: and this representation itself is an aesthetic
representation of the finality. The only question is whether such a
representation of finality exists at all.
If pleasure is connected with the mere apprehension (apprehensio) of
the form of an object of intuition, apart from any reference it may
have to a concept for the purpose of a definite cognition, this does
not make the representation referable to the object, but solely to the
subject. In such a case, the pleasure can express nothing but the
conformity of the object to the cognitive faculties brought into
play in the reflective judgement, and so far as they are in play,
and hence merely a subjective formal finality of the object. For
that apprehension of forms in the imagination can never take place
without the reflective judgement, even when it has no intention of
so doing, comparing them at least with its faculty of referring
intuitions to concepts. If, now, in this comparison, imagination (as
the faculty of intuitions a priori) is undesignedly brought into
accord with understanding (as the faculty of concepts), by means of
a given representation, and a feeling of pleasure is thereby
aroused, then the object must be regarded as final for the
reflective judgement. A judgement of this kind is an aesthetic
judgement upon the finality of the object, which does not depend
upon any present concept of the object, and does not provide one. When
the form of an object (as opposed to the matter of its representation,
as sensation) is, in the mere act of reflecting upon it, without
regard to any concept to be obtained from it, estimated as the
ground of a pleasure in the representation of such an object, then
this pleasure is also judged to be combined necessarily with the
representation of it, and so not merely for the subject apprehending
this form, but for all in general who pass judgement. The object is
then called beautiful; and the faculty of judging by means of such a
pleasure (and so also with universal validity) is called taste. For
since the ground of the pleasure is made to reside merely in the
form of the object for reflection generally, consequently not in any
sensation of the object, and without any reference, either, to any
concept that might have something or other in view, it is with the
conformity to law in the empirical employment of judgement generally
(unity of imagination and understanding) in the subject, and with this
alone, that the representation of the object in reflection, the
conditions of which are universally valid a priori, accords. And, as
this accordance of the object with the faculties of the subject is
contingent, it gives rise to a representation of a finality on the
part of the object in respect of the cognitive faculties of the
subject.
Here, now, is a pleasure which-as is the case with all pleasure or
displeasure that is not brought about through the agency of the
concept of freedom (i.e., through the antecedent determination of
the higher faculty of desire by means of pure reason)-no concepts
could ever enable us to regard as necessarily connected with the
representation of an object. It must always be only through reflective
perception that it is cognized as conjoined with this
representation. As with all empirical judgements, it is, consequently,
unable to announce objective necessity or lay claim to a priori
validity. But, then, the judgement of taste in fact only lays claim,
like every other empirical judgement, to be valid for every one,
and, despite its inner contingency this is always possible. The only
point that is strange or out of the way about it is that it is not
an empirical concept, but a feeling of pleasure (and so not a
concept at all), that is yet exacted from every one by the judgement
of taste, just as if it were a predicate united to the cognition of
the object, and that is meant to be conjoined with its representation.
A singular empirical judgement, as for example, the judgement of one
who perceives a movable drop of water in a rock-crystal, rightly looks
to every one finding the fact as stated, since the judgement has
been formed according to the universal conditions of the determinant
judgement under the laws of a possible experience generally. In the
same way, one who feels pleasure in simple reflection on the form of
an object, without having any concept in mind, rightly lays claim to
the agreement of every one, although this judgement is empirical and a
singular judgement. For the ground of this pleasure is found in the
universal, though subjective, condition of reflective judgements,
namely the final harmony of an object (be it a product of nature or of
art) with the mutual relation of the faculties of cognition
(imagination and understanding), which are requisite for every
empirical cognition. The pleasure in judgements of taste is,
therefore, dependent doubtless on an empirical representation, and
cannot be united a priori to any concept (one cannot determine a
priori what object will be in accordance with taste or not-one must
find out the object that is so); but then it is only made the
determining ground of this judgement by virtue of our consciousness of
its resting simply upon reflection and the universal, though only
subjective, conditions of the harmony of that reflection with the
knowledge of objects generally, for which the form of the object is
final.
{INTRO ^paragraph 70}
This is why judgements of taste are subjected to a critique in
respect of their possibility. For their possibility presupposes an a
priori principle, although that principle is neither a cognitive
principle for understanding nor a practical principle for the will,
and is thus in no way determinant a priori.
Susceptibility to pleasure arising from reflection on the forms of
things (whether of nature or of art) betokens, however, not only a
finality on the part of objects in their relation to the reflective
judgement in the subject, in accordance with the concept of nature,
but also, conversely, a finality on the part of the subject, answering
to the concept of freedom, in respect of the form, or even
formlessness of objects. The result is that the aesthetic judgement
refers not merely, as a judgement of taste, to the beautiful, but
also, as springing from a higher intellectual feeling, to the sublime.
Hence the above-mentioned Critique of Aesthetic judgement must be
divided on these lines into two main parts.
-
VIII. The Logical Representation of the
Finality of Nature.
{INTRO ^paragraph 75}
-
There are two ways in which finality may be represented in an object
given in experience. It may be made to turn on what is purely
subjective. In this case the object is considered in respect of its
form as present in apprehension (apprehensio) prior to any concept;
and the harmony of this form with the cognitive faculties, promoting
the combination of the intuition with concepts for cognition
generally, is represented as a finality of the form of the object. Or,
on the other hand, the representation of finality may be made to
turn on what is objective, in which case it is represented as the
harmony of the form of the object with the possibility of the thing
itself according to an antecedent concept of it containing the
ground of this form. We have seen that the representation of the
former kind of finality rests on the pleasure immediately felt in mere
reflection on the form of the object. But that of the latter kind of
finality, as it refers the form of the object, not to the subject's
cognitive faculties engaged in its apprehension, but to a definite
cognition of the object under a given concept, bas nothing to do
with a feeling of pleasure in things, but only understanding and its
estimate of them. Where the concept of an object is given, the
function of judgement, in its employment of that concept for
cognition, consists in presentation (exhibitio), i. e., in placing
beside the concept an intuition corresponding to it. Here it may be
that our own imagination is the agent employed, as in the case of art,
where we realize a preconceived concept of an object which we set
before ourselves as an end. Or the agent may be nature in its
technic (as in the case of organic bodies), when we read into it our
own concept of an end to assist our estimate of its product. In this
case what is represented is not a mere finality of nature in the
form of the thing, but this very product as a natural end. Although
our concept that nature, in its empirical laws, is subjectively
final in its forms is in no way a concept of the object, but only a
principle of judgement for providing itself with concepts in the
vast multiplicity of nature, so that it may be able to take its
bearings, yet, on the analogy of an end, as it were a regard to our
cognitive faculties is here attributed to nature. Natural beauty
may, therefore, be looked on as the presentation of the concept of
formal, i. e., merely subjective, finality and natural ends as the
presentation of the concept of a real, i.e., objective, finality.
The former of these we estimate by taste (aesthetically by means of
the feeling of pleasure), the latter by understanding and reason
(logically according to concepts).
On these considerations is based the division of the Critique of
judgement into that of the aesthetic and the teleological judgement.
By the first is meant the faculty of estimating formal finality
(otherwise called subjective) by the feeling of pleasure or
displeasure, by the second, the faculty of estimating the real
finality (objective) of nature by understanding and, reason.
In a Critique of judgement the part dealing with aesthetic judgement
is essentially relevant, as it alone contains a principle introduced
by judgement completely a priori as the basis of its reflection upon
nature. This is the principle of nature's formal finality for our
cognitive faculties in its particular (empirical) laws-a principle
without which understanding could not feel itself at home in nature:
whereas no reason is assignable a priori, nor is so much as the
possibility of one apparent from the concept of nature as an object of
experience, whether in its universal or in its particular aspects, why
there should be objective ends of nature, i. e., things only
possible as natural ends. But it is only judgement that, without being
itself possessed a priori of a principle in that behalf, in actually
occurring cases (of certain products) contains the rule for making use
of the concept of ends in the interest of reason, after that the above
transcendental principle has already prepared understanding to apply
to nature the concept of an end (at least in respect of its form).
But the transcendental principle by which a finality of nature in
its subjective reference to our cognitive faculties, is represented in
the form of a thing as a principle of its estimation, leaves quite
undetermined the question of where and in what cases we have to make
our estimate of the object as a product according to a principle of
finality, instead of simply according to universal laws of nature.
It resigns to the aesthetic judgement the task of deciding the
conformity of this product (in its form) to our cognitive faculties as
a question of taste (a matter which the aesthetic judgement decides,
not by any harmony with concepts, but by feeling). On the other
hand, judgement as teleologically employed assigns the determinate
conditions under which something (e. g., an organized body) is to be
estimated after the idea of an end of nature. But it can adduce no
principle from the concept of nature, as an object of experience, to
give it its authority to ascribe a priori to nature a reference to
ends, or even only indeterminately to assume them from actual
experience in the case of such products. The reason of this is that,
in order to be able merely empirically to cognize objective finality
in a certain object, many particular experiences must be collected and
reviewed under the unity of their principle. Aesthetic judgement is,
therefore, a special faculty of estimating according to a rule, but
not according to concepts. The teleological is not a special
faculty, but only general reflective judgement proceeding, as it
always does in theoretical cognition, according to concepts, but in
respect of certain objects of nature, following special
principles-those, namely, of a judgement that is merely reflective and
does not determine objects. Hence, as regards its application, it
belongs to the theoretical part of philosophy, and on account of its
special principles, which are not determinant, as principles belonging
to doctrine have to be, it must also form a special part of the
Critique. On the other hand, the aesthetic judgement contributes
nothing to the cognition of its objects. Hence it must only be
allocated to the Critique of the judging subject and of its
faculties of knowledge so far as these are capable of possessing a
priori principles, be their use (theoretical or practical) otherwise
what it may-a Critique which is the propaedeutic of all philosophy.
{INTRO ^paragraph 80}
-
IX. Joinder of the Legislations of Understanding and
Reason by means of Judgement.
-
Understanding prescribes laws a priori for nature as an object of
sense, so that we may have a theoretical knowledge of it in a possible
experience. Reason prescribes laws a priori for freedom and its
peculiar causality as the supersensible in the subject, so that we may
have a purely practical knowledge. The realm of the concept of
nature under the one legislation, and that of the concept of freedom
under the other, are completely cut off from all reciprocal influence,
that they might severally (each according to its own principles) exert
upon the other, by the broad gulf that divides the supersensible
from phenomena. The concept of freedom determines nothing in respect
of the theoretical cognition of nature; and the concept of nature
likewise nothing in respect of the practical laws of freedom. To
that extent, then, it is not possible to throw a bridge from the one
realm to the other. Yet although the determining grounds of
causality according to the concept of freedom (and the practical
rule that this contains) have no place in nature, and the sensible
cannot determine the supersensible in the subject; still the
converse is possible (not, it is true, in respect of the knowledge
of nature, but of the consequences arising from the supersensible
and bearing on the sensible). So much indeed is implied in the concept
of a causality by freedom, the operation of which, in conformity
with the formal laws of freedom, is to take effect in the word. The
word cause, however, in its application to the supersensible only
signifies the ground that determines the causality of things of nature
to an effect in conformity with their appropriate natural laws, but at
the same time also in unison with the formal principle of the laws
of reason-a ground which, while its possibility is impenetrable, may
still be completely cleared of the charge of contradiction that it
is alleged to involve.* The effect in accordance with the concept of
freedom is the final end which (or the manifestation of which in the
sensible world) is to exist, and this presupposes the condition of the
possibility of that end in nature (i. e., in the nature of the subject
as a being of the sensible world, namely, as man). It is so
presupposed a priori, and without regard to the practical, by
judgement. This faculty, with its concept of a finality of nature,
provides us with the mediating concept between concepts of nature
and the concept of freedom-a concept that makes possible the
transition from the pure theoretical [legislation of understanding] to
the pure practical [legislation of reason] and from conformity to
law in accordance with the former to final ends according to the
latter. For through that concept we cognize the possibility of the
final end that can only be actualized in nature and in harmony with
its laws.
{INTRO ^paragraph 85}
-
*One of the various supposed contradictions in this complete
distinction of the causality of nature from that through freedom is
expressed in the objection that when I speak of hindrances opposed
by nature to causality according to laws of freedom (moral laws) or of
assistance lent to it by nature, I am all the time admitting an
influence of the former upon the latter. But the misinterpretation
is easily avoided, if attention is only paid to the meaning of the
statement. The resistance or furtherance is not between nature and
freedom, but between the former as phenomenon and the effects of the
latter as phenomena in the world of sense. Even the causality of
freedom (of pure and practical reason) is the causality of a natural
cause subordinated to freedom (a causality of the subject regarded
as man, and consequently as a phenomenon), and one, the ground of
whose determination is contained in the intelligible, that is
thought under freedom, in a manner that is not further or otherwise
explicable (just as in the case of that intelligible that forms the
supersensible substrate of nature.)
-
Understanding, by the possibility of its supplying a priori laws for
nature, furnishes a proof of the fact that nature is cognized by us
only as phenomenon, and in so doing points to its having a
supersensible substrate; but this substrate it leaves quite
undetermined. judgement by the a priori principle of its estimation of
nature according to its possible particular laws provides this
supersensible substrate (within as well as without us) with
determinability through the intellectual faculty. But reason gives
determination to the same a priori by its practical law. Thus
judgement makes possible the transition from the realm of the
concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom.
In respect of the faculties of the soul generally, regarded as
higher faculties, i.e., as faculties containing an autonomy,
understanding is the one that contains the constitutive a priori
principles for the faculty of cognition (the theoretical knowledge
of nature). The feeling pleasure and displeasure is provided for by
the judgement in its independence from concepts and from sensations
that refer to the determination of the faculty of desire and would
thus be capable of being immediately practical. For the faculty of
desire there is reason, which is practical without mediation of any
pleasure of whatsoever origin, and which determines for it, as a
higher faculty, the final end that is attended at the same time with
pure intellectual delight in the object. judgement's concept of a
finality of nature falls, besides, under the head of natural concepts,
but only as a regulative principle of the cognitive faculties-although
the aesthetic judgement on certain objects (of nature or of art) which
occasions that concept, is a constitutive principle in respect of
the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The spontaneity in the play of
the cognitive faculties whose harmonious accord contains the ground of
this pleasure, makes the concept in question, in its consequences, a
suitable mediating link connecting the realm of the concept of
nature with that of the concept of freedom, as this accord at the same
time promotes the sensibility of the mind for or moral feeling. The
following table may facilitate the review of all the above faculties
in their systematic unity.*
{INTRO ^paragraph 90}
-
*It has been thought somewhat suspicious that my divisions in pure
philosophy should almost always come out threefold. But it is due to
the nature of the case. If a division is to be a priori it must be
either analytic, according to the law of contradiction-and then it
is always twofold (quodlibet ens est aut A aut non A)-Or else it is
synthetic. If it is to be derived in the latter case from a priori
concepts (not, as in mathematics, from the a priori intuition
corresponding to the concept), then, to meet the requirements of
synthetic unity in general, namely (1) a condition, (2) a conditioned,
(3) the concept arising from the union of the conditioned with its
condition, the division must of necessity be trichotomous.
-
List of Mental Faculties Cognitive Faculties
Cognitive faculties Understanding
{INTRO ^paragraph 95}
Feeling of pleasure Judgement
and displeasure Reason
Faculty of desire
-
A priori Principles Application
{INTRO ^paragraph 100}
Conformity to law Nature
Finality Art
Final End Freedom
-
SEC1|BK1
FIRST PART CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT
SECTION I. ANALYTIC OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT.
BOOK I. Analytic of the Beautiful.
-
FIRST MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste*:
Moment of Quality.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 5}
*The definition of taste here relied upon is that it is the
faculty of estimating the beautiful. But the discovery of what is
required for calling an object beautiful must be reserved for the
analysis of judgements of taste. In my search for the moments to which
attention is paid by this judgement in its reflection, I have followed
the guidance of the logical functions of judging (for a judgement of
taste always involves a reference to understanding). I have brought
the moment of quality first under review, because this is what the
aesthetic judgement on the beautiful looks to in the first instance.
-
SS 1. The judgement of taste is aesthetic.
-
If we wish to discern whether anything is beautiful or not, we do
not refer the representation of it to the object by means of
understanding with a view to cognition, but by means of the
imagination (acting perhaps in conjunction with understanding) we
refer the representation to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or
displeasure. The judgement of taste, therefore, is not a cognitive
judgement, and so not logical, but is aesthetic-which means that it is
one whose determining ground cannot be other than subjective. Every
reference of representations is capable of being objective, even
that of sensations (in which case it signifies the real in an
empirical representation). The one exception to this is the feeling of
pleasure or displeasure. This denotes nothing in the object, but is
a feeling which the subject has of itself and of the manner in which
it is affected by the representation.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 10}
To apprehend a regular and appropriate building with one's cognitive
faculties, be the mode of representation clear or confused, is quite a
different thing from being conscious of this representation with an
accompanying sensation of delight. Here the representation is referred
wholly to the subject, and what is more to its feeling of life-under
the name of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure-and this forms
the basis of a quite separate faculty of discriminating and
estimating, that contributes nothing to knowledge. All it does is to
compare the given representation in the subject with the entire
faculty of representations of which the mind is conscious in the
feeling of its state. Given representations in a judgement may be
empirical, and so aesthetic; but the judgement which is pronounced
by their means is logical, provided it refers them to the object.
Conversely, be the given representations even rational, but referred
in a judgement solely to the subject (to its feeling), they are always
to that extent aesthetic.
-
SS 2. The delight which determines the judgement of
taste is independent of all interest.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 15}
The delight which we connect with the representation of the real
existence of an object is called interest. Such a delight,
therefore, always involves a reference to the faculty of desire,
either as its determining ground, or else as necessarily implicated
with its determining ground. Now, where the question is whether
something is beautiful, we do not want to know, whether we, or any one
else, are, or even could be, concerned in the real existence of the
thing, but rather what estimate we form of it on mere contemplation
(intuition or reflection). If any one asks me whether I consider
that the palace I see before me is beautiful, I may, perhaps, reply
that I do not care for things of that sort that are merely made to
be gaped at. Or I may reply in the same strain as that Iroquois sachem
who said that nothing in Paris pleased him better than the
eating-houses. I may even go a step further and inveigh with the
vigour of a Rousseau against the vigour of a great against the
vanity of the of the people on such superfluous things. Or, in fine, I
may quite easily persuade myself that if I found myself on an
uninhabited island, without hope of ever again coming among men, and
could conjure such a palace into existence by a mere wish, I should
still not trouble to do so, so long as I had a hut there that was
comfortable enough for me. All this may be admitted and approved; only
it is not the point now at issue. All one wants to know is whether the
mere representation of the object is to my liking, no matter how
indifferent I may be to the real existence of the object of this
representation. It is quite plain that in order to say that the object
is beautiful, and to show that I have taste, everything turns on the
meaning which I can give to this representation, and not on any factor
which makes me dependent on the real existence of the object. Every
one must allow that a judgement on the beautiful which is tinged
with the slightest interest, is very partial and not a pure
judgement of taste. One must not be in the least prepossessed in
favour of the real existence of the thing, but must preserve
complete indifference in this respect, in order to play the part of
judge in matters of taste.
This proposition, which is of the utmost importance, cannot be
better explained than by contrasting the pure disinterested* delight
which appears in the judgement of taste with that allied to an
interest-especially if we can also assure ourselves that there are
no other kinds of interest beyond those presently to be mentioned.
-
*A judgement upon an object of our delight may be wholly
disinterested but withal very interesting, i.e., it relies on no
interest, but it produces one. Of this kind are all pure moral
judgements. But, of themselves judgements of taste do not even set
up any interest whatsoever. Only in society is it interesting to
have taste-a point which will be explained in the sequel.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 20}
SS 3. Delight in the agreeable is coupled with interest.
-
That is agreeable which the senses find pleasing in sensation.
This at once affords a convenient opportunity for condemning and
directing particular attention to a prevalent confusion of the
double meaning of which the word sensation is capable. All delight (as
is said or thought) is itself sensation (of a pleasure).
Consequently everything that pleases, and for the very reason that
it pleases, is agreeable-and according to its different degrees, or
its relations to other agreeable sensations, is attractive,
charming, delicious, enjoyable, etc. But if this is conceded, then
impressions of sense, which determine inclination, or principles of
reason, which determine the will, or mere contemplated forms of
intuition, which determine judgement, are all on a par in everything
relevant to their effect upon the feeling of pleasure, for this
would be agreeableness in the sensation of one's state; and since,
in the last resort, all the elaborate work of our faculties must issue
in and unite in the practical as its goal, we could credit our
faculties with no other appreciation of things and the worth of
things, than that consisting in the gratification which they
promise. How this is attained is in the end immaterial; and, as the
choice of the means is here the only thing that can make a difference,
men might indeed blame one another for folly or imprudence, but
never for baseness or wickedness; for they are all, each according
to his own way of looking at things, pursuing one goal, which for each
is the gratification in question.
When a modification of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure is
termed sensation, this expression is given quite a different meaning
to that which it bears when I call the representation of a thing
(through sense as a receptivity pertaining to the faculty of
knowledge) sensation. For in the latter case the representation is
referred to the object, but in the former it is referred solely to the
subject and is not available for any cognition, not even for that by
which the subject cognizes itself.
Now in the above definition the word sensation is used to denote
an objective representation of sense; and, to avoid continually
running the risk of misinterpretation, we shall call that which must
always remain purely subjective, and is absolutely incapable of
forming a representation of an object, by the familiar name of
feeling. The green colour of the meadows belongs to objective
sensation, as the perception of an object of sense; but its
agreeableness to subjective sensation, by which no object is
represented; i.e., to feeling, through which the object is regarded as
an object of delight (which involves no cognition of the object).
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 25}
Now, that a judgement on an object by which its agreeableness is
affirmed, expresses an interest in it, is evident from the fact that
through sensation it provokes a desire for similar objects,
consequently the delight presupposes, not the simple judgement about
it, but the bearing its real existence has upon my state so far as
affected by such an object. Hence we do not merely say of the
agreeable that it pleases, but that it gratifies. I do not accord it a
simple approval, but inclination is aroused by it, and where
agreeableness is of the liveliest type a judgement on the character of
the object is so entirely out of place that those who are always
intent only on enjoyment (for that is the word used to denote
intensity of gratification) would fain dispense with all judgement.
-
SS 4. Delight in the good is coupled with interest.
-
That is good which by means of reason commends itself by its mere
concept. We call that good for something which only pleases as a
means; but that which pleases on its own account we call good in
itself. In both cases the concept of an end is implied, and
consequently the relation of reason to (at least possible) willing,
and thus a delight in the existence of an object or action, i.e., some
interest or other.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 30}
To deem something good, I must always know what sort of a thing
the object is intended to be, i. e., I must have a concept of it. That
is not necessary to enable me to see beauty in a thing. Flowers,
free patterns, lines aimlessly intertwining-technically termed
foliage-have no signification, depend upon no definite concept, and
yet please. Delight in the beautiful must depend upon the reflection
on an object precursory to some (not definitely determined) concept.
It is thus also differentiated from the agreeable, which rests
entirely upon sensation.
In many cases, no doubt, the agreeable and the good seem convertible
terms. Thus it is commonly said that all (especially lasting)
gratification is of itself good; which is almost equivalent to
saying that to be permanently agreeable and to be good are
identical. But it is readily apparent that this is merely a vicious
confusion of words, for the concepts appropriate to these
expressions are far from interchangeable. The agreeable, which, as
such, represents the object solely in relation to sense, must in the
first instance be brought under principles of reason through the
concept of an end, to be, as an object of will, called good. But
that the reference to delight is wholly different where what gratifies
is at the same time called good, is evident from the fact that with
the good the question always is whether it is mediately or immediately
good, i. e., useful or good in itself; whereas with the agreeable this
point can never arise, since the word always means what pleases
immediately-and it is just the same with what I call beautiful.
Even in everyday parlance, a distinction is drawn between the
agreeable and the good. We do not scruple to say of a dish that
stimulates the palate with spices and other condiments that it is
agreeable owning all the while that it is not good: because, while
it immediately satisfies the senses, it is mediately displeasing, i.
e., in the eye of reason that looks ahead to the consequences. Even in
our estimate of health, this same distinction may be traced. To all
that possess it, it is immediately agreeable-at least negatively, i.
e., as remoteness of all bodily pains. But, if we are to say that it
is good, we must further apply to reason to direct it to ends, that
is, we must regard it as a state that puts us in a congenial mood
for all we have to do. Finally, in respect of happiness every one
believes that the greatest aggregate of the pleasures of life,
taking duration as well as number into account, merits the name of a
true, nay even of the highest, good. But reason sets its face
against this too. Agreeableness is enjoyment. But if this is all
that we are bent on, it would be foolish to be scrupulous about the
means that procure it for us-whether it be obtained passively by the
bounty of nature or actively and by the work of our own hands. But
that there is any intrinsic worth in the real existence of a man who
merely lives for enjoyment, however busy he may be in this respect,
even when in so doing he serves others-all equally with himself intent
only on enjoyment-as an excellent means to that one end, and does
so, moreover, because through sympathy he shares all their
gratifications-this is a view to which reason will never let itself be
brought round. Only by what a man does heedless of enjoyment, in
complete freedom, and independently of what he can procure passively
from the hand of nature, does be give to his existence, as the real
existence of a person, an absolute worth. Happiness, with all its
plethora of pleasures, is far from being an unconditioned good.*
-
*An obligation to enjoyment is a patent absurdity. And the same,
then, must also be said of a supposed obligation to actions that
have merely enjoyment for their aim, no matter how spiritually this
enjoyment may be refined in thought (or embellished), and even if it
be a mystical, so-called heavenly, enjoyment.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 35}
-
But, despite all this difference between the agreeable and the good,
they both agree in being invariably coupled with an interest in
their object. This is true, not alone of the agreeable, SS 3, and of
the mediately good, i, e., the useful, which pleases as a means to
some pleasure, but also of that which is good absolutely and from
every point of view, namely the moral good which carries with it the
highest interest. For the good is the object of will, i. e., of a
rationally determined faculty of desire). But to will something, and
to take a delight in its existence, i.e., to take an interest in it,
are identical.
-
SS 5. Comparison of the three specifically different
kinds of delight.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 40}
-
Both the agreeable and the good involve a reference to the faculty
of desire, and are thus attended, the former with a delight
pathologically conditioned (by stimuli), the latter with a pure
practical delight. Such delight is determined not merely by the
representation of the object, but also by the represented bond of
connection between the subject and the real existence of the object.
It is not merely the object, but also its real existence, that
pleases. On the other hand, the judgement of taste is simply
contemplative, i. e., it is a judgement which is indifferent as to the
existence of an object, and only decides how its character stands with
the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. But not even is this
contemplation itself directed to concepts; for the judgement of
taste is not a cognitive judgement (neither a theoretical one nor a
practical), and hence, also, is not grounded on concepts, nor yet
intentionally directed to them.
The agreeable, the beautiful, and the good thus denote three
different relations of representations to the feeling of pleasure
and displeasure, as a feeling in respect of which we distinguish
different objects or modes of representation. Also, the
corresponding expressions which indicate our satisfaction in them
are different The agreeable is what GRATIFIES a man; the beautiful
what simply PLEASES him; the good what is ESTEEMED (approved), i.e.,
that on which he sets an objective worth. Agreeableness is a
significant factor even with irrational animals; beauty has purport
and significance only for human beings, i.e., for beings at once
animal and rational (but not merely for them as rational-intelligent
beings-but only for them as at once animal and rational); whereas
the good is good for every rational being in general-a proposition
which can only receive its complete justification and explanation in
the sequel. Of all these three kinds of delight, that of taste in
the beautiful may be said to be the one and only disinterested and
free delight; for, with it, no interest, whether of sense or reason,
extorts approval. And so we may say that delight, in the three cases
mentioned, is related to inclination, to favour, or to respect. For
FAVOUR is the only free liking. An object of inclination, and one
which a law of reason imposes upon our desire, leaves us no freedom to
turn anything into an object of pleasure. All interest presupposes a
want, or calls one forth; and, being a ground determining approval,
deprives the judgement on the object of its freedom.
So far as the interest of inclination in the case of the agreeable
goes, every one says "Hunger is the best sauce; and people with a
healthy appetite relish everything, so long as it is something they
can eat." Such delight, consequently, gives no indication of taste
having anything to say to the choice. Only when men have got all
they want can we tell who among the crowd has taste or not.
Similarly there may be correct habits (conduct) without virtue,
politeness without good-will, propriety without honour, etc. For where
the moral law dictates, there is, objectively, no room left for free
choice as to what one has to do; and to show taste in the way one
carries out these dictates, or in estimating the way others do so,
is a totally different matter from displaying the moral frame of one's
mind. For the latter involves a command and produces a need of
something, whereas moral taste only plays with the objects of
delight without devoting itself sincerely to any.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 45}
Definition of the Beautiful derived from the First Moment.
-
Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or a mode of
representation by means of a delight or aversion apart from any
interest. The object of such a delight is called beautiful.
-
SECOND MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste:
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 50}
Moment of Quantity.
-
SS 6. The beautiful is that which, apart from
concepts, is represented as the Object
of a universal delight.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 55}
-
This definition of the beautiful is deducible from the foregoing
definition of it as an object of delight apart from any interest.
For where any one is conscious that his delight in an object is with
him independent of interest, it is inevitable that he should look on
the object as one containing a ground of delight for all men. For,
since the delight is not based on any inclination of the subject (or
on any other deliberate interest), but the subject feels himself
completely free in respect of the liking which he accords to the
object, he can find as reason for his delight no personal conditions
to which his own subjective self might alone be party. Hence he must
regard it as resting on what he may also presuppose in every other
person; and therefore he must believe that he has reason for demanding
a similar delight from every one. Accordingly he will speak of the
beautiful as if beauty were a quality of the object and the
judgement logical (forming a cognition of the object by concepts of
it); although it is only aesthetic, and contains merely a reference of
the representation of the object to the subject; because it still
bears this resemblance to the logical judgement, that it may be
presupposed to be valid for all men. But this universality cannot
spring from concepts. For from concepts there is no transition to
the feeling of pleasure or displeasure (save in the case of pure
practical laws, which, however, carry an interest with them; and
such an interest does not attach to the pure judgement of taste).
The result is that the judgement of taste, with its attendant
consciousness of detachment from all interest, must involve a claim to
validity for all men, and must do so apart from universality
attached to objects, i.e., there must be coupled with it a claim to
subjective universality.
-
SS 7. Comparison of the beautiful with the agreeable
and the good by means of the above characteristic.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 60}
-
As regards the agreeable, every one concedes that his judgement,
which he bases on a private feeling, and in which he declares that
an object pleases him, is restricted merely to himself personally.
Thus he does not take it amiss if, when he says that Canary-wine is
agreeable, another corrects the expression and reminds him that he
ought to say: "It is agreeable to me." This applies not only to the
taste of the tongue, the palate, and the throat, but to what may
with any one be agreeable to eye or ear. A violet colour is to one
soft and lovely: to another dull and faded. One man likes the tone
of wind instruments, another prefers that of string instruments. To
quarrel over such points with the idea of condemning another's
judgement as incorrect when it differs from our own, as if the
opposition between the two judgements were logical, would be folly.
With the agreeable, therefore, the axiom holds good: Every one has his
own taste (that of sense).
The beautiful stands on quite a different footing. It would, on
the contrary, be ridiculous if any one who plumed himself on his taste
were to think of justifying himself by saying: "This object (the
building we see, the dress that person has on, the concert we hear,
the poem submitted to our criticism) is beautiful for me." For if it
merely pleases him, be must not call it beautiful. Many things may for
him possess charm and agreeableness-no one cares about that; but
when he puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he
demands the same delight from others. He judges not merely for
himself, but for all men, and then speaks of beauty as if it were a
property of things. Thus he says the thing is beautiful; and it is not
as if he counted on others agreeing in his judgement of liking owing
to his having found them in such agreement on a number of occasions,
but he demands this agreement of them. He blames them if they judge
differently, and denies them taste, which he still requires of them as
something they ought to have; and to this extent it is not open to men
to say: "Every one has his own taste." This would be equivalent to
saying that there is no such thing at all as taste, i. e., no
aesthetic judgement capable of making a rightful claim upon the assent
of all men.
Yet even in the case of the agreeable, we find that the estimates
men form do betray a prevalent agreement among them, which leads to
our crediting some with taste and denying it to others, and that, too,
not as an organic sense but as a critical faculty in respect of the
agreeable generally. So of one who knows how to entertain his guests
with pleasures (of enjoyment through all the senses) in such a way
that one and all are pleased, we say that he has taste. But the
universality here is only understood in a comparative sense; and the
rules that apply are, like all empirical rules, general only, not
universal, the latter being what the judgement of taste upon the
beautiful deals or claims to deal in. It is a judgement in respect
of sociability so far as resting on empirical rules. In respect of the
good, it is true that judgements also rightly assert a claim to
validity for every one; but the good is only represented as an
object of universal delight by means of a concept, which is the case
neither with the agreeable nor the beautiful.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 65}
SS 8. In a judgement of taste the universality of
delight is only represented as subjective.
-
This particular form of the universality of an aesthetic
judgement, which is to be met in a judgement of taste, is a
significant feature, not for the logician certainly, but for the
transcendental philosopher. It calls for no small effort on his part
to discover its origin, but in return it brings to light a property of
our cognitive faculty which, without this analysis, would have
remained unknown.
First, one must get firmly into one's mind that by the judgement
of taste (upon the beautiful) the delight in an object is imputed to
every one, yet without being founded on a concept (for then it would
be the good), and that this claim to universality is such an essential
factor of a judgement by which we describe anything as beautiful, that
were it not for its being present to the mind it would never enter
into any one's head to use this expression, but everything that
pleased without a concept would be ranked as agreeable. For in respect
of the agreeable, every one is allowed to have his own opinion, and no
one insists upon others agreeing with his judgement of taste, which is
what is invariably done in the judgement of taste about beauty. The
first of these I may call the taste of sense, the second, the taste of
reflection: the first laying down judgements merely private, the
second, on the other hand, judgements ostensibly of general validity
(public), but both alike being aesthetic (not practical) judgements
about an object merely in respect of the bearings of its
representation on the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Now it
does seem strange that while with the taste of sense it is not alone
experience that shows that its judgement (of pleasure or displeasure
in something) is not universally valid, but every one willingly
refrains from imputing this agreement to others (despite the
frequent actual prevalence of a considerable consensus of general
opinion even in these judgements), the taste of reflection, which,
as experience teaches, has often enough to put up with a rude
dismissal of its claims to universal validity of its judgement (upon
the beautiful), can (as it actually does) find it possible for all
that to formulate judgements capable of demanding this agreement in
its universality. Such agreement it does in fact require from every
one for each of its judgements of taste the persons who pass these
judgements not quarreling over the possibility of such a claim, but
only failing in particular cases to come to terms as to the correct
application of this faculty.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 70}
First of all we have here to note that a universality which does not
rest upon concepts of the object (even though these are only
empirical) is in no way logical, but aesthetic, i. e., does not
involve any objective quantity of the judgement, but only one that
is subjective. For this universality I use the expression general
validity, which denotes the validity of the reference of a
representation, not to the cognitive faculties, but to the feeling
of pleasure or displeasure for every subject. (The same expression,
however, may also be employed for the logical quantity of the
judgement, provided we add objective universal validity, to
distinguish it from the merely subjective validity which is always
aesthetic.)
Now a judgement that has objective universal validity has always got
the subjective also, i.e., if the judgement is valid for everything
which is contained under a given concept, it is valid also for all who
represent an object by means of this concept. But from a subjective
universal validity, i. e., the aesthetic, that does not rest on any
concept, no conclusion can be drawn to the logical; because judgements
of that kind have no bearing upon the object. But for this very reason
the aesthetic universality attributed to a judgement must also be of a
special kind, seeing that it does not join the predicate of beauty
to the concept of the object taken in its entire logical sphere, and
yet does extend this predicate over the whole sphere of judging
subjects.
In their logical quantity, all judgements of taste are singular
judgements. For, since I must present the object immediately to my
feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and that, too, without the aid
of concepts, such judgements cannot have the quantity of judgements
with objective general validity. Yet by taking the singular
representation of the object of the judgement of taste, and by
comparison converting it into a concept according to the conditions
determining that judgement, we can arrive at a logically universal
judgement. For instance, by a judgement of the taste I describe the
rose at which I am looking as beautiful. The judgement, on the other
hand, resulting from the comparison of a number of singular
representations: "Roses in general are beautiful," is no longer
pronounced as a purely aesthetic judgement, but as a logical judgement
founded on one that is aesthetic. Now the judgement, "The rose is
agreeable" (to smell) is also, no doubt, an aesthetic and singular
judgement, but then it is not one of taste but of sense. For it has
this point of difference from a judgement of taste, that the latter
imports an aesthetic quantity of universality, i.e., of validity for
everyone which is not to be met with in a judgement upon the
agreeable. It is only judgements upon the good which, while also
determining the delight in an object, possess logical and not mere
aesthetic universality; for it is as involving a cognition of the
object that "they are valid of it, and on that account valid for
everyone.
In forming an estimate of objects merely from concepts, all
representation of beauty goes by the board. There can, therefore, be
no rule according to which any one is to be compelled to recognize
anything as beautiful. Whether a dress, a house, or a flower is
beautiful is a matter upon which one declines to allow one's judgement
to be swayed by any reasons or principles. We want to get a look at
the object with our own eyes, just as if our delight depended on
sensation. And yet, if upon so doing, we call the object beautiful, we
believe ourselves to be speaking with a universal voice, and lay claim
to the concurrence of everyone, whereas no private sensation would
be decisive except for the observer alone and his liking.
Here, now, we may perceive that nothing is postulated in the
judgement of taste but such a universal voice in respect of delight
that it is not mediated by concepts; consequently, only the
possibility of an aesthetic judgement capable of being at the same
time deemed valid for everyone. The judgement of taste itself does not
postulate the agreement of everyone (for it is only competent for a
logically universal judgement to do this, in that it is able to
bring forward reasons); it only imputes this agreement to everyone, as
an instance of the rule in respect of which it looks for confirmation,
not from concepts, but from the concurrence of others. The universal
voice is, therefore, only an idea -resting upon grounds the
investigation of which is here postponed. It may be a matter of
uncertainty whether a person who thinks he is laying down a
judgement of taste is, in fact, judging in conformity with that
idea; but that this idea is what is contemplated in his judgement, and
that, consequently, it is meant to be a judgement of taste, is
proclaimed by his use of the expression "beauty." For himself he can
be certain on the point from his mere consciousness of the
separation of everything belonging to the agreeable and the good
from the delight remaining to him; and this is all for which be
promises himself the agreement of everyone-a claim which, under
these conditions, he would also be warranted in making, were it not
that he frequently sinned against them, and thus passed an erroneous
judgement of taste.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 75}
-
SS 9. Investigation of the question of the relative
priority in a judgement of taste of the feeling
of pleasure and the estimating of the object.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 80}
The solution of this problem is the key to the Critique of taste,
and so is worthy of all attention.
Were the pleasure in a given object to be the antecedent, and were
the universal communicability of this pleasure to be all that the
judgement of taste is meant to allow to the representation of the
object, such a sequence would be self-contradictory. For a pleasure of
that kind would be nothing but the feeling of mere agreeableness to
the senses, and so, from its very nature, would possess no more than
private validity, seeing that it would be immediately dependent on the
representation through which the object is given.
Hence it is the universal capacity for being communicated incident
to the mental state in the given representation which, as the
subjective condition of the judgement of taste, must be,
fundamental, with the pleasure in the object as its consequent.
Nothing, however, is capable of being universally communicated but
cognition and representation so far as appurtenant to cognition. For
it is only as thus appurtenant that the representation is objective,
and it is this alone that gives it a universal point of reference with
which the power of representation of every one is obliged to
harmonize. If, then, the determining ground of the judgement as to
this universal communicability of the representation is to be merely
subjective, that is to say, to be conceived independently of any
concept of the object, it can be nothing else than the mental state
that presents itself in the mutual relation of the powers of
representation so far as they refer a given representation to
cognition in general.
The cognitive powers brought into play by this representation are
here engaged in a free play, since no definite concept restricts
them to a particular rule of cognition. Hence the mental state in this
representation must be one of a feeling of the free play of the powers
of representation in a given representation for a cognition in
general. Now a representation, whereby an object is given, involves,
in order that it may become a source of cognition at all,
imagination for bringing together the manifold of intuition, and
understanding for the unity of the concept uniting the
representations. This state of free play of the cognitive faculties
attending a representation by which an object is given must admit of
universal communication: because cognition, as a definition of the
object with which given representations (in any subject whatever)
are to accord, is the one and only representation which is valid for
everyone.
As the subjective universal communicability of the mode of
representation in a judgement of taste is to subsist apart from the
presupposition of any definite concept, it can be nothing else than
the mental state present in the free play of imagination and
understanding (so far as these are in mutual accord, as is requisite
for cognition in general); for we are conscious that this subjective
relation suitable for a cognition in general must be just as valid for
every one, and consequently as universally communicable, as is any
indeterminate cognition, which always rests upon that relation as
its subjective condition.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 85}
Now this purely subjective (aesthetic) estimating of the object,
or of the representation through which it is given, is antecedent to
the pleasure in it, and is the basis of this pleasure in the harmony
of the cognitive faculties. Again, the above-described universality of
the subjective conditions of estimating objects forms the sole
foundation of this universal subjective validity of the delight
which we connect with the representation of the object that we call
beautiful.
That an ability to communicate one's mental state, even though it be
only in respect of our cognitive faculties, is attended with a
pleasure, is a fact which might easily be demonstrated from the
natural propensity of mankind to social life, i.e., empirically and
psychologically. But what we have here in view calls for something
more than this. In a judgement of taste, the pleasure felt by us is
exacted from every one else as necessary, just as if, when we call
something beautiful, beauty was to be regarded as a quality of the
object forming part of its inherent determination according to
concepts; although beauty is for itself, apart from any reference to
the feeling of the subject, nothing. But the discussion of this
question must be reserved until we have answered the further one of
whether, and how, aesthetic judgements are possible a priori.
At present we are exercised with the lesser question of the way in
which we become conscious, in a judgement of taste, of a reciprocal
subjective common accord of the powers of cognition. Is it
aesthetically by sensation and our mere internal sense? Or is it
intellectually by consciousness of our intentional activity in
bringing these powers into play?
Now if the given representation occasioning the judgement of taste
were a concept which united understanding and imagination in the
estimate of the object so as to give a cognition of the object, the
consciousness of this relation would be intellectual (as in the
objective schematism of judgement dealt with in the Critique). But,
then, in that case the judgement would not be laid down with respect
to pleasure and displeasure, and so would not be a judgement of taste.
But, now, the judgement of taste determines the object,
independently of concepts, in respect of delight and of the
predicate of beauty. There is, therefore, no other way for the
subjective unity of the relation in question to make itself known than
by sensation. The quickening of both faculties (imagination and
understanding) to an indefinite, but yet, thanks to the given
representation, harmonious activity, such as belongs to cognition
generally, is the sensation whose universal communicability is
postulated by the judgement of taste. An objective relation can, of
course, only be thought, yet in so far as, in respect of its
conditions, it is subjective, it may be felt in its effect upon the
mind, and, in the case of a relation (like that of the powers of
representation to a faculty of cognition generally) which does not
rest on any concept, no other consciousness of it is possible beyond
that through sensation of its effect upon the mind -an effect
consisting in the more facile play of both mental powers
(imagination and understanding) as quickened by their mutual accord. A
representation which is singular and independent of comparison with
other representations, and, being such, yet accords with the
conditions of the universality that is the general concern of
understanding, is one that brings the cognitive faculties into that
proportionate accord which we require for all cognition and which we
therefore deem valid for every one who is so constituted as to judge
by means of understanding and sense conjointly (i.e., for every man).
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 90}
Definition of the Beautiful drawn from the Second Moment.
-
The beautiful is that which, apart from a concept, pleases
universally.
-
THIRD MOMENT. Of Judgements of Taste: Moment of
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 95}
the relation of the Ends brought under Review
in such Judgements.
-
SS 10. Finality in general.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 100}
Let us define the meaning of "an end" in transcendental terms (i.e.,
without presupposing anything empirical, such as the feeling of
pleasure). An end is the object of a concept so far as this concept is
regarded as the cause of the object (the real ground of its
possibility); and the causality of a concept in respect of its
object is finality (forma finalis). Where, then, not the cognition
of an object merely, but the object itself (its form or real
existence) as an effect, is thought to be possible only through a
concept of it, there we imagine an end. The representation of the
effect is here the determining ground of its cause and takes the
lead of it. The consciousness of the causality of a representation
in respect of the state of the subject as one tending to preserve a
continuance of that state, may here be said to denote in a general way
what is called pleasure; whereas displeasure is that representation
which contains the ground for converting the state of the
representations into their opposite (for hindering or removing them).
The faculty of desire, so far as determinable only through concepts,
i.e., so as to act in conformity with the representation of an end,
would be the Will. But an object, or state of mind, or even an
action may, although its possibility does not necessarily presuppose
the representation of an end, be called final simply on account of its
possibility being only explicable and intelligible for us by virtue of
an assumption on our part of fundamental causality according to
ends, i.e., a will that would have so ordained it according to a
certain represented rule. Finality, therefore, may exist apart from an
end, in so far as we do not locate the causes of this form in a
will, but yet are able to render the explanation of its possibility
intelligible to ourselves only by deriving it from a will. Now we
are not always obliged to look with the eye of reason into what we
observe (i.e., to consider it in its possibility). So we may at
least observe a finality of form, and trace it in objects-though by
reflection only-without resting it on an end (as the material of the
nexus finalis).
-
SS 11. The sole foundation of the judgement of taste
is the form of finality of an object (or mode of
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 105}
representing it).
-
Whenever an end is regarded as a source of delight, it always
imports an interest as determining ground of the judgement on the
object of pleasure. Hence the judgement of taste cannot rest on any
subjective end as its ground. But neither can any representation of an
objective end, i.e., of the possibility of the object itself on
principles of final connection, determine the judgement of taste, and,
consequently, neither can any concept of the good. For the judgement
of taste is an aesthetic and not a cognitive judgement, and so does
not deal with any concept of the nature or of the internal or external
possibility, by this or that cause, of the object, but simply with the
relative bearing of the representative powers so far as determined
by a representation.
Now this relation, present when an object is characterized as
beautiful, is coupled with the feeling of pleasure. This pleasure is
by the judgement of taste pronounced valid for every one; hence an
agreeableness attending the representation is just as incapable of
containing the determining ground of the judgement as the
representation of the perfection of the object or the concept of the
good. We are thus left with the subjective finality in the
representation of an object, exclusive of any end (objective or
subjective)-consequently the bare form of finality in the
representation whereby an object is given to us, so far as we are
conscious of it as that which is alone capable of constituting the
delight which, apart from any concept, we estimate as universally
communicable, and so of forming the determining ground of the
judgement of taste.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 110}
SS 12. The judgement of taste rests upon a
priori grounds.
-
To determine a priori the connection of the feeling of pleasure or
displeasure as an effect, with some representation or other (sensation
or concept) as its cause, is utterly impossible; for that would be a
causal relation which (with objects of experience) is always one
that can only be cognized a posteriori and with the help of
experience. True, in the Critique of Practical Reason we did
actually derive a priori from universal moral concepts the feeling
of respect (as a particular and peculiar modification of this
feeling which does not strictly answer either to the pleasure or
displeasure which we receive from empirical objects). But there we
were further able to cross the border of experience and call in aid
a causality resting on a supersensible attribute of the subject,
namely that of freedom. But even there it was not this feeling exactly
that we deduced from the idea of the moral as cause, but from this was
derived simply the determination of the will. But the mental state
present in the determination of the will by any means is at once in
itself a feeling of pleasure and identical with it, and so does not
issue from it as an effect. Such an effect must only be assumed
where the concept of the moral as a good precedes the determination of
the will by the law; for in that case it would be futile to derive the
pleasure combined with the concept from this concept as a mere
cognition.
Now the pleasure in aesthetic judgements stands on a similar
footing: only that here it is merely contemplative and does not
bring about an interest in the object; whereas in the moral
judgement it is practical, The consciousness of mere formal finality
in the play of the cognitive faculties of the subject attending a
representation whereby an object is given, is the pleasure itself,
because it involves a determining ground of the subject's activity
in respect of the quickening of its cognitive powers, and thus an
internal causality (which is final) in respect of cognition generally,
but without being limited to a definite cognition, and consequently
a mere form of the subjective finality of a representation in an
aesthetic judgement. This pleasure is also in no way practical,
neither resembling that form the pathological ground of
agreeableness nor that from the intellectual ground of the represented
good. But still it involves an inherent causality, that, namely, of
preserving a continuance of the state of the representation itself and
the active engagement of the cognitive powers without ulterior aim. We
dwell on the contemplation of the beautiful because this contemplation
strengthens and reproduces itself. The case is analogous (but
analogous only) to the way we linger on a charm in the
representation of an object which keeps arresting the attention, the
mind all the while remaining passive.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 115}
-
SS 13. The pure judgement of taste is independent
of charm and emotion.
-
Every interest vitiates the judgement of taste and robs it of its
impartiality. This is especially so where, instead of, like the
interest of reason, making finality take the lead of the lead of the
feeling of pleasure, it grounds it upon this feeling-which is what
always happens in aesthetic judgements upon anything so far as it
gratifies or pains. Hence judgements so influenced can either lay no
claim at all to a universally valid delight, or else must abate
their claim in proportion as sensations of the kind in question
enter into the determining grounds of taste. Taste that requires an
added element of charm and emotion for its delight, not to speak of
adopting this as the measure of its approval, has not yet emerged from
barbarism.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 120}
And yet charms are frequently not alone ranked with beauty (which
ought properly to be a question merely of the form) as supplementary
to the aesthetic universal delight, but they have been accredited as
intrinsic beauties, and consequently the matter of delight passed
off for the form. This is a misconception which, like many others that
have still an underlying element of truth, may be removed by a careful
definition of these concepts.
A judgement of taste which is uninfluenced by charm or emotion
(though these may be associated with the delight in the beautiful),
and whose determining ground, therefore, is simply finality of form,
is a pure judgement of taste.
-
SS 14 Exemplification.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 125}
Aesthetic, just like theoretical (logical) judgements, are divisible
into empirical and pure. The first are those by which agreeableness or
disagreeableness, the second those by which beauty is predicated of an
object or its mode of representation. The former are judgements of
sense (material aesthetic judgements), the latter (as formal) alone
judgements of taste proper.
A judgement of taste, therefore, is only pure so far as its
determining ground is tainted with no merely empirical delight. But
such a taint is always present where charm or emotion have a share
in the judgement by which something is to be described as beautiful.
Here now there is a recrudescence of a number of specious pleas that
go the length of putting forward the case that charm is not merely a
necessary ingredient of beauty, but is even of itself sufficient to
merit the name of beautiful. A mere colour, such as the green of a
plot of grass, or a mere tone (as distinguished from sound or
noise), like that of a violin, is described by most people as in
itself beautiful, notwithstanding the fact that both seem to depend
merely on the matter of the representations in other words, simply
on sensation-which only entitles them to be called agreeable. But it
will at the same time be observed that sensations of colour as well as
of tone are only entitled to be immediately regarded as beautiful
where, in either case, they are pure. This is a determination which at
once goes to their form, and it is the only one which these
representations possess that admits with certainty of being
universally communicated. For it is not to be assumed that even the
quality of the sensations agrees in all subjects, and we can hardly
take it for granted that the agreeableness of a colour, or of the tone
of a musical instrument, which we judge to be preferable to that of
another, is given a like preference in the estimate of every one.
Assuming vibrations vibration sound, and, what is most important,
that the mind not alone perceives by sense their effect in stimulating
the organs, but also, by reflection, the regular play of the
impressions (and consequently the form in which different
representations are united)-which I, still, in no way doubt-then
colour and tone would not be mere sensations. They would be nothing
short of formal determinations of the unity of a manifold of
sensations, and in that case could even be ranked as intrinsic
beauties.
But the purity of a simple mode of sensation means that its
uniformity is not disturbed or broken by any foreign sensation. It
belongs merely to the form; for abstraction may there be made from the
quality of the mode of such sensation (what colour or tone, if any, it
represents). For this reason, all simple colours are regarded as
beautiful so far as pure. Composite colours have not this advantage,
because, not being simple, there is no standard for estimating whether
they should be called pure or impure.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 130}
But as for the beauty ascribed to the object on account of its form,
and the supposition that it is capable of being enhanced by charm,
this is a common error and one very prejudicial to genuine,
uncorrupted, sincere taste. Nevertheless charms may be added to beauty
to lend to the mind, beyond a bare delight, an adventitious interest
in the representation of the object, and thus to advocate taste and
its cultivation. This applies especially where taste is as yet crude
and untrained. But they are positively subversive of the judgement
of taste, if allowed to obtrude themselves as grounds of estimating
beauty. For so far are they from contributing to beauty that it is
only where taste is still weak and untrained that, like aliens, they
are admitted as a favour, and only on terms that they do not violate
that beautiful form.
In painting, sculpture, and in fact in all the formative arts, in
architecture and horticulture, so far as fine arts, the design is what
is essential. Here it is not what gratifies in sensation but merely
what pleases by its form, that is the fundamental prerequisite for
taste. The colours which give brilliancy to the sketch are part of the
charm. They may no doubt, in their own way, enliven the object for
sensation, but make it really worth looking at and beautiful they
cannot. Indeed, more often than not the requirements of the
beautiful form restrict them to a very narrow compass, and, even where
charm is admitted, it is only this form that gives them a place of
honour.
All form of objects of sense (both of external and also,
mediately, of internal sense) is either figure or play. In the
latter case it is either play of figures (in space: mimic and
dance), or mere play of sensations (in time). The charm of colours, or
of the agreeable tones of instruments, may be added: but the design in
the former and the composition in the latter constitute the proper
object of the pure judgement of taste. To say that the purity alike of
colours and of tones, or their variety and contrast, seem to
contribute to beauty, is by no means to imply that, because in
themselves agreeable, they therefore yield an addition to the
delight in the form and one on a par with it. The real meaning
rather is that they make this form more clearly, definitely, and
completely intuitable, and besides stimulate the representation by
their charm, as they excite and sustain the attention directed to
the object itself.
Even what is called ornamentation (parerga), i.e., what is only an
adjunct and not an intrinsic constituent in the complete
representation of the object, in augmenting the delight of taste
does so only by means of its form. Thus it is with the frames of
pictures or the drapery on statues, or the colonnades of palaces.
But if the ornamentation does not itself enter into the composition of
the beautiful form-if it is introduced like a gold frame merely to win
approval for the picture by means of its charm-it is then called
finery and takes away from the genuine beauty.
Emotion-a sensation where an agreeable feeling is produced merely by
means of a momentary check followed by a more powerful outpouring of
the vital force-is quite foreign to beauty. Sublimity (with which
the feeling of emotion is connected) requires, however, a different
standard of estimation from that relied upon by taste. A pure
judgement of taste has, then, for its determining ground neither charm
nor emotion, in a word, no sensation as matter of the aesthetic
judgement.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 135}
-
SS 15. The judgement of taste is entirely independent
of the concept of perfection.
-
Objective finality can only be cognized by means of a reference of
the manifold to a definite end, and hence only through a concept. This
alone makes it clear that the beautiful, which is estimated on the
ground of a mere formal finality, i.e., a finality apart from an
end, is wholly independent of the representation of the good. For
the latter presupposes an objective finality, i.e., the reference of
the object to a definite end.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 140}
Objective finality is either external, i.e., the utility, or
internal, i. e., the perfection, of the object. That the delight in an
object on account of which we call it beautiful is incapable of
resting on the representation of its utility, is abundantly evident
from the two preceding articles; for in that case, it would not be
an immediate delight in the object, which latter is the essential
condition of the judgement upon beauty. But in an objective,
internal finality, i.e., perfection, we have what is more akin to
the predicate of beauty, and so this has been held even by
philosophers of reputation to be convertible with beauty, though
subject to the qualification: where it is thought in a confused way.
In a critique of taste it is of the utmost importance to decide
whether beauty is really reducible to the concept of perfection.
For estimating objective finality we always require the concept of
an end, and, where such finality has to be, not an external one
(utility), but an internal one, the concept of an internal end
containing the ground of the internal possibility of the object. Now
an end is in general that, the concept of which may be regarded as the
ground of the possibility of the object itself. So in order to
represent an objective finality in a thing we must first have a
concept of what sort of a thing it is to be. The agreement of the
manifold in a thing with this concept (which supplies the rule of
its synthesis) is the qualitative perfection of the thing.
Quantitative perfection is entirely distinct from this. It consists in
the completeness of anything after its kind, and is a mere concept
of quantity (of totality). In its case the question of what the
thing is to be is regarded as definitely disposed of, and we only
ask whether it is possessed of all the requisites that go to make it
such. What is formal in the representation of a thing, i.e., the
agreement of its manifold with a unity (i.e., irrespective of what
it is to be), does not, of itself, afford us any cognition
whatsoever of objective finality. For since abstraction is made from
this unity as end (what the thing is to be), nothing is left but the
subjective finality of the representations in the mind of the
subject intuiting. This gives a certain finality of the representative
state of the subject, in which the subject feels itself quite at
home in its effort to grasp a given form in the imagination, but no
perfection of any object, the latter not being here thought through
any concept. For instance, if in a forest I light upon a plot of
grass, round which trees stand in a circle, and if I do not then
form any representation of an end, as that it is meant to be used,
say, for country dances, then not the least hint of a concept of
perfection is given by the mere form. To suppose a formal objective
finality that is yet devoid of an end, i.e., the mere form of a
perfection (apart from any matter or concept of that to which the
agreement relates, even though there was the mere general idea of a
conformity to law) is a veritable contradiction.
Now the judgement of taste is an aesthetic judgement, one resting on
subjective grounds. No concept can be its determining ground, and
hence not one of a definite end. Beauty, therefore, as a formal
subjective finality, involves no thought whatsoever of a perfection of
the object, as a would-be formal finality which yet, for all that,
is objective: and the distinction between the concepts of the
beautiful and the good, which represents both as differing only in
their logical form, the first being merely a confused, the second a
clearly defined, concept of perfection, while otherwise alike in
content and origin, all goes for nothing: for then there would be no
specific difference between them, but the judgement of taste would
be just as much a cognitive judgement as one by which something is
described as good-just as the man in the street, when be says that
deceit is wrong, bases his judgement on confused, but the
philosopher on clear grounds, while both appeal in reality to
identical principles of reason. But I have already stated that an
aesthetic judgement is quite unique, and affords absolutely no (not
even a confused) knowledge of the object. It is only through a logical
judgement that we get knowledge. The aesthetic judgement, on the other
hand, refers the representation, by which an object is given, solely
to the subject, and brings to our notice no quality of the object, but
only the final form in the determination of the powers of
representation engaged upon it. The judgement is called aesthetic
for the very reason that its determining ground cannot be a concept,
but is rather the feeling (of the internal sense) of the concert in
the play of the mental powers as a thing only capable of being felt.
If, on the other band, confused concepts, and the objective
judgement based on them, are going to be called aesthetic, we shall
find ourselves with an understanding judging by sense, or a sense
representing its objects by concepts-a mere choice of
contradictions. The faculty of concepts, be they confused or be they
clear, is understanding; and although understanding has (as in all
judgements) its role in the judgement of taste, as an aesthetic
judgement, its role there is not that of a faculty for cognizing an
object, but of a faculty for determining that judgement and its
representation (without a concept) according to its relation to the
subject and its internal feeling, and for doing so in so far as that
judgement is possible according to a universal rule.
-
SS 16. A judgement of taste by which an object is
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 145}
described as beautiful, under the condition of
a definite concept, is not pure.
-
There are two kinds of beauty: free beauty (pulchritudo vaga), or
beauty which is merely dependent (pulchritudo adhaerens). The first
presupposes no concept of what the object should be; the second does
presuppose such a concept and, with it, an answering perfection of the
object. Those of the first kind are said to be (self-subsisting)
beauties of this thing or that thing; the other kind of beauty,
being attached to a concept (conditioned beauty), is ascribed to
objects which come under the concept of a particular end.
Flowers are free beauties of nature. Hardly anyone but a botanist
knows the true nature of a flower, and even he, while recognizing in
the flower the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no attention to
this natural end when using his taste to judge of its beauty. Hence no
perfection of any kind-no internal finality, as something to which the
arrangement of the manifold is related-underlies this judgement.
Many birds (the parrot, the humming-bird, the bird of paradise), and a
number of crustacea, are self-subsisting beauties which are not
appurtenant to any object defined with respect to its end, but
please freely and on their own account. So designs a la grecque,
foliage for framework or on wall-papers, etc., have no intrinsic
meaning; they represent nothing-no object under a definite concept-and
are free beauties. We may also rank in the same class what in music
are called fantasias (without a theme), and, indeed, all music that is
not set to words.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 150}
In the estimate of a free beauty (according to mere form) we have
the pure judgement of taste. No concept is here presupposed of any end
for which the manifold should serve the given object, and which the
latter, therefore, should represent-an incumbrance which would only
restrict the freedom of the imagination that, as it were, is at play
in the contemplation of the outward form.
But the beauty of man (including under this head that of a man,
woman, or child), the beauty of a horse, or of a building (such as a
church, palace, arsenal, or summer-house), presupposes a concept of
the end that defines what the thing has to be, and consequently a
concept of its perfection; and is therefore merely appendant beauty.
Now, just as it is a clog on the purity of the purity of the judgement
of taste to have the agreeable (of sensation) joined with beauty to
which properly only the form is relevant, so to combine the good
with beauty (the good, namely, of the manifold to the thing itself
according to its end) mars its purity.
Much might be added to a building that would immediately please
the eye, were it not intended for a church. A figure might be
beautified with all manner of flourishes and light but regular
lines, as is done by the New Zealanders with their tattooing, were
we dealing with anything but the figure of a human being. And here
is one whose rugged features might be softened and given a more
pleasing aspect, only he has got to be a man, or is, perhaps, a
warrior that has to have a warlike appearance.
Now the delight in the manifold of a thing, in reference to the
internal end that determines its possibility, is a delight based on
a concept, whereas delight in the beautiful is such as does not
presuppose any concept, but is immediately coupled with the
representation through which the object is given (not through which it
is thought). If, now, the judgement of taste in respect of the
latter delight is made dependent upon the end involved in the former
delight as a judgement of reason, and is thus placed under a
restriction, then it is no longer a free and pure judgement of taste.
Taste, it is true, stands to gain by this combination of
intellectual delight with the aesthetic. For it becomes fixed, and,
while not universal, it enables rules to be prescribed for it in
respect of certain definite final objects. But these rules are then
not rules of taste, but merely rules for establishing a union of taste
with reason, i.e., of the beautiful with the good-rules by which the
former becomes available as an intentional instrument in respect of
the latter, for the purpose of bringing that temper of the mind
which is self-sustaining and of subjective universal validity to the
support and maintenance of that mode of thought which, while
possessing objective universal validity, can only be preserved by a
resolute effort. But, strictly speaking, perfection neither gains by
beauty, nor beauty by perfection. The truth is rather this, when we
compare the representation through which an object is given to us with
the object (in respect of what it is meant to be) by means of a
concept, we cannot help reviewing it also in respect of the
sensation in the subject. Hence there results a gain to the entire
faculty of our representative power when harmony prevails between both
states of mind.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 155}
In respect of an object with a definite internal end, a judgement of
taste would only be pure where the person judging either has no
concept of this end, or else makes abstraction from it in his
judgement. But in cases like this, although such a person should lay
down a correct judgement of taste, since he would be estimating the
object as a free beauty, he would still be found fault with by another
who saw nothing in its beauty but a dependent quality (i.e., who
looked to the end of the object) and would be accused by him of
false taste, though both would, in their own way, be judging
correctly: the one according to what he had present to his senses, the
other according to what was present in his thoughts. This
distinction enables us to settle many disputes about beauty on the
part of critics; for we may show them how one side is dealing with
free beauty, and the other with that which is dependent: the former
passing a pure judgement of taste, the latter one that is applied
intentionally.
-
SS 17. Ideal of beauty.
-
There can be no objective rule of taste by which what is beautiful
may be defined by means of concepts. For every judgement from that
source is aesthetic, i.e., its determining ground is the feeling of
the subject, and not any concept of an object. It is only throwing
away labour to look for a principle of taste that affords a
universal criterion of the beautiful by definite concepts; because
what is sought is a thing impossible and inherently contradictory. But
in the universal communicability of the sensation (of delight or
aversion)-a communicability, too, that exists apart from any
concept-in the accord, so far as possible, of all ages and nations
as to this feeling in the representation of certain objects, we have
the empirical criterion, weak indeed and scarce sufficient to raise
a presumption, of the derivation of a taste, thus confirmed by
examples, from grounds deep seated and shared alike by all men,
underlying their agreement in estimating the forms under which objects
are given to them.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 160}
For this reason some products of taste are looked on as
exemplary-not meaning thereby that by imitating others taste may be
acquired. For taste must be an original faculty; whereas one who
imitates a model, while showing skill commensurate with his success,
only displays taste as himself a critic of this model.* Hence it
follows that the highest model, the archetype of taste, is a mere
idea, which each person must beget in his own consciousness, and
according to which he must form his estimate of everything that is
an object of taste, or that is an example of critical taste, and
even of universal taste itself. Properly speaking, an idea signifies a
concept of reason, and an ideal the representation of an individual
existence as adequate to an idea. Hence this archetype of
taste-which rests, indeed, upon reason's indeterminate idea of a
maximum, but is not, however, capable of being represented by means of
concepts, but only in an individual presentation-may more
appropriately be called the ideal of the beautiful. While not having
this ideal in our possession, we still strive to beget it within us.
But it is bound to be merely an ideal of the imagination, seeing
that it rests, not upon concepts, but upon the presentation-the
faculty of presentation being the imagination. Now, how do we arrive
at such an ideal of beauty? Is it a priori or empirically? Further,
what species of the beautiful admits of an ideal?
-
*Models of taste with respect to the arts of speech must be composed
in a dead and learned language; the first, to prevent their having
to suffer the changes that inevitably overtake living ones, making
dignified expressions become degraded, common ones antiquated, and
ones newly coined after a short currency obsolete: the second to
ensure its having a grammar that is not subject to the caprices of
fashion, but has fixed rules of its own.
-
First of all, we do well to observe that the beauty for which an
ideal has to be sought cannot be a beauty that is free and at large,
but must be one fixed by a concept of objective finality. Hence it
cannot belong to the object of an altogether pure judgement of
taste, but must attach to one that is partly intellectual. In other
words, where an ideal is to have place among the grounds upon which
any estimate is formed, then beneath grounds of that kind there must
lie some idea of reason according to determinate concepts, by which
the end underlying the internal possibility of the object is
determined a priori. An ideal of beautiful flowers, of a beautiful
suite of furniture, or of a beautiful view, is unthinkable. But, it
may also be impossible to represent an ideal of a beauty dependent
on definite ends, e.g., a beautiful residence, a beautiful tree, a
beautiful garden, etc., presumably because their ends are not
sufficiently defined and fixed by their concept, with the result
that their finality is nearly as free as with beauty that is quite
at large. Only what has in itself the end of its real existence-only
man that is able himself to determine his ends by reason, or, where he
has to derive them from external perception, can still compare them
with essential and universal ends, and then further pronounce
aesthetically upon their accord with such ends, only he, among all
objects in the world, admits, therefore, of an ideal of beauty, just
as humanity in his person, as intelligence, alone admits of the
ideal of perfection.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 165}
Two factors are here involved. First, there is the aesthetic
normal idea, which is an individual intuition (of the imagination).
This represents the norm by which we judge of a man as a member of a
particular animal species. Secondly, there is the rational idea.
This deals with the ends of humanity so far as capable of sensuous
representation, and converts them into a principle for estimating
his outward form, through which these ends are revealed in their
phenomenal effect. The normal idea must draw from experience the
constituents which it requires for the form of an animal of a
particular kind. But the greatest finality in the construction of this
form-that which would serve as a universal norm for forming an
estimate of each individual of the species in question-the image that,
as it were, forms an intentional basis underlying the technic of
nature, to which no separate individual, but only the race as a whole,
is adequate, has its seat merely in the idea of the judging subject.
Yet it is, with all its proportions, an aesthetic idea, and, as
such, capable of being fully presented in concreto in a model image.
Now, how is this effected? In order to render the process to some
extent intelligible (for who can wrest nature's whole secret from
her?), let us attempt a psychological explanation.
It is of note that the imagination, in a manner quite
incomprehensible to us, is able on occasion, even after a long lapse
of time, not alone to recall the signs for concepts, but also to
reproduce the image and shape of an object out of a countless number
of others of a different, or even of the very same, kind. And,
further, if the mind is engaged upon comparisons, we may well
suppose that it can in actual fact, though the process is unconscious,
superimpose as it were one image upon another, and from the
coincidence of a number of the same kind arrive at a mean contour
which serves as a common standard for all. Say, for instance, a person
has seen a thousand full-grown men. Now if he wishes to judge normal
size determined upon a comparative estimate, then imagination (to my
mind) allows a great number of these images (perhaps the whole
thousand) to fall one upon the other, and, if I may be allowed to
extend to the case the analogy of optical presentation, in the space
where they come most together, and within the contour where the
place is illuminated by the greatest concentration of colour, one gets
a perception of the average size, which alike in height and breadth is
equally removed from the extreme limits of the greatest and smallest
statures; and this is the stature of a beautiful man. (The same result
could be obtained in a mechanical way, by taking the measures of all
the thousand, and adding together their heights, and their breadths
[and thicknesses], and dividing the sum in each case by a thousand.)
But the power of imagination does all this by means of a dynamical
effect upon the organ of internal sense, arising from the frequent
apprehension of such forms. If, again, for our average man we seek
on similar lines for the average head, and for this the average
nose, and so on, then we get the figure that underlies the normal idea
of a beautiful man in the country where the comparison is
instituted. For this reason a Negro must necessarily (under these
empirical conditions) have a different normal idea of the beauty of
forms from what a white man has, and the Chinaman one different from
the European. And the. process would be just the same with the model
of a beautiful horse or dog (of a particular breed). This normal
idea is not derived from proportions taken from experience as definite
rules: rather is it according to this idea that rules forming
estimates first become possible. It is an intermediate between all
singular intuitions of individuals, with their manifold variations-a
floating image for the whole genus, which nature has set as an
archetype underlying those of her products that belong to the same
species, but which in no single case she seems to have completely
attained. But the normal idea is far from giving the complete
archetype of beauty in the genus. It only gives the form that
constitutes the indispensable condition of all beauty, and,
consequently, only correctness in the presentation of the genus. It
is, as the famous "Doryphorus" of Polycletus was called, the rule (and
Myron's "Cow" might be similarly employed for its kind). It cannot,
for that very reason, contain anything specifically characteristic;
for otherwise it would not be the normal idea for the genus.
Further, it is not by beauty that its presentation pleases, but merely
because it does not contradict any of the conditions under which alone
a thing belonging to this genus can be beautiful. The presentation
is merely academically correct.*
-
*It will be found that a perfectly regular face one that a painter
might fix his eye on for a model-ordinarily conveys nothing. This is
because it is devoid of anything characteristic, and so the idea of
the race is expressed in it rather than the specific qualities of a
person. The exaggeration of what is characteristic in this way,
i.e., exaggeration violating the normal idea (the finality of the
race), is called caricature. Also experience shows that these quite
regular faces indicate as a rule internally only a mediocre type of
man; presumably-if one may assume that nature in its external form
expresses the proportions of the internal -because, where none of
the mental qualities exceed the proportion requisite to constitute a
man free from faults, nothing can be expected in the way of what is
called genius, in which nature seems to make a departure from its
wonted relations of the mental powers in favour of some special one.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 170}
But the ideal of the beautiful is still something different from its
normal idea. For reasons already stated it is only to be sought in the
human figure. Here the ideal consists in the expression of the
moral, apart from which the object would not please at once
universally and positively (not merely negatively in a presentation
academically correct). The visible expression of moral ideas that
govern men inwardly can, of course, only be drawn from experience; but
their combination with all that our reason connects with the morally
good in the idea of the highest finality-benevolence, purity,
strength, or equanimity, etc.-may be made, as it were, visible in
bodily manifestation (as effect of what is internal), and this
embodiment involves a union of pure ideas of reason and great
imaginative power, in one who would even form an estimate of it, not
to speak of being the author of its presentation. The correctness of
such an ideal of beauty is evidenced by its not permitting any
sensuous charm to mingle with the delight in its object, in which it
still allows us to take a great interest. This fact in turn shows that
an estimate formed according to such a standard can never be purely
aesthetic, and that one formed according to an ideal of beauty
cannot be a simple judgement of taste.
-
Definition of the Beautiful Derived from this Third Moment.
-
Beauty is the form of finality in an object, so far as perceived
in it apart from the representation of an end.*
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 175}
-
*As telling against this explanation, the instance may be adduced
that there are things in which we see a form suggesting adaptation
to an end, without any end being cognized in them-as, for example, the
stone implements frequently obtained from sepulchral tumuli and
supplied with a hole, as if for [inserting] a handle; and although
these by their shape manifestly indicate a finality, the end of
which is unknown, they are not on that account described as beautiful.
But the very fact of their being regarded as art-products involves
an immediate recognition that their shape is attributed to some
purpose or other and to a definite end. For this reason there is no
immediate delight whatever in their contemplation. A flower, on the
other hand, such as a tulip, is regarded as beautiful, because we meet
with a certain finality in its perception, which, in our estimate of
it, is not referred to any end whatever.
-
FOURTH MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste: Moment of
the Modality of the Delight in the Object.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 180}
-
SS 18. Nature of the modality in a judgement of taste.
-
I may assert in the case of every representation that the
synthesis of a pleasure with the representation (as a cognition) is at
least possible. Of what I call agreeable I assert that it actually
causes pleasure in me. But what we have in mind in the case of the
beautiful is a necessary reference on its part to delight. However,
this necessity is of a special kind. It is not a theoretical objective
necessity-such as would let us cognize a priori that every one will
feel this delight in the object that is called beautiful by me. Nor
yet is it a practical necessity, in which case, thanks to concepts
of a pure rational will in which free agents are supplied with a rule,
this delight is the necessary consequence of an objective law, and
simply means that one ought absolutely (without ulterior object) to
act in a certain way. Rather, being such a necessity as is thought
in an aesthetic judgement, it can only be termed exemplary. In other
words it is a necessity of the assent of all to a judgement regarded
as exemplifying a universal rule incapable of formulation. Since an
aesthetic judgement is not an objective or cognitive judgement, this
necessity is not derivable from definite concepts, and so is not
apodeictic. Much less is it inferable from universality of
experience (of a thoroughgoing agreement of judgements about the
beauty of a certain object). For, apart from the fact that
experience would hardly furnish evidences sufficiently numerous for
this purpose, empirical judgements do not afford any foundation for
a concept of the necessity of these judgements.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 185}
SS 19. The subjective necessity attributed to a
judgement of taste is conditioned.
-
The judgement of taste exacts agreement from every one; and a person
who describes something as beautiful insists that every one ought to
give the object in question his approval and follow suit in describing
it as beautiful. The ought in aesthetic judgements, therefore, despite
an accordance with all the requisite data for passing judgement, is
still only pronounced conditionally. We are suitors for agreement from
every one else, because we are fortified with a ground common to
all. Further, we would be able to count on this agreement, provided we
were always assured of the correct subsumption of the case under
that ground as the rule of approval.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 190}
SS 20. The condition of the necessity advanced by a
judgement of taste is the idea of a common sense.
-
Were judgements of taste (like cognitive judgements) in possession
of a definite objective principle, then one who in his judgement
followed such a principle would claim unconditioned necessity for
it. Again, were they devoid of any principle, as are those of the mere
taste of sense, then no thought of any necessity on their part would
enter one's head. Therefore they must have a subjective principle, and
one which determines what pleases or displeases, by means of feeling
only and not through concepts, but yet with universal validity. Such a
principle, however, could only be regarded as a common sense. This
differs essentially from common understanding, which is also sometimes
called common sense (sensus communis): for the judgement of the latter
is not one by feeling, but always one by concepts, though usually only
in the shape of obscurely represented principles.
The judgement of taste, therefore, depends on our presupposing the
existence of a common sense. (But this is not to be taken to mean some
external sense, but the effect arising from the free play of our
powers of cognition.) Only under the presupposition, I repeat, of such
a common sense, are we able to lay down a judgement of taste.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 195}
-
SS 21. Have we reason for presupposing a common sense?
-
Cognitions and judgements must, together with their attendant
conviction, admit of being universally communicated; for otherwise a
correspondence with the object would not be due to them. They would be
a conglomerate constituting a mere subjective play of the powers of
representation, just as scepticism would have it. But if cognitions
are to admit of communication, then our mental state, i.e., the way
the cognitive powers are attuned for cognition generally, and, in
fact, the relative proportion suitable for a representation (by
which an object is given to us) from which cognition is to result,
must also admit of being universally communicated, as, without this,
which is the subjective condition of the act of knowing, knowledge, as
an effect, would not arise. And this is always what actually happens
where a given object, through the intervention of sense, sets the
imagination at work in arranging the manifold, and the imagination, in
turn, the understanding in giving to this arrangement the unity of
concepts. But this disposition of the cognitive powers has a
relative proportion differing with the diversity of the objects that
are given. However, there must be one in which this internal ratio
suitable for quickening (one faculty by the other) is best adapted for
both mental powers in respect of cognition (of given objects)
generally; and this disposition can only be determined through feeling
(and not by concepts). Since, now this disposition itself must admit
of being universally communicated, and hence also the feeling of it
(in the case of a given representation), while again, the universal
communicability of a feeling presupposes a common sense: it follows
that our assumption of it is well founded. And here, too, we do not
have to take our stand on psychological observations, but we assume
a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal
communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every
logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of scepticism.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 200}
SS 22. The necessity of the universal assent that is
thought in a judgement of taste, is a subjective
necessity which, under the presupposition of a
common sense, is represented as objective.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 205}
In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we
tolerate no one else being of a different opinion, and in taking up
this position we do not rest our judgement upon concepts, but only
on our feeling. Accordingly we introduce this fundamental feeling
not as a private feeling, but as a public sense. Now, for this
purpose, experience cannot be made the ground of this common sense,
for the latter is invoked to justify judgements containing an "ought."
The assertion is not that every one will fall in with our judgement,
but rather that every one ought to agree with it. Here I put forward
my judgement of taste as an example of the judgement of common
sense, and attribute to it on that account exemplary validity. Hence
common sense is a mere ideal norm. With this as presupposition, a
judgement that accords with it, as well as the delight in an object
expressed in that judgement, is rightly converted into a rule for
everyone. For the principle, while it is only subjective, being yet
assumed as subjectively universal (a necessary idea for everyone),
could, in what concerns the consensus of different judging subjects,
demand universal assent like an objective principle, provided we
were assured of our subsumption under it being correct.
This indeterminate norm of a common sense is, as a matter of fact,
presupposed by us; as is shown by our presuming to lay down judgements
of taste. But does such a common sense in fact exist as a constitutive
principle of the possibility of experience, or is it formed for us
as a regulative principle by a still higher principle of reason,
that for higher ends first seeks to beget in us a common sense? Is
taste, in other words, a natural and original faculty, or is it only
the idea of one that is artificial and to be acquired by us, so that a
judgement of taste, with its demand for universal assent, is but a
requirement of reason for generating such a consensus, and does the
"ought," i. e., the objective necessity of the coincidence of the
feeling of all with the particular feeling of each, only betoken the
possibility of arriving at some sort of unanimity in these matters,
and the judgement of taste only adduce an example of the application
of this principle? These are questions which as yet we are neither
willing nor in a position to investigate. For the present we have only
to resolve the faculty of taste into its elements, and to unite
these ultimately in the idea of a common sense.
-
Definition of the Beautiful drawn from the Fourth Moment.
-
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 210}
The beautiful is that which, apart from a concept, is cognized as
object of a necessary delight.
-
General Remark on the First Section of the Analytic.
-
The result to be extracted from the foregoing analysis is in
effect this: That everything runs up into the concept of taste as a
critical faculty by which an object is estimated in reference to the
free conformity to law of the imagination. If, now, imagination must
in the judgement of taste be regarded in its freedom, then, to begin
with, it is not taken as reproductive, as in its subjection to the
laws of association, but as productive and exerting an activity of its
own (as originator of arbitrary forms of possible intuitions). And
although in the apprehension of a given object of sense it is tied
down to a definite form of this object and, to that extent, does not
enjoy free play (as it does in poetry), still it is easy to conceive
that the object may supply ready-made to the imagination just such a
form of the arrangement of the manifold as the imagination, if it were
left to itself, would freely protect in harmony with the general
conformity to law of the understanding. But that the imagination
should be both free and of itself conformable to law, i. e., carry
autonomy with it, is a contradiction. The understanding alone gives
the law. Where, however, the imagination is compelled to follow a
course laid down by a definite law, then what the form of the
product is to be is determined by concepts; but, in that case, as
already shown, the delight is not delight in the beautiful, but in the
good (in perfection, though it be no more than formal perfection), and
the judgement is not one due to taste. Hence it is only a conformity
to law without a law, and a subjective harmonizing of the
imagination and the understanding without an objective one-which
latter would mean that the representation was referred to a definite
concept of the object-that can consist with the free conformity to law
of the understanding (which has also been called finality apart from
an end) and with the specific character of a judgement of taste.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 215}
Now geometrically regular figures, a circle, a square, a cube, and
the like, are commonly brought forward by critics of taste as the most
simple and unquestionable examples of beauty. And yet the very
reason why they are called regular, is because the only way of
representing them is by looking on them as mere presentations of a
determinate concept by which the figure has its rule (according to
which alone it is possible) prescribed for it. One or other of these
two views must, therefore, be wrong: either the verdict of the critics
that attributes beauty to such figures, or else our own, which makes
finality apart from any concept necessary for beauty.
One would scarce think it necessary for a man to have taste to
take more delight in a circle than in a scrawled outline, in an
equilateral and equiangular quadrilateral than in one that is all
lop-sided, and, as it were, deformed. The requirements of common
understanding ensure such a preference without the least demand upon
taste. Where some purpose is perceived, as, for instance, that of
forming an estimate of the area of a plot of land, or rendering
intelligible the relation of divided parts to one another and to the
whole, then regular figures, and those of the simplest kind, are
needed; and the delight does not rest immediately upon the way the
figure strikes the eye, but upon its serviceability for all manner
of possible purposes. A room with the walls making oblique angles, a
plot laid out in a garden in a similar way, even any violation of
symmetry, as well in the figure of animals (e.g., being one-eyed) as
in that of buildings, or of flower-beds, is displeasing because of its
perversity of form, not alone in a practical way in respect of some
definite use to which the thing may be put, but for an estimate that
looks to all manner of possible purposes. With the judgement of
taste the case is different. For, when it is pure, it combines delight
or aversion immediately with the bare contemplation of the object
irrespective of its use or of any end.
The regularity that conduces to the concept of an object is, in
fact, the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non) of
grasping the object as a single representation and giving to the
manifold its determinate form. This determination is an end in respect
of knowledge; and in this connection it is invariably coupled with
delight (such as attends the accomplishment of any, even
problematical, purpose). Here, however, we have merely the value set
upon the solution that satisfies the problem, and not a free and
indeterminately final entertainment of the mental powers with what
is called beautiful. In the latter case, understanding is at the
service of imagination, in the former, this relation is reversed.
With a thing that owes its possibility to a purpose, a building,
or even an animal, its regularity, which consists in symmetry, must
express the unity of the intuition accompanying the concept of its
end, and belongs with it to cognition. But where all that is
intended is the maintenance of a free play of the powers of
representation (subject, however, to the condition that there is to be
nothing for understanding to take exception to), in ornamental
gardens, in the decoration of rooms, in all kinds of furniture that
shows good taste, etc., regularity in the shape of constraint is to be
avoided as far as possible. Thus English taste in gardens, and
fantastic taste in furniture, push the freedom of imagination to the
verge of what is grotesque the idea being that in this divorce from
all constraint of rules the precise instance is being afforded where
taste can exhibit its perfection in projects of the imagination to the
fullest extent.
All stiff regularity (such as borders on mathematical regularity) is
inherently repugnant to taste, in that the contemplation of it affords
us no lasting entertainment. Indeed, where it has neither cognition
nor some definite practical end expressly in view, we get heartily
tired of it. On the other hand, anything that gives the imagination
scope for unstudied and final play is always fresh to us. We do not
grow to hate the very sight of it. Marsden, in his description of
Sumatra, observes that the free beauties of nature so surround the
beholder on all sides that they cease to have much attraction for him.
On the other band he found a pepper garden full of charm, on coming
across it in mid-forest with its rows of parallel stakes on which
the plant twines itself. From all this he infers that wild, and in its
appearance quite irregular beauty, is only pleasing as a change to one
whose eyes have become surfeited with regular beauty. But he need only
have made the experiment of passing one day in his pepper garden to
realize that once the regularity has enabled the understanding to
put itself in accord with the order that is the constant
requirement, instead of the object diverting him any longer, it
imposes an irksome constraint upon the imagination: whereas nature
subject to no constraint of artificial rules, and lavish, as it
there is, in its luxuriant variety can supply constant food for his
taste. Even a bird's song, which we can reduce to no musical rule,
seems to have more freedom in it, and thus to be richer for taste,
than the human voice singing in accordance with all the rules that the
art of music prescribes; for we grow tired much sooner of frequent and
lengthy repetitions of the latter. Yet here most likely our sympathy
with the mirth of a dear little creature is confused with the beauty
of its song, for if exactly imitated by man (as has been sometimes
done with the notes of the nightingale) it would strike our ear as
wholly destitute of taste.
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 220}
Further, beautiful objects have to be distinguished from beautiful
views of objects (where the distance often prevents a clear
perception). In the latter case, taste appears to fasten, not so
much on what the imagination grasps in this field, as on the incentive
it receives to indulge in poetic fiction, i. e., in the peculiar
fancies with which the mind entertains itself as it is being
continually stirred by the variety that strikes the eye. It is just as
when we watch the changing shapes of the fire or of a rippling
brook: neither of which are things of beauty, but they convey a
charm to the imagination, because they sustain its free play.
-
SEC1|BK2
FIRST PART CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT
SECTION I. ANALYTIC OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT.
BOOK II. Analytic of the Sublime.
-
SS 23. Transition from the faculty of estimating the
beautiful to that of estimating the sublime.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 5}
The beautiful and the sublime agree on the point of pleasing on
their own account. Further they agree in not presupposing either a
judgement of sense or one logically determinant, but one of
reflection. Hence it follows that the delight does not depend upon a
sensation, as with the agreeable, nor upon a definite concept, as does
the delight in the good, although it has, for all that, an
indeterminate reference to concepts. Consequently the delight is
connected with the mere presentation or faculty of presentation, and
is thus taken to express the accord, in a given intuition, of the
faculty of presentation, or the imagination, with the faculty of
concepts that belongs to understanding or reason, in the sense of
the former assisting the latter. Hence both kinds of judgements are
singular, and yet such as profess to be universally valid in respect
of every subject, despite the fact that their claims are directed
merely to the feeling of pleasure and not to any knowledge of the
object.
There are, however, also important and striking differences
between the two. The beautiful in nature is a question of the form
of object, and this consists in limitation, whereas the sublime is
to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately
involves, or else by its presence provokes a representation of
limitlessness, yet with a superadded thought of its totality.
Accordingly, the beautiful seems to be regarded as a presentation of
an indeterminate concept of understanding, the sublime as a
presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason. Hence the
delight is in the former case coupled with the representation of
quality, but in this case with that of quantity. Moreover, the
former delight is very different from the latter in kind. For the
beautiful is directly attended with a feeling of the furtherance of
life, and is thus compatible with charms and a playful imagination. On
the other hand, the feeling of the sublime is a pleasure that only
arises indirectly, being brought about by the feeling of a momentary
check to the vital forces followed at once by a discharge all the more
powerful, and so it is an emotion that seems to be no sport, but
dead earnest in the affairs of the imagination. Hence charms are
repugnant to it; and, since the mind is not simply attracted by the
object, but is also alternately repelled thereby, the delight in the
sublime does not so much involve positive pleasure as admiration or
respect, i. e., merits the name of a negative pleasure.
But the most important and vital distinction between the sublime and
the beautiful is certainly this: that if, as is allowable, we here
confine our attention in the first instance to the sublime in
objects of nature (that of art being always restricted by the
conditions of an agreement with nature), we observe that whereas
natural beauty (such as is self-subsisting) conveys a finality in
its form making the object appear, as it were, preadapted to our power
of judgement, so that it thus forms of itself an object of our
delight, that which, without our indulging in any refinements of
thought, but, simply in our apprehension of it, excites the feeling of
the sublime, may appear, indeed, in point of form to contravene the
ends of our power of judgement, to be ill-adapted to our faculty of
presentation, and to be, as it were, an outrage on the imagination,
and yet it is judged all the more sublime on that account.
From this it may be seen at once that we express ourselves on the
whole inaccurately if we term any object of nature sublime, although
we may with perfect propriety call many such objects beautiful. For
how can that which is apprehended as inherently contra-final be
noted with an expression of approval? All that we can say is that
the object lends itself to the presentation of a sublimity
discoverable in the mind.
For the sublime, in the strict sense of the word, cannot be
contained in any sensuous form, but rather concerns ideas of reason,
which, although no adequate presentation of them is possible, may be
excited and called into the mind by that very inadequacy itself
which does admit of sensuous presentation. Thus the broad ocean
agitated by storms cannot be called sublime. Its aspect is horrible,
and one must have stored one's mind in advance with a rich stock of
ideas, if such an intuition is to raise it to the pitch of a feeling
which is itself sublime-sublime because the mind has been incited to
abandon sensibility and employ itself upon ideas involving higher
finality.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 10}
Self-subsisting natural beauty reveals to us a technic of nature
which shows it in the light of a system ordered in accordance with
laws the principle of which is not to be found within the range of our
entire faculty of understanding. This principle is that of a
finality relative to the employment of judgement in respect of
phenomena which have thus to be assigned, not merely to nature
regarded as aimless mechanism, but also to nature regarded after the
analogy of art. Hence it gives a veritable extension, not, of
course, to our knowledge of objects of nature, but to our conception
of nature itself-nature as mere mechanism being enlarged to the
conception of nature as art-an extension inviting profound inquiries
as to the possibility of such a form. But in what we are wont to
call sublime in nature there is such an absence of anything leading to
particular objective principles and corresponding forms of nature that
it is rather in its chaos, or in its wildest and most irregular
disorder and desolation, provided it gives signs of magnitude and
power, that nature chiefly excites the ideas of the sublime. Hence
we see that the concept of the sublime in nature is far less important
and rich in consequences than that of its beauty. It gives on the
whole no indication of anything final in nature itself, but only in
the possible employment of our intuitions of it in inducing a
feeling in our own selves of a finality quite independent of nature.
For the beautiful in nature we must seek a ground external to
ourselves, but for the sublime one merely in ourselves and the
attitude of mind that introduces sublimity into the representation
of nature. This is a very needful preliminary remark. It entirely
separates the ideas of the sublime from that of a finality of
nature, and makes the theory of the sublime a mere appendage to the
aesthetic estimate of the finality of nature, because it does not give
a representation of any particular form in nature, but involves no
more than the development of a final employment by the imagination
of its own representation.
-
SS 24. Subdivision of an investigation of the feeling
of the sublime.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 15}
In the division of the moments of an aesthetic estimate of objects
in respect of the feeling of the sublime, the course of the Analytic
will be able to follow the same principle as in the analysis of
judgements of taste. For, the judgement being one of the aesthetic
reflective judgement, the delight in the sublime, just like that in
the beautiful, must in its quantity be shown to be universally
valid, in its quality independent of interest, in its relation
subjective finality, and the latter, in its modality, necessary. Hence
the method here will not depart from the lines followed in the
preceding section: unless something is made of the point that there,
where the aesthetic judgement bore on the form of the object, we began
with the investigation of its quality, whereas here, considering the
formlessness that may belong to what we call sublime, we begin with
that of its quantity, as first moment of the aesthetic judgement on
the sublime-a divergence of method the reason for which is evident
from SS 23.
But the analysis of the sublime obliges a division not required by
that of the beautiful, namely one into the mathematically and the
dynamically sublime.
For the feeling of sublime involves as its characteristic feature
a mental movement combined with the estimate of the object, whereas
taste in respect of the beautiful presupposes that the mind is in
restful contemplation, and preserves it in this state. But this
movement has to be estimated as subjectively final (since the
sublime pleases). Hence it is referred through the imagination
either to the faculty of cognition or to that of desire; but to
whichever faculty the reference is made, the finality of the given
representation is estimated only in respect of these faculties
(apart from end or interest). Accordingly the first is attributed to
the object as a mathematical, the second as a dynamical, affection
of the imagination. Hence we get the above double mode of representing
an object as sublime.
-
A. THE MATHEMATICALLY SUBLIME.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 20}
SS 25. Definition of the term "sublime".
-
Sublime is the name given to what is absolutely great. But to be
great and to be a magnitude are entirely different concepts (magnitudo
and quantitas). In the same way, to assert without qualification
(simpliciter) that something is great is quite a different thing
from saying that it is absolutely great (absolute, non comparative
magnum). The latter is what is beyond all comparison great. What,
then, is the meaning of the assertion that anything is great, or
small, or of medium size? What is indicated is not a pure concept of
understanding, still less an intuition of sense; and just as little is
it a concept of reason, for it does not import any principle of
cognition. It must, therefore, be a concept of judgement, or have
its source in one, and must introduce as basis of the judgement a
subjective finality of the representation with reference to the
power of judgement. Given a multiplicity of the homogeneous together
constituting one thing, and we may at once cognize from the thing
itself that it is a magnitude (quantum). No comparison with other
things is required. But to determine how great it is always requires
something else, which itself has magnitude, for its measure. Now,
since in the estimate of magnitude we have to take into account not
merely the multiplicity (number of units) but also the magnitude of
the unit (the measure), and since the magnitude of this unit in turn
always requires something else as its measure and as the standard of
its comparison, and so on, we see that the computation of the
magnitude of phenomena is, in all cases, utterly incapable of
affording us any absolute concept of a magnitude, and can, instead,
only afford one that is always based on comparison.
If, now, I assert without qualification that anything is great, it
would seem that I have nothing in the way of a comparison present to
my mind, or at least nothing involving an objective measure, for no
attempt is thus made to determine how great the object is. But,
despite the standard of comparison being merely subjective, the
claim of the judgement is none the less one to universal agreement;
the judgements: "that man is beautiful" and "He is tall", do not
purport to speak only for the judging subject, but, like theoretical
judgements, they demand the assent of everyone.
Now in a judgement that without qualification describes anything
as great, it is not merely meant that the object has a magnitude,
but greatness is ascribed to it pre-eminently among many other objects
of a like kind, yet without the extent of this pre-eminence being
determined. Hence a standard is certainly laid at the basis of the
judgement, which standard is presupposed to be one that can be taken
as the same for every one, but which is available only for an
aesthetic estimate of the greatness, and not for one that is logical
(mathematically determined), for the standard is a merely subjective
one underlying the reflective judgement upon the greatness.
Furthermore, this standard may be empirical, as, let us say, the
average size of the men known to us, of animals of a certain kind,
of trees, of houses, of mountains, and so forth. Or it may be a
standard given a priori, which by reason of the imperfections of the
judging subject is restricted to subjective conditions of presentation
in concreto; as, in the practical sphere, the greatness of a
particular virtue, or of public liberty and justice in a country;
or, in the theoretical sphere, the greatness of the accuracy or
inaccuracy of an experiment or measurement, etc.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 25}
Here, now, it is of note that, although we have no interest whatever
in the object, i.e., its real existence may be a matter of no
concern to us, still its mere greatness, regarded even as devoid of
form, is able to convey a universally communicable delight and so
involve the consciousness of a subjective finality in the employment
of our cognitive faculties, but not, be it remembered, a delight in
the object, for the latter may be formless, but, in
contradistinction to what is the case with the beautiful, where the
reflective judgement finds itself set to a key that is final in
respect of cognition generally, a delight in an extension affecting
the imagination itself.
If (subject as above) we say of an object, without qualification,
that it is great, this is not a mathematically determinant, but a mere
reflective judgement upon its representation, which is subjectively
final for a particular employment of our cognitive faculties in the
estimation of magnitude, and we then always couple with the
representation a kind of respect, just as we do a kind of contempt
with what we call absolutely small. Moreover, the estimate of things
as great or small extends to everything, even to all their
qualities. Thus we call even their beauty great or small. The reason
of this is to be found in the fact that we have only got to present
a thing in intuition, as the precept of judgement directs
(consequently to represent it aesthetically), for it to be in its
entirety a phenomenon, and hence a quantum.
If, however, we call anything not alone great, but, without
qualification, absolutely, and in every respect (beyond all
comparison) great, that is to say, sublime, we soon perceive that
for this it is not permissible to seek an appropriate standard outside
itself, but merely in itself. It is a greatness comparable to itself
alone. Hence it comes that the sublime is not to be looked for in
the things of nature, but only in our own ideas. But it must be left
to the deduction to show in which of them it resides.
The above definition may also be expressed in this way: that is
sublime in comparison with which all else is small. Here we readily
see that nothing can be given in nature, no matter how great we may
judge it to be, which, regarded in some other relation, may not be
degraded to the level of the infinitely little, and nothing so small
which in comparison with some still smaller standard may not for our
imagination be enlarged to the greatness of a world. Telescopes have
put within our reach an abundance of material to go upon in making the
first observation, and microscopes the same in making the second.
Nothing, therefore, which can be an object of the senses is to be
termed sublime when treated on this footing. But precisely because
there is a striving in our imagination towards progress ad
infinitum, while reason demands absolute totality, as a real idea,
that same inability on the part of our faculty for the estimation of
the magnitude of things of the world of sense to attain to this
idea, is the awakening of a feeling of a supersensible faculty
within us; and it is the use to which judgement naturally puts
particular objects on behalf of this latter feeling, and not the
object of sense, that is absolutely great, and every other
contrasted employment small. Consequently it is the disposition of
soul evoked by a particular representation engaging the attention of
the reflective judgement, and not the object, that is to be called
sublime.
The foregoing formulae defining the sublime may, therefore, be
supplemented by yet another: The sublime is that, the mere capacity of
thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard
of sense.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 30}
-
SS 26. The estimation of the magnitude of natural
things requisite for the idea of the sublime.
-
The estimation of magnitude by means of concepts of number (or their
signs in algebra) is mathematical, but that in mere intuition (by
the eye) is aesthetic. Now we can only get definite concepts of how
great anything is by having recourse to numbers (or, at any rate, by
getting approximate measurements by means of numerical series
progressing ad infinitum), the unit being the measure; and to this
extent all logical estimation of magnitude is mathematical. But, as
the magnitude of the measure has to be assumed as a known quantity,
if, to form an estimate of this, we must again have recourse to
numbers involving another standard for their unit, and consequently
must again proceed mathematically, we can never arrive at a first or
fundamental measure, and so cannot get any definite concept of a given
magnitude. The estimation of the magnitude of the fundamental
measure must, therefore, consist merely in the immediate grasp which
we can get of it in intuition, and the use to which our imagination
can put this in presenting the numerical concepts: i.e., all
estimation of the magnitude of objects of nature is in the last resort
aesthetic (i.e., subjectively and not objectively determined).
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 35}
Now for the mathematical estimation of magnitude there is, of
course, no greatest possible (for the power of numbers extends to
infinity), but for the aesthetic estimation there certainly is and
of it I say that where it is considered an absolute measure beyond
which no greater is possible subjectively (i.e., for the judging
subject), it then conveys the idea of the sublime and calls forth that
emotion which no mathematical estimation of magnitudes by numbers
can evoke (unless in so far as the fundamental aesthetic measure is
kept vividly present to the imagination): because the latter
presents only the relative magnitude due to comparison with others
of a like kind, whereas the former presents magnitude absolutely, so
far as the mind can grasp it in an intuition.
To take in a quantum intuitively in the imagination so as to be able
to use it as a measure, or unit for estimating magnitude by numbers,
involves two operations of this faculty: apprehension (apprehensio)
and comprehension (comprehension aesthetica). Apprehension presents no
difficulty: for this process can be carried on ad infinitum; but
with the advance of apprehension comprehension becomes more
difficult at every step and soon attains its maximum, and this is
the aesthetically greatest fundamental measure for the estimation of
magnitude. For if the apprehension has reached a point beyond which
the representations of sensuous intuition in the case of the parts
first apprehended begin to disappear from the imagination as this
advances to the apprehension of yet others, as much, then, is lost
at one end as is gained at the other, and for comprehension we get a
maximum which the imagination cannot exceed.
This explains Savary's observations in his account of Egypt, that in
order to get the full emotional effect of the size of the Pyramids
we must avoid coming too near just as much as remaining too far
away. For in the latter case the representation of the apprehended
parts (the tiers of stones) is but obscure, and produces no effect
upon the aesthetic judgement of the Subject. In the former, however,
it takes the eye some time to complete the apprehension from the
base to the summit; but in this interval the first tiers always in
part disappear before the imagination has taken in the last, and so
the comprehension is never complete. The same explanation may also
sufficiently account for the bewilderment, or sort of perplexity,
which, as is said, seizes the visitor on first entering St. Peter's in
Rome. For here a feeling comes home to him of the inadequacy of his
imagination for presenting the idea of a whole within which that
imagination attains its maximum, and, in its fruitless efforts to
extend this limit, recoils upon itself, but in so doing succumbs to an
emotional delight.
At present I am not disposed to deal with the ground of this
delight, connected, as it is, with a representation in which we
would least of all look for it-a representation, namely, that lets
us see its own inadequacy, and consequently its subjective want of
finality for our judgement in the estimation of magnitude-but
confine myself to the remark that if the aesthetic judgement is to
be pure (unmixed with any teleological judgement which, as such,
belongs to reason), and if we are to give a suitable example of it for
the Critique of aesthetic judgement, we must not point to the
sublime in works of art, e.g., buildings, statues and the like,
where a human end determines the form as well as the magnitude, nor
yet in things of nature, that in their very concept import a
definite end, e.g., animals of a recognized natural order, but in rude
nature merely as involving magnitude (and only in this so far as it
does not convey any charm or any emotion arising from actual
danger). For, in a representation of this kind, nature contains
nothing monstrous (nor what is either magnificent or horrible)-the
magnitude apprehended may be increased to any extent provided
imagination is able to grasp it all in one whole. An object is
monstrous where by its size it defeats the end that forms its concept.
The colossal is the mere presentation of a concept which is almost too
great for presentation, i.e., borders on the relatively monstrous; for
the end to be attained by the presentation of a concept is made harder
to realize by the intuition of the object being almost too great for
our faculty of apprehension. A pure judgement upon the sublime must,
however, have no end belonging to the object as its determining
ground, if it is to be aesthetic and not to be tainted with any
judgement of understanding or reason.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 40}
Since whatever is to be a source of pleasure, apart from interest,
to the merely reflective judgement must involve in its
representation subjective, and, as such, universally valid
finality-though here, however, no finality of the form of the object
underlies our estimate of it (as it does in the case of the
beautiful)-the question arises: What is the subjective finality, and
what enables it to be prescribed as a norm so as to yield a ground for
universally valid delight in the mere estimation of magnitude, and
that, too, in a case where it is pushed to the point at which
faculty of imagination breaks down in presenting the concept of a
magnitude, and proves unequal to its task?
In the successive aggregation of units requisite for the
representation of magnitudes, the imagination of itself advances ad
infinitum without let or hindrance-understanding, however,
conducting it by means of concepts of number for which the former must
supply the schema. This procedure belongs to the logical estimation of
magnitude, and, as such, is doubtless something objectively final
according to the concept of an end (as all measurement is), but it
is hot anything which for the aesthetic judgement is final or
pleasing. Further, in this intentional finality there is nothing
compelling us to tax the utmost powers of the imagination, and drive
it as far as ever it can reach in its presentations, so as to
enlarge the size of the measure, and thus make the single intuition
holding the many in one (the comprehension) as great as possible. For,
in the estimation of magnitude by the understanding (arithmetic), we
get just as far, whether the comprehension of the units is pushed to
the number 10 (as in the decimal scale) or only to 4 (as in the
quaternary); the further production of magnitude being carried out
by the successive aggregation of units, or, if the quantum is given in
intuition, by apprehension, merely progressively (not
comprehensively), according to an adopted principle of progression. In
this mathematical estimation of magnitude, understanding is as well
served and as satisfied whether imagination selects for the unit a
magnitude which one can take in at a glance, e.g., a foot, or a perch,
or else a German mile, or even the earth's diameter, the
apprehension of which is indeed possible, but not its comprehension
in, sit intuition of the imagination (i.e., it is not possible by
means of a comprehension aesthetica, thought quite so by means of a
comprehension logica in a numerical concept). In each case the logical
estimation of magnitude advances ad infinitum with nothing to stop it.
The mind, however, hearkens now to the voice of reason, which for
all given magnitudes-even for those which can never be completely
apprehended, though (in sensuous representation) estimated as
completely given-requires totality, and consequently comprehension
in one intuition, and which calls for a presentation answering to
all the above members of a progressively increasing numerical
series, and does not exempt even the infinite (space and time past)
from this requirement, but rather renders it inevitable for us to
regard this infinite (in the judgement of common reason) as completely
given (i.e., given in its totality).
But the infinite is absolutely (not merely comparatively) great.
In comparison with this all else (in the way of magnitudes of the same
order) is small. But the point of capital importance is that the
mere ability even to think it as a whole indicates a faculty of mind
transcending every standard of sense. For the latter would entail a
comprehension yielding as unit a standard bearing to the infinite
ratio expressible in numbers, which is impossible. Still the mere
ability even to think the given infinite without contradiction, is
something that requires the presence in the human mind of a faculty
that is itself supersensible. For it is only through this faculty
and its idea of a noumenon, which latter, while not itself admitting
of any intuition, is yet introduced as substrate underlying the
intuition of the world as mere phenomenon, that the infinite of the
world of sense, in the pure intellectual estimation of magnitude, is
completely comprehended under a concept, although in the
mathematical estimation by means of numerical concepts it can never be
completely thought. Even a faculty enabling the infinite of
supersensible intuition to be regarded as given (in its intelligible
substrate), transcends every standard of sensibility and is great
beyond all comparison even with the faculty of mathematical
estimation: not, of course, from a theoretical point of view that
looks to the interests of our faculty of knowledge, but as a
broadening of the mind that from another (the practical) point of view
feels itself empowered to pass beyond the narrow confines of
sensibility.
Nature, therefore, is sublime in such of its phenomena as in their
intuition convey the idea of their infinity. But this can only occur
through the inadequacy of even the greatest effort of our
imagination in the estimation of the magnitude of an object. But, now,
in the case of the mathematical estimation of magnitude, imagination
is quite competent to supply a measure equal to the requirements of
any object. For the numerical concepts of the understanding can by
progressive synthesis make any measure adequate to any given
magnitude. Hence it must be the aesthetic estimation of magnitude in
which we get at once a feeling of the effort towards a comprehension
that exceeds the faculty of imagination for mentally grasping the
progressive apprehension in a whole of intuition, and, with it, a
perception of the inadequacy of this faculty, which has no bounds to
its progress, for taking in and using for the estimation of
magnitude a fundamental measure that understanding could turn to
account without the least trouble. Now the proper unchangeable
fundamental measure of nature is its absolute whole, which, with it,
regarded as a phenomenon, means infinity comprehended. But, since this
fundamental measure is a self-contradictory concept (owing to the
impossibility of the absolute totality of an endless progression),
it follows that where the size of a natural object is such that the
imagination spends its whole faculty of comprehension upon it in vain,
it must carry our concept of nature, to a supersensible substrate
(underlying both nature and our faculty of thought). which is, great
beyond every standard of sense. Thus, instead of the object, it is
rather the cast of the mind in appreciating it that we have to
estimate as sublime.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 45}
Therefore, just as the aesthetic judgement in its estimate of the
beautiful refers the imagination in its free play to the
understanding, to bring out its agreement with the concepts of the
latter in general (apart from their determination): so in its estimate
of a thing as sublime it refers that faculty to reason to bring out
its subjective accord with ideas of reason (indeterminately
indicated), i.e., to induce a temper of mind conformable-to that which
the influence of definite (practical) ideas would produce upon
feeling, and in common accord with it.
This makes it evident that true sublimity must be sought only in the
mind of the judging subject, and not in the object of nature that
occasions this attitude by the estimate formed of it. Who would
apply the term "sublime" even to shapeless mountain masses towering
one above the other in wild disorder, with their pyramids of ice, or
to the dark tempestuous ocean, or such like things? But in the
contemplation of them, without any regard to their form, the mind
abandons itself to the imagination and to a reason placed, though
quite apart from any definite end, in conjunction therewith, and
merely broadening its view, and it feels itself elevated in its own
estimate of itself on finding all the might of imagination still
unequal to its ideas.
We get examples of the mathematically sublime of nature in mere
intuition in all those instances where our imagination is afforded,
not so much a greater numerical concept as a large unit as measure
(for shortening the numerical series). A tree judged by the height
of man gives, at all events, a standard for a mountain; and, supposing
this is, say, a mile high, it can serve as unit for the number
expressing the earth's diameter, so as to make it intuitable;
similarly the earth's diameter for the known planetary system; this
again for the system of the Milky Way; and the immeasurable host of
such systems, which go by the name of nebulae, and most likely in turn
themselves form such a system, holds out no prospect of a limit. Now
in the aesthetic estimate of such an immeasurable whole, the sublime
does not lie so much in the greatness of the number, as in the fact
that in our onward advance we always arrive at proportionately greater
units. The systematic division of the cosmos conduces to this
result. For it represents all that is great in nature as in turn
becoming little; or, to be more exact, it represents our imagination
in all its boundlessness, and with it nature, as sinking into
insignificance before the ideas of reason, once their adequate
presentation is attempted.
-
SS 27. Quality of the delight in our estimate
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 50}
of the sublime.
-
The feeling of our incapacity to attain to an idea that is a law for
us, is respect. Now the idea of the comprehension of any phenomenon
whatever, that may be given us, in a whole of intuition, is an idea
imposed upon us by a law of reason, which recognizes no definite,
universally valid and unchangeable measure except the absolute
whole. But our imagination, even when taxing itself to the uttermost
on the score of this required comprehension of a given object in a
whole of intuition (and so with a view to the presentation of the idea
of reason), betrays its limits and its inadequacy, but still, at the
same time, its proper vocation of making itself adequate to the same
as law. Therefore the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect
for our own vocation, which we attribute to an object of nature by a
certain subreption (substitution of a respect for the object in
place of one for the idea of humanity in our own self-the subject);
and this feeling renders, as it were, intuitable the supremacy of
our cognitive faculties on the rational side over the greatest faculty
of sensibility.
The feeling of the sublime is, therefore, at once a feeling of
displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of imagination in the
aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to its estimation by
reason, and a simultaneously awakened pleasure, arising from this very
judgement of the inadequacy of the greatest faculty of sense being
in accord with ideas of reason, so far as the effort to attain to
these is for us a law. It is, in other words, for us a law (of
reason), which goes to make us what we are, that we should esteem as
small in comparison with ideas of reason everything which for us is
great in nature as an object of sense; and that which makes us alive
to the feeling of this supersensible side of our being harmonizes with
that law. Now the greatest effort of the imagination in the
presentation of the unit for the estimation of magnitude involves in
itself a reference to something absolutely great, consequently a
reference also to the law of reason that this alone is to be adopted
as the supreme measure of what is great. Therefore the inner
perception of the inadequacy of every standard of sense to serve for
the rational estimation of magnitude is a coming into accord with
reason's laws, and a displeasure that makes us alive to the feeling of
the supersensible side of our being, according to which it is final,
and consequently a pleasure, to find every standard of sensibility
falling short of the ideas of reason.
The mind feels itself set in motion in the representation of the
sublime in nature; whereas in the aesthetic judgement upon what is
beautiful therein it is in restful contemplation. This movement,
especially in its inception, may be compared with vibration, i.e.,
with a rapidly alternating repulsion and attraction produced by one
and the same object. The point of excess for the imagination
(towards which it is driven in the apprehension of the intuition) is
like an abyss in which it fears to lose itself, yet again for the
rational idea of the supersensible it is not excessive, but
conformable to law, and directed to drawing out such an effort on
the part of the imagination: and so in turn as much a source of
attraction as it was repellent to mere sensibility. But the
judgement itself all the while steadfastly preserves its aesthetic
character, because it represents, without being grounded on any
definite concept of the object, merely the subjective play of the
mental powers (imagination and reason) as harmonious by virtue of
their very contrast. For just as in the estimate of the beautiful
imagination and understanding by their concert generate subjective
finality of the mental faculties, so imagination and reason do so here
by their conflict-that is to say they induce a feeling of our
possessing a pure and self-sufficient reason, or a faculty for the
estimation of magnitude, whose preeminence can only be made
intuitively evident by the inadequacy of that faculty which in the
presentation of magnitudes (of objects of sense) is itself unbounded.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 55}
Measurement of a space (as apprehension) is at the same time a
description of it, and so an objective movement in the imagination and
a progression. On the other hand, the comprehension of the manifold in
the unity, not of thought, but of intuition, and consequently the
comprehension of the successively apprehended parts at one glance,
is a retrogression that removes the time-condition in the
progression of the imagination, and renders coexistence intuitable.
Therefore, since the time-series is a condition of the internal
sense and of an intuition, it is a subjective movement of the
imagination by which it does violence to the internal sense-a violence
which must be proportionately more striking the greater the quantum
which the imagination comprehends in one intuition. The effort,
therefore, to receive in a single intuition a measure for magnitudes
which it takes an appreciable time to apprehend, is a mode of
representation which, subjectively considered, is contra-final, but
objectively, is requisite for the estimation of magnitude, and is
consequently final. Here the very same violence that is wrought on the
subject through the imagination is estimated as final for the whole
province of the mind.
The quality of the feeling of the sublime consists in being, in
respect of the faculty of forming aesthetic estimates, a feeling of
displeasure at an object, which yet, at the same time, is
represented as being final-a representation which derives its
possibility from the fact that the subject's very incapacity betrays
the consciousness of an unlimited faculty of the same subject, and
that the mind can only form an aesthetic estimate of the latter
faculty by means of that incapacity.
In the case of the logical estimation of magnitude, the
impossibility of ever arriving at absolute totality by the progressive
measurement of things of the sensible world in time and space was
cognized as an objective impossibility, i.e., one of thinking the
infinite as given, and not as simply subjective, i.e., an incapacity
for grasping it; for nothing turns there on the amount of the
comprehension in one intuition, as measure, but everything depends
on a numerical concept. But in an aesthetic estimation of magnitude
the numerical concept must drop out of count or undergo a change.
The only thing that is final for such estimation is the
comprehension on the part of imagination in respect of the unit of
measure (the concept of a law of the successive production of the
concept of magnitude being consequently avoided). If, now, a magnitude
begins to tax the utmost stretch of our faculty of comprehension in an
intuition, and still numerical magnitudes-in respect of which we are
conscious of the boundlessness of our faculty-call upon the
imagination for aesthetic comprehension in a greater unit, the mind
then gets a feeling of being aesthetically confined within bounds.
Nevertheless, with a view to the extension of imagination necessary
for adequacy with what is unbounded in our faculty of reason, namely
the idea of the absolute whole, the attendant displeasure, and,
consequently, the want of finality in our faculty of imagination, is
still represented as final for ideas of reason and their animation.
But in this very way the aesthetic judgement itself is subjectively
final for reason as source of ideas, i.e., of such an intellectual
comprehension as makes all aesthetic comprehension small, and the
object is received as sublime with a pleasure that is only possible
through the mediation of a displeasure.
-
B. THE DYNAMICALLY SUBLIME IN NATURE.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 60}
SS 28. Nature as Might.
-
Might is a power which is superior to great hindrances. It is termed
dominion if it is also superior to the resistance of that which itself
possesses might. Nature, considered in an aesthetic judgement as might
that has no dominion over us, is dynamically sublime.
If we are to estimate nature as dynamically sublime, it must be
represented as a source of fear (though the converse, that every
object that is a source of fear, in our aesthetic judgement,
sublime, does not hold). For in forming an aesthetic estimate (no
concept being present) the superiority to hindrances can only be
estimated according to the greatness of the resistance. Now that which
we strive to resist is an evil, and, if we do not find our powers
commensurate to the task, an object of fear. Hence the aesthetic
judgement can only deem nature a might, and so dynamically sublime, in
so far as it is looked upon as an object of fear.
But we may look upon an object as fearful, and yet not be afraid
of it, if, that is, our estimate takes the form of our simply
picturing to ourselves the case of our wishing to offer some
resistance to it and recognizing that all such resistance would be
quite futile. So the righteous man fears God without being afraid of
Him, because he regards the case of his wishing to resist God and
His commandments as one which need cause him no anxiety. But in
every such case, regarded by him as not intrinsically impossible, he
cognizes Him as One to be feared.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 65}
One who is in a state of fear can no more play the part of a judge
of the sublime of nature than one captivated by inclination and
appetite can of the beautiful. He flees from the sight of an object
filling him with dread; and it is impossible to take delight in terror
that is seriously entertained. Hence the agreeableness arising from
the cessation of an uneasiness is a state of joy. But this,
depending upon deliverance from a danger, is a rejoicing accompanied
with a resolve never again to put oneself in the way of the danger: in
fact we do not like bringing back to mind how we felt on that occasion
not to speak of going in search of an opportunity for experiencing
it again.
Bold, overhanging, and, as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds
piled up the vault of heaven, borne along with flashes and peals,
volcanos in all their violence of destruction, hurricanes leaving
desolation in their track, the boundless ocean rising with
rebellious force, the high waterfall of some mighty river, and the
like, make our power of resistance of trifling moment in comparison
with their might. But, provided our own position is secure, their
aspect is all the more attractive for its fearfulness; and we
readily call these objects sublime, because they raise the forces of
the soul above the height of vulgar commonplace, and discover within
us a power of resistance of quite another kind, which gives us courage
to be able to measure ourselves against the seeming omnipotence of
nature.
In the immeasurableness of nature and the incompetence of our
faculty for adopting a standard proportionate to the aesthetic
estimation of the magnitude of its realm, we found our own limitation.
But with this we also found in our rational faculty another
non-sensuous standard, one which has that infinity itself under it
as a unit, and in comparison with which everything in nature is small,
and so found in our minds a pre-eminence over nature even in it
immeasurability. Now in just the same way the irresistibility of the
might of nature forces upon us the recognition of our physical
helplessness as beings of nature, but at the same time reveals a
faculty of estimating ourselves as independent of nature, and
discovers a pre-eminence above nature that is the foundation of a
self-preservation of quite another kind from that which may be
assailed and brought into danger by external nature. This saves
humanity in our own person from humiliation, even though as mortal men
we have to submit to external violence. In this way, external nature
is not estimated in our aesthetic judgement as sublime so far as
exciting fear, but rather because it challenges our power (one not
of nature) to regard as small those things of which we are wont to
be solicitous (worldly goods, health, and life), and hence to regard
its might (to which in these matters we are no doubt subject) as
exercising over us and our personality no such rude dominion that we
should bow down before it, once the question becomes one of our
highest principles and of our asserting or forsaking them. Therefore
nature is here called sublime merely because it raises the imagination
to a presentation of those cases in which the mind can make itself
sensible of the appropriate sublimity of the sphere of its own
being, even above nature.
This estimation of ourselves loses nothing by the fact that we
must see ourselves safe in order to feel this soul-stirring
delight-a fact from which it might be plausibly argued that, as
there is no seriousness in the danger, so there is just as little
seriousness in the sublimity of our faculty of soul. For here the
delight only concerns the province of our faculty disclosed in such
a case, so far as this faculty has its root in our nature;
notwithstanding that its development and exercise is left to ourselves
and remains an obligation. Here indeed there is truth-no matter how
conscious a man, when he stretches his reflection so far abroad, may
be of his actual present helplessness.
This principle has, doubtless, the appearance of being too
far-fetched and subtle, and so of lying beyond the reach of an
aesthetic judgement. But observation of men proves the reverse, and
that it may be the foundation of the commonest judgements, although
one is not always conscious of its presence. For what is it that, even
to the savage, is the object of the greatest admiration? It is a man
who is undaunted, who knows no fear, and who, therefore, does not give
way to danger, but sets manfully to work with full deliberation.
Even where civilization has reached a high pitch, there remains this
special reverence for the soldier; only that there is then further
required of him that he should also exhibit all the virtues of
peace-gentleness, sympathy, and even becoming thought for his own
person; and for the reason that in this we recognize that his mind
is above the threats of danger. And so, comparing the statesman and
the general, men may argue as they please as to the pre-eminent
respect which is due to either above the other; but the verdict of the
aesthetic judgement is for the latter. War itself, provided it is
conducted with order and a sacred respect for the rights of civilians,
has something sublime about it, and gives nations that carry it on
in such a manner a stamp of mind only the more sublime the more
numerous the dangers to which they are exposed, and which they are
able to meet with fortitude. On the other hand, a prolonged peace
favours the predominance of a mere commercial spirit, and with it a
debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminacy, and tends to
degrade the character of the nation.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 70}
So far as sublimity is predicated of might, this solution of the
concept of it appears at variance with the fact that we are wont to
represent God in the tempest, the storm, the earthquake, and the like,
as presenting Himself in His wrath, but at the same time also in His
sublimity, and yet here it would be alike folly and presumption to
imagine a pre-eminence of our minds over the operations and, as it
appears, even over the direction of such might. Here, instead of a
feeling of the sublimity of our own nature, submission, prostration,
Aristotle's remarks on Courage, in the utter helplessness seem more to
constitute the attitude of mind befitting the manifestation of such an
object, and to be that also more customarily associated with the
idea of it on the occasion of a natural phenomenon of this kind. In
religion, as a rule, prostration, adoration with bowed head, coupled
with contrite, timorous posture and voice, seems to be the only
becoming demeanour in presence of the Godhead, and accordingly most
nations have assumed and still observe it. Yet this cast of mind is
far from being intrinsically and necessarily involved in the idea of
the sublimily of a religion and of its object. The man that is
actually in a state of fear, finding in himself good reason to be
so, because he is conscious of offending with his evil disposition
against a might directed by a will at once irresistible and just, is
far from being in the frame of mind for admiring divine greatness, for
which a temper of calm reflection and a quite free judgement are
required. Only when he becomes conscious of having a disposition
that is upright and acceptable to God, do those operations of might
serve, to stir within him the idea of the sublimity of this Being,
so far as he recognizes the existence in himself of a sublimity of
disposition consonant with His will, and is thus raised above the
dread of such operations of nature, in which he no longer sees God
pouring forth the vials of the wrath. Even humility, taking the form
of an uncompromising judgement upon his shortcomings, which, with
consciousness of good intentions, might readily be glossed over on the
ground of the frailty of human nature, is a sublime temper of the mind
voluntarily to undergo the pain of remorse as a means of more and more
effectually eradicating its cause. In this way religion is
intrinsically distinguished from superstition, which latter rears in
the mind, not reverence for the sublime, but dread and apprehension of
the all-powerful Being to whose will terror-stricken man sees
himself subjected, yet without according Him due honour. From this
nothing can arise but grace-begging and vain adulation, instead of a
religion consisting in a good life.
Sublimity, therefore, does not reside in any of the things of
nature, but only in our own mind, in so far as we may become conscious
of our superiority over nature within, and thus also over nature
without us (as exerting influence upon us). Everything that provokes
this feeling in us, including the might of nature which challenges our
strength, is then, though improperly, called sublime, and it is only
under presupposition of this idea within us, and in relation to it,
that we are capable of attaining to the idea of the sublimity of
that Being Which inspires deep respect in us, not by the mere
display of its might in nature, but more by the faculty which is
planted in us of estimating that might without fear, and of
regarding our estate as exalted above it.
-
SS 29. Modality of the judgement on the sublime
in nature.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 75}
-
Beautiful nature contains countless things as to which we at once
take every one as in their judgement concurring with our own, and as
to which we may further expect this concurrence without facts
finding us far astray. But in respect of our judgement upon the
sublime in nature, we cannot so easily vouch for ready acceptance by
others. For a far higher degree of culture, not merely of the
aesthetic judgement, but also of the faculties of cognition which
lie at its basis, seems to be requisite to enable us to lay down a
judgement upon this high distinction of natural objects.
The proper mental mood for a feeling of the sublime postulates the
mind's susceptibility for ideas, since it is precisely in the
failure of nature to attain to these- and consequently only under
presupposition of this susceptibility and of the straining of the
imagination to use nature as a schema for ideas- that there is
something forbidding to sensibility, but which, for all that, has an
attraction for us, arising from the fact of its being a dominion which
reason exercises over sensibility with a view to extending it to the
requirements of its own realm (the practical) and letting it look
out beyond itself into the infinite, which for it is an abyss. In
fact, without the development of moral ideas, that which, thanks to
preparatory culture, we call sublime, merely strikes the untutored man
as terrifying. He will see in the evidences which the ravages of
nature give of her dominion, and in the vast scale of her might,
compared with which his own is diminished to insignificance, only
the misery, peril, and distress that would compass the man who was
thrown to its mercy. So the simpleminded, and, for the most part,
intelligent, Savoyard peasant, (as Herr von Sassure relates),
unhesitatingly called all lovers of snow mountains fools. And who
can tell whether he would have been so wide of the mark, if that
student of nature had taken the risk of the dangers to which he
exposed himself merely, as most travellers do, for a fad, or so as
some day to be able to give a thrilling account of his adventures? But
the mind of Sassure was bent on the instruction of mankind, and
soul-stirring sensations that excellent man indeed had, and the reader
of his travels got them thrown into the bargain.
But the fact that culture is requisite for the judgement upon the
sublime in nature (more than for that upon the beautiful) does not
involve its being an original product of culture and something
introduced in a more or less conventional way into society. Rather
is it in human nature that its foundations are laid, and, in fact,
in that which, at once with common understanding, we may expect
every one to possess and may require of him, namely, a native capacity
for the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e., for moral feeling.
This, now, is the foundation of the necessity of that agreement
between other men's judgements upon the sublime and our own, which
we make our own imply. For just as we taunt a man who is quite
inappreciative when forming an estimate of an object of nature in
which we see beauty, with want of taste, so we say of a man who
remains unaffected in the presence of what we consider sublime, that
he has no feeling. But we demand both taste and feeling of every
man, and, granted some degree of culture, we give him credit for both.
Still, we do so with this difference: that, in the, case of the
former, since judgement there refers the imagination merely to the
understanding, as a the faculty of concepts, we make the requirement
as a matter of course, whereas in the case of the latter, since here
the judgement refers the imagination to reason, as a faculty of ideas,
we do so only under a subjective presupposition (which, however, we
believe we are warranted in making), namely, that of the moral feeling
in man. And, on this assumption, we attribute necessity to the
latter aesthetic judgement also.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 80}
In this modality of aesthetic judgements, namely, their assumed
necessity, lies what is for the Critique of judgement a moment of
capital importance. For this is exactly what makes an a priori
principle apparent in their case, and lifts them out of the sphere
of empirical psychology, in which otherwise they would remain buried
amid the feelings of gratification and pain (only with the senseless
epithet of finer feeling), so as to place them, and, thanks to them,
to place the faculty of judgement itself, in the class of judgements
of which the basis of an a priori principle is the distinguishing
feature, and, thus distinguished, to introduce them into
transcendental philosophy.
-
General Remark upon the Exposition of
Aesthetic Reflective Judgements.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 85}
In relation to the feeling of pleasure an object is to be counted
either as agreeable, or beautiful, or sublime, or good (absolutely),
(incundum, pulchrum, sublime, honestum).
As the motive of desires the agreeable is invariably of one and
the same kind, no matter what its source or how specifically different
the representation (of sense and sensation objectively considered).
Hence in estimating its influence upon the mind, the multitude of
its charms (simultaneous or successive) is alone revelant, and so
only, as it were, the mass of the agreeable sensation, and it is
only by the quantity, therefore, that this can be made intelligible.
Further it in no way conduces to our culture, but belongs only to mere
enjoyment. The beautiful, on the other hand, requires the
representation of a certain quality of the object, that pern-fits also
of being understood and reduced to concepts (although in the aesthetic
judgement it is not reduced), and it cultivates, as it instructs us to
attend to, finality in the feeling of pleasure. The sublime consists
merely in the relation exhibited by the estimate of the serviceability
of the sensible in the representation of nature for a possible
supersensible employment. The absolutely good, estimated
subjectively according to the feeling it inspires (the object of the
moral feeling), as the determinability of the powers of the subject by
means of the representation of an absolutely necessitating law, is
principally distinguished, by the modality of a necessity resting upon
concepts a priori, and involving not a mere claim, but a command
upon every one to assent, and belongs intrinsically not to the
aesthetic, but to the pure intellectual judgement. Further, it is
not ascribed to nature but to freedom, and that in a determinant and
not a merely reflective judgement. But the determinability of the
subject by means of this idea, and, what is more, that of a subject
which can be sensible, in the way of a modification of its state, to
hindrances on the part of sensibility, while, at the same time, it can
by surmounting them feel superiority over them-a determinability, in
other words, as moral feeling-is still so allied to aesthetic
judgement and its formal conditions as to be capable of being
pressed into the service of the aesthetic representation of the
conformity to law of action from duty, i.e., of the representation
of this as sublime, or even as beautiful, without forfeiting its
purity-an impossible result were one to make it naturally bound up
with the feeling of the agreeable.
The net result to be extracted from the exposition so far given of
both kinds of aesthetic judgements may be summed up in the following
brief definitions:
The beautiful is what pleases in the mere estimate formed of it
(consequently not by intervention of any feeling of sense in
accordance with a concept of the understanding). From this it
follows at once that it must please apart from all interest.
The sublime is what pleases immediately by reason of its
opposition to the interest of sense.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 90}
Both, as definitions of aesthetic universally valid estimates,
have reference to subjective grounds. In the one case the reference is
to grounds of sensibility, in so far as these are final on behalf of
the contemplative understanding, in the other case in so far as, in
their opposition to sensibility, they are, on the contrary, final in
reference to the ends of practical reason. Both, however, as united in
the same subject, are final in reference to the moral feeling. The
beautiful prepares us to love something, even nature, apart from any
interest: the sublime to esteem something highly even in opposition to
our (sensible) interest object,
The sublime may be described in this way: It is an object (of
nature) the representation of which determines the mind to regard
the elevation of nature beyond our reach as equivalent to a
presentation of ideas.
In a literal sense and according to their logical import, ideas
cannot be presented. But if we enlarge our empirical faculty of
representation (mathematical or dynamical) with a view to the
intuition of nature, reason inevitably steps forward, as the faculty
concerned with the independence of the absolute totality, and calls
forth the effort of the mind, unavailing though it be, to make
representation of sense adequate to this totality. This effort, and
the feeling of the unattainability of the idea by means of
imagination, is itself a presentation of the subjective finality of
our mind in the employment of the imagination in the interests of
the mind's supersensible province, and compels us subjectively to
think nature itself in its totality as a presentation of something
supersensible, without our being able to effectuate this
presentation objectively.
For we readily see that nature in space and time falls entirely
short of the unconditioned, consequently also of the absolutely great,
which still the commonest reason demands. And by this we are also
reminded that we have only to do with nature as phenomenon, and that
this itself must be regarded as the mere presentation of a
nature-in-itself (which exists in the idea of reason). But this idea
of the supersensible, which no doubt we cannot further determine so
that we cannot cognize nature as its presentation, but only think it
as such-is awakened in us by an object the aesthetic estimating of
which strains the imagination to its utmost, whether in respect of its
extension (mathematical), or of its might over the mind (dynamical).
For it is founded upon the feeling of a sphere of the mind which
altogether exceeds the realm of nature (i.e., upon the moral feeling),
with regard to which the representation of the object is estimated
as subjectively final.
As a matter of fact, a feeling for the sublime in nature is hardly
thinkable unless in association with an attitude of mind resembling
the moral. And though, like that feeling, the immediate pleasure in
the beautiful in nature presupposes and cultivates a certain
liberality of thought, i.e., makes our delight independent of any mere
enjoyment of sense, still it represents freedom rather as in play than
as exercising a law-ordained function, which is the genuine
characteristic of human morality, where reason has to impose its
dominion upon sensibility. There is, however, this qualification, that
in the aesthetic judgement upon the sublime this dominion is
represented as exercised through the imagination itself as an
instrument of reason.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 95}
Thus, too, delight in the sublime in nature is only negative
(whereas that in the beautiful is positive): that is to say, it is a
feeling of imagination by its own act depriving itself of its
freedom by receiving a final determination in accordance with a law
other than that of its empirical employment. In this way it gains an
extension and a might greater than that which it sacrifices. But the
ground of this is concealed from it, and in its place it feels the
sacrifice or deprivation, as well as its cause, to which it is
subjected. The astonishment amounting almost to terror, the awe and
thrill of devout feeling, that takes hold of one when gazing upon
the prospect of mountains ascending to heaven, deep ravines and
torrents raging there, deep shadowed solitudes that invite to brooding
melancholy, and the like-all this, when we are assured of our own
safety, is not actual fear. Rather is it an attempt to gain access
to it through imagination, for the purpose of feeling the might of
this faculty in combining the movement of the mind thereby aroused
with its serenity, and of thus being superior to internal and,
therefore, to external, nature, so far as the latter can have any
bearing upon our feeling of well-being. For the imagination, in
accordance with laws of association, makes our state of contentment
dependent upon physical conditions. But acting in accordance with
principles of the schematism of judgement (consequently so far as it
is subordinated to freedom), it is at the same time an instrument of
reason and its ideas. But in this capacity it is a might enabling us
to assert our independence as against the influences of nature, to
degrade what is great in respect of the latter to the level of what is
little, and thus to locate the absolutely great only in the proper
estate of the subject. This reflection of aesthetic judgement by which
it raises itself to the point of adequacy with reason, though
without any determinate concept of reason, is still a representation
of the object as subjectively final, by virtue even of the objective
inadequacy of the imagination in its greatest extension for meeting
the demands of reason (as the faculty of ideas).
Here we have to attend generally to what has been already adverted
to, that in the transcendental aesthetic of judgement there must be no
question of anything but pure aesthetic judgements. Consequently
examples are not to be selected from such beautiful, or sublime
objects as presuppose the concept of an end. For then the finality
would be either teleological, or based upon mere sensations of an
object: (gratification or pain) and so, in the first case, not
aesthetic, and, in the second, not merely formal. So, if we call the
sight of the starry heaven sublime, we must not found our estimate
of it upon any concepts of worlds inhabited by rational beings, with
the bright spots, which we see filling the space above us, as their
suns moving in orbits prescribed for them with the wisest regard to
ends. But we must take it, just as it strikes the eye, as a broad
and all-embracing canopy: and it is merely under such a representation
that we may posit the sublimity which the pure aesthetic judgement
attributes to this object. Similarly, as to the prospect of the ocean,
we are not to regard it as we, with our minds stored with knowledge on
a variety of matters (which, however, is not contained in the
immediate intuition), are wont to represent it in thought, as, let
us say, a spacious realm of aquatic creatures, or as the mighty
reservoirs from which are drawn the vapours that fill the air with
clouds of moisture for the good of the land, or yet as an element
which no doubt divides continent from continent, but at the same
time affords the means of the greatest commercial intercourse
between them-for in this way we get nothing beyond teleological
judgements. Instead of this we must be able to see sublimity in the
ocean, regarding it, as the poets do, according to what the impression
upon the eye reveals, as, let us say, in its calm a clear mirror of
water bounded only by the heavens, or, be it disturbed, as threatening
to overwhelm and engulf everything. The same is to be said of the
sublime and beautiful in the human form. Here, for determining grounds
of the judgement, we must not have recourse to concepts of ends
subserved by all: all its and members, or allow their accordance
with these ends to influence our aesthetic judgement (in such case
no longer pure), although it is certainly also a also a necessary
condition of aesthetic delight that they should not conflict. With
these ends. Aesthetic finality is the conformity to law of judgement
in its freedom. The delight in the object depends on the reference
which we seek to give to the imagination, subject to the proviso
that it is to entertain the mind in a free activity. If, on the
other hand, something else-be it sensation or concept of the
understanding-determines the judgement, it is then conformable to law,
no doubt, but not an act of free judgement.
Hence to speak of intellectual beauty or sublimity is to use
expressions which, in the first place, are not quite correct. For
these are aesthetic modes of representation which would be entirely
foreign to us were we merely pure intelligences (or if we even put
ourselves in thought in the position of such). Secondly, although
both, as objects of an intellectual (moral) delight, are compatible
with aesthetic delight to the extent of not resting upon any interest,
still, on the: Other hand, there is a difficulty in the way of their
alliance with such delight, since their function is to produce an
interest, and, on the assumption that the presentation has to accord
with delight in the aesthetic estimate, this interest could only be
effected by means of an interest of sense combined with it in the
presentation. But in this way the intellectual finality would be
violated and rendered impure.
The object of a pure and unconditioned intellectual delight is the
moral law in the might which it exerts in us over all antecedent
motives of the mind. Now, since it is only through sacrifices that
this might makes itself known to us aesthetically (and this involves a
deprivation of something -though in the interest of inner
freedom-whilst in turn it reveals in us an unfathomable depth of
this supersensible faculty, the consequences of which extend beyond
reach of the eye of sense), it follows that the delight, looked at
from the aesthetic side (in reference to sensibility) is negative,
i.e., opposed to this interest, but from the intellectual side,
positive and bound up with an interest. Hence it follows that the
intellectual and intrinsically final (moral) good, estimated
aesthetically, instead of being represented as beautiful, must
rather be represented as sublime, with the result that it arouses more
a feeling of respect (which disdains charm) than of love or of the
heart being drawn towards it-for human nature does not of its own
proper motion accord with the good, but only by virtue of the dominion
which reason exercises over sensibility. Conversely, that, too,
which we call sublime in external nature, or even internal nature
(e.g., certain affections) is only represented as a might of the
mind enabling it to overcome this or that hindrance of sensibility
by means of moral principles, and it is from this that it derives
its interest.
I must dwell while on the latter point. The idea of the good to
which affection is superadded is enthusiasm. This state of mind
appears to be sublime: so much so that there is a common saying that
nothing great can be achieved without it. But now every affection*
is blind either as to the choice of its end, or, supposing this has
been furnished by reason, in the way it is effected for it is that
mental movement whereby the exercise of free deliberation upon
fundamental principles, with a view to determining oneself
accordingly, is rendered impossible. On this account it cannot merit
any delight on the part of reason. Yet, from an aesthetic point of
view, enthusiasm is sublime, because it is an effort of one's powers
called forth by ideas which give to the mind an impetus of far
stronger and more enduring efficacy than the stimulus afforded by
sensible representations. But (as seems strange) even freedom from
affection (apatheia, phlegma in significatu bono) in a mind that
strenuously follows its unswerving principles is sublime, and that,
too, in a manner vastly superior, because it has at the same time
the delight of pure reason on its side. Such a stamp of mind is
alone called noble. This expression, however, comes in time to be
applied to things-such as buildings, a garment, literary style, the
carriage of one's person, and the like-provided they do not so much
excite astonishment (the affection attending the representation of
novelty exceeding expectation) as admiration (an astonishment which
does not cease when the novelty wears off)-and this obtains where
ideas undesignedly and artlessly accord in their presentation with
aesthetic delight.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 100}
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*There is a specific distinction between affections and Passions.
Affections are related merely to feeling; passions belong to the
faculty of desire, and are inclinations that hinder or render
impossible all determinability of the elective will by principles.
Affections are impetuous and irresponsible; passions are abiding and
deliberate. Thus resentment, in the form of anger, is an affection:
but in the form of hatred (vindictiveness) it is a passion. Under no
circumstances can the latter be called sublime; for, while the freedom
of the mind is, no doubt, impeded in the case of affection, in passion
it is abrogated.
-
Every affection of the STRENUOUS TYPE (such, that is, as excites the
consciousness of our power of overcoming every resistance [animus
strenuus]) is aesthetically sublime, e.g., anger, even desperation
(the rage of forlorn hope but not faint-hearted despair). On the other
hand, affection of the LANGUID TYPE (which converts the very effort of
resistance into an object of displeasure [animus languidus] has
nothing noble about it, though it may take its rank as possessing
beauty of the sensuous order. Hence the emotions capable of
attaining the strength of an affection are very diverse. We have
spirited, and we have tender emotions. When the strength of the latter
reaches that of an affection they can be turned to no account. The
propensity to indulge in them is sentimentality. A sympathetic grief
that refuses to be consoled, or one that has to do with imaginary
misfortune to which we deliberately give way so far as to allow our
fancy to delude us into thinking it actual fact, indicates and goes to
make a tender, but at the same time weak, soul, which shows a
beautiful side, and may no doubt be called fanciful, but never
enthusiastic. Romances, maudlin dramas, shallow homilies, which trifle
with so-called (though falsely so) noble sentiments, but in fact
make the heart enervated, insensitive to the stem precepts of duty,
and incapable of respect for the worth of humanity in our own person
and the rights of men (which is something quite other than their
happiness), and in general incapable of all firm principles; even a
religious discourse which recommends a cringing and abject
grace-begging and favour-seeking, abandoning all reliance on our own
ability to resist the evil within us, in place of the vigorous
resolution to try to get the better of our inclinations by means of
those powers which, miserable sinners though we be, are still left
to us; that false humility by which self-abasement, whining
hypocritical repentance and a merely passive frame of mind are set
down as the method by which alone we can become acceptable to the
Supreme Being-these have neither lot nor fellowship with what may be
reckoned to belong to beauty, not to speak of sublimity, of mental
temperament.
But even impetuous movements of the mind be they allied under the
name of edification with ideas of religion, or, as pertaining merely
to culture, with ideas involving a social interest no matter what
tension of the imagination they may produce, can in no way lay claim
to the honour of a sublime presentation, if they do not leave behind
them a temper of mind which, though it be only indirectly, has an
influence upon the consciousness of the mind's strength and
resoluteness in respect of that which carries with it pure
intellectual finality (the supersensible). For, in the absence of
this, all these emotions belong only to motion, which we welcome in
the interests of good health. The agreeable lassitude that follows
upon being stirred up in that way by the play of the affections, is
a fruition of the state of well-being arising from the restoration
of the equilibrium of the various vital forces within us. This, in the
last resort, comes to no more than what the Eastern voluptuaries
find so soothing when they get their bodies massaged, and all their
muscles and joints softly pressed and bent; only that in the first
case the principle that occasions the movement is chiefly internal,
whereas here it is entirely external. Thus, many a man believes
himself edified by a sermon in which there is no establishment of
anything (no system of good maxims); or thinks himself improved by a
tragedy, when he is merely glad at having got well rid of the
feeling of being bored. Thus the sublime must in every case have
reference to our way of thinking, i.e., to maxims directed to giving
the intellectual side of our nature and the ideas of reason
supremacy over sensibility.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 105}
We have no reason to fear that the feeling of the sublime will
suffer from an abstract mode of presentation like this, which is
altogether negative as to what is sensuous. For though the
imagination, no doubt, finds nothing beyond the sensible world to
which it can lay hold, still this thrusting aside of the sensible
barriers gives it a feeling of being unbounded; and that removal is
thus a presentation of the infinite. As such it can never be
anything more than a negative presentation-but still it expands the
soul. Perhaps there is no more sublime passage in the Jewish Law
than the commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,
or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven or on earth, or under
the earth, etc." This commandment can alone explain the enthusiasm
which the Jewish people, in their moral period, felt for their
religion when comparing themselves with others, or the pride
inspired by Mohammedanism. The very same holds good of our
representation of the moral law and of our native capacity for
morality. The fear that, if we divest this representation of
everything that can commend it to the senses, it will thereupon be
attended only with a cold and lifeless approbation and not with any
moving force or emotion, is wholly unwarranted. The very reverse is
the truth. For when nothing any longer meets the eye of sense, and the
unmistakable and ineffaceable idea of morality is left in possession
of the field, there would be need rather of tempering the ardour of an
unbounded imagination to prevent it rising to enthusiasm, than of
seeking to lend these ideas the aid of images and childish devices for
fear of their being wanting in potency. For this reason, governments
have gladly let religion be fully equipped with these accessories,
seeking in this way to relieve their subjects of the exertion, but
to deprive them, at the same time, of the ability, required for
expanding their spiritual powers beyond the limits arbitrarily laid
down for them, and which facilitate their being treated as though they
were merely passive.
This pure, elevating, merely negative presentation of morality
involves, on the other hand, no fear of fanaticism, which is a
delusion that would will some VISION beyond all the bounds of
sensibility; i.e., would dream according to principles (rational
raving). The safeguard is the purely negative character of the
presentation. For the inscrutability of the idea of freedom
precludes all positive presentation. The moral law, however, is a
sufficient and original source of determination within us: so it
does not for a moment permit us to cast about for a ground of
determination external to itself. If enthusiasm is comparable to
delirium, fanaticism may be compared to mania. Of these, the latter is
least of all compatible with the sublime, for it is profoundly
ridiculous. In enthusiasm, as an affection, the imagination is
unbridled; in fanaticism, as a deep-seated, brooding passion, it is
anomalous. The first is a transitory accident to which the
healthiest understanding is liable to become at times the victim;
the second is an undermining disease.
Simplicity (artless finality) is, as it were, the style adopted by
nature in the sublime. It is also that of morality. The latter is a
second (supersensible) nature, whose laws alone we know, without being
able to attain to an intuition of the supersensible faculty within
us-that which contains the ground of this legislation.
One further remark. The delight in the sublime, no less than in
the beautiful, by reason of its universal communicability not alone is
plainly distinguished from other aesthetic judgements, but also from
this same property acquires an interest in society (in which it admits
of such communication). Yet, despite this, we have to note the fact
that isolation from all society is looked upon as something sublime,
provided it rests upon ideas which disregard all sensible interest. To
be self-sufficing, and so not to stand in need of society, yet without
being unsociable, i.e., without shunning it, is something
approaching the sublime-a remark applicable to all superiority to
wants. On the other hand, to shun our fellow men from misanthropy,
because of enmity towards them, or from anthropophobia, because we
imagine the hand of every man is against us, is partly odious,
partly contemptible. There is, however, a misanthropy (most improperly
so called), the tendency towards which is to be found with advancing
years in many right minded men, that, as far as good will goes, is
no doubt, philanthropic enough, but as the result of long and sad
experience, is widely removed from delight in mankind. We see
evidences of this in the propensity to recluseness, in the fanciful
desire for a retired country seat, or else (with the young) in the
dream of the happiness of being able to spend one's life with a little
family on an island unknown to the rest of the world-material of which
novelists or writers of Robinsonades know how to make such good use.
Falsehood, ingratitude, injustice, the puerility of the ends which
we ourselves look upon as great and momentous, and to compass which
man inflicts upon his brother man all imaginable evils-these all so
contradict the idea of what men might be if they only would, and are
so at variance with our active wish to see them better, that, to avoid
hating where we cannot love, it seems but a slight sacrifice to forego
all the joys of fellowship with our kind. This sadness, which is not
directed to the evils which fate brings down upon others (a sadness
which springs from sympathy), but to those which they inflict upon
themselves (one which is based on antipathy in questions of
principle), is sublime because it is founded on ideas, whereas that
springing from sympathy can only be accounted beautiful. Sassure,
who was no less ingenious than profound, in the description of his
Alpine travels remarks of Bonhomme, one of the Savoy mountains: "There
reigns there a certain insipid sadness." He recognized, therefore,
that, besides this, there is an interesting sadness, such as is
inspired by the sight of some desolate place into which men might fain
withdraw themselves so as to hear no more of the world without, and be
no longer versed in its affairs, a place, however, which must yet
not be so altogether inhospitable as only to afford a most miserable
retreat for a human being. I only make this observation as a
reminder that even melancholy, (but not dispirited sadness), may
take its place among the vigorous affections, provided it has its root
in moral ideas. If, however, it is grounded upon sympathy, and, as
such, is lovable, it belongs only to the languid affections. And
this serves to call attention to the mental temperament which in the
first case alone is sublime are
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{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 110}
The transcendental exposition of aesthetic judgements now brought to
a close may be compared with the physiological, as worked out by Burke
and many acute men among us, so that we may see where a merely
empirical exposition of the sublime and beautiful would bring us.
Burke, who deserves to be called the foremost author in this method of
treatment, deduces, on these lines, "that the feeling of the sublime
is grounded on the impulse towards self-preservation and on fear,
i.e., on a pain, which, since it does not go the length of disordering
the bodily parts, calls forth movements which, as they clear the
vessels, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and troublesome
encumbrance, are capable of producing delight; not pleasure but a sort
of delightful horror, a sort of tranquility tinged With terror." The
beautiful, which he grounds on love (from which, still, he would
have desire kept separate), he reduces to "the relaxing, slackening,
and enervating of the fibres of the body, and consequently a
softening, a dissolving, a languor, and a fainting, dying, and melting
away for pleasure." And this explanation he supports, not alone by
instances in which the feeling of the beautiful as well as of the
sublime is capable of being excited in us by the imagination in
conjunction with the understanding, but even by instances when it is
in conjunction with sensations. As psychological observations, these
analyses of our mental phenomena are extremely fine, and supply a
wealth of material for the favourite investigations of empirical
anthropology. But, besides that, there is no denying the fact that all
representations within us, no matter whether they are objectively
merely sensible or wholly intellectual, are still subjectively
associable with gratification or pain, however imperceptible either of
these may be. (For these representations one and all have an influence
on the feeling of life, and none of them, so far as it is a
modification of the subject, can be indifferent.) We must even admit
that, as Epicurus maintained, gratification and pain though proceeding
from the imagination or even from representations of the
understanding, are always in the last resort corporeal, since apart
from any feeling of the bodily organ life would be merely a
consciousness of one's existence, and could not include any feeling of
well-being or the reverse, i.e., of the furtherance or hindrance of
the vital forces. For, of itself alone, the mind is all life (the
life-principle itself), and hindrance or furtherance has to be
sought outside it, and yet in the man himself consequently in the
connection with his body and melting
But if we attribute the delight in the object wholly and entirely to
the gratification which it affords through charm or emotion, then we
must not exact from any one else agreement with the aesthetic
judgement passed by us. For, in such matters each person rightly
consults his own personal feeling alone. But in that case there is
an end of all censorship of taste-unless the afforded by others as the
result of a contingent coincidence of their judgements is to be held
over us as commanding our assent. But this principle we would
presumably resent, and appeal to our natural right of submitting a
judgement to our own sense, where it rests upon the immediate
feeling of personal well-being, instead of submitting it to that of
others.
Hence if the import of the judgement of taste, where we appraise
it as a judgement entitled to require the concurrence of every one,
cannot be egoistic, but must necessarily, from its inner nature, be
allowed a pluralistic validity, i.e., on account of what taste
itself is, and not on account of the examples which others give of
their taste, then it must found upon some a priori principle (be it
subjective or objective), and no amount of prying into the empirical
laws of the changes that go on within the mind can succeed in
establishing such a principle. For these laws only yield a knowledge
of how we do judge, but they do not give us a command as to how we
ought to judge, and, what is more, such a command as is
unconditioned-and commands of this kind are presupposed by
judgements of taste, inasmuch as they require delight to be taken as
immediately connected with a representation. Accordingly, though the
empirical exposition of aesthetic judgements may be a first step
towards accumulating the material for a higher investigation, yet a
transcendental examination of this faculty is possible, and forms an
essential part of the Critique of Taste. For, were not taste in
possession of a priori principles, it could not possibly sit in
judgement upon the judgements of others and pass sentence of
commendation or condemnation upon them, with even the least
semblance of authority.
The remaining part of the Analytic of the aesthetic judgement
contains first of all the:
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{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 115}
Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgements.
SS 30. The deduction of aesthetic judgements upon objects of
nature must not be directed to what we call sublime in
nature, but only to the beautiful.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 120}
The claim of an aesthetic judgement to universal validity for
every subject, being a judgement which must rely on some a priori
principle, stands in need of a deduction (i.e., a derivation of its
title). Further, where the delight or aversion turns on the form of
the object this has to be something over and above the exposition of
the judgement. Such is the case with judgements of taste upon the
beautiful in nature. For there the finality has its foundation in
the object and its outward form-although it does not signify the
reference of this to other objects according to concepts (for the
purpose of cognitive judgements), but is merely concerned in general
with the apprehension of this form so far as it proves accordant in
the mind with the faculty of concepts as well as with that of their
presentation (which is identical with that of apprehension). With
regard to the beautiful in nature, therefore, we may start a number of
questions touching the cause of this finality of their forms e.g., how
we are to explain why nature has scattered beauty abroad with so
lavish a hand even in the depth of the ocean where it can but seldom
be reached by the eye of man-for which alone it is. final?
But the sublime in nature-if we pass upon it a pure aesthetic
judgement unmixed with concepts of perfection, as objective
finality, which would make the judgement teleological-may be
regarded as completely wanting in form or figure, and none the less be
looked upon as an object of pure delight, and indicate a subjective
finality of the given representation. So, now, the question suggests
itself, whether in addition to the exposition of what is thought in an
aesthetic judgement of this kind, we may be called upon to give a
deduction of its claim to some (subjective) a priori principle.
This we may meet with the reply that the sublime in nature is
improperly so called, and that sublimity should, in strictness, be
attributed merely to the attitude of thought, or, rather, to that
which serves as basis for this in human nature. The apprehension of an
object otherwise formless and in conflict with ends supplies the
mere occasion for our coming to a consciousness of this basis; and the
object is in this way put to a subjectively-final use, but it is not
estimated as subjectively-final on its own account and because of
its form. (It is, as it were, a species finalis accepta, non data.)
Consequently the exposition we gave of judgements upon the sublime
in nature was at the same time their deduction. For, in our analysis
of the reflection on the part of judgement in this case, we found that
in such judgements there is a final relation of the cognitive
faculties, which has to be laid a priori at the basis of the faculty
of ends (the will), and which is therefore itself a priori final.
This, then, at once involves the deduction, i.e., the justification of
the claim of such a judgement to universally-necessary validity.
Hence we may confine our search to one for the deduction of
judgements of taste, i.e., of judgements upon the beauty of things
of nature, and this will satisfactorily dispose of the problem for the
entire aesthetic faculty of judgement.
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{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 125}
SS 31. Of the method of the deduction of judgements
of taste.
-
The obligation to furnish a deduction, i.e., a guarantee of the
legitimacy of judgements of a particular kind, only arises where the
judgement lays claim to necessity. This is the case even where it
requires subjective universality, i.e., the concurrence of every
one, albeit the judgement is not a cognitive judgement, but only one
of pleasure or displeasure in a given object, i.e., an assumption of a
subjective finality that has a thoroughgoing validity for every one,
and which, since the judgement is one of taste, is not to be
grounded upon any concept of the thing.
Now, in the latter case, we are not dealing with a judgement of
cognition-neither with a theoretical one based on the concept of a
nature in general, supplied by understanding, nor with a (pure)
practical one based on the idea of freedom, as given a priori by
reason-and so we are not called upon to justify a priori the
validity of a judgement which represents either what a thing is, or
that there is something which I ought to do in order to produce it.
Consequently, if for judgement generally we demonstrate the
universal validity of a singular judgement expressing the subjective
finality of an empirical representation of the form of an object, we
shall do all that is needed to explain how it is possible that
something can please in the mere formation of an estimate of it
(without sensation or concept), and how, just as the estimate of an
object for the sake of a cognition generally has universal rules,
the delight of any one person may be pronounced as a rule for every
other.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 130}
Now if this universal validity is not to be based on a collection of
votes and interrogation of others as to what sort of sensations they
experience, but is to rest, as it were, upon an, autonomy of the
subject passing judgement on the feeling of pleasure (in the given
representation), i.e., upon his own taste, and yet is also not to be
derived from concepts; then it follows that such a judgement-and
such the judgement of taste in fact is-has a double and also logical
peculiarity. For, first, it has universal validity a priori, yet
without having a logical universality according to concepts, but
only the universality of a singular judgement. Secondly, it has a
necessity (which must invariably rest upon a priori grounds), but
one which depends upon no a priori proofs by the representation of
which it would be competent to enforce the assent which the
judgement of taste demands of every one.
The solution of these logical peculiarities, which distinguish a
judgement of taste from all cognitive judgements, will of itself
suffice for a deduction of this strange faculty, provided we
abstract at the outset from all content of the judgement, viz., from
the feeling of pleasure, and merely compare the aesthetic form with
the form of objective judgements as prescribed by logic. We shall
first try, with the help of examples, to illustrate and bring out
these characteristic properties of taste.
-
SS 32. First peculiarity of the judgement of taste.
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{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 135}
The judgement of taste determines its object in respect of delight
(as a thing of beauty) with a claim to the agreement of every one,
just as if it were objective.
To say: "this flower is beautiful is tantamount to repeating its own
proper claim to the delight of everyone. The agreeableness of its
smell gives it no claim at all. One man revels in it, but it gives
another a headache. Now what else are we to suppose from this than
that its beauty is to be taken for a property of the flower itself
which does not adapt itself to the diversity of heads and the
individual senses of the multitude, but to which they must adapt
themselves, if they are going to pass judgement upon it. And yet
this is not the way the matter stands. For the judgement of taste
consists precisely in a thing being called beautiful solely in respect
of that quality in which it adapts itself to our mode of taking it in.
Besides, every judgement which is to show the taste of the
individual, is required to be an independent judgement of the
individual himself. There must be no need of groping about among other
people's judgements and getting previous instruction from their
delight in or aversion to the same object. Consequently his
judgement should be given out a priori, and not as an imitation
relying on the general pleasure a thing gives as a matter of fact. One
would think, however, that a judgement a priori must involve a concept
of the object for the cognition of which it contains the principle.
But the judgement of taste is not founded on concepts, and is in no
way a cognition, but only an aesthetic judgement.
Hence it is that a youthful poet refuses to allow himself to be
dissuaded from the conviction that his poem is beautiful, either by
the judgement of the public or of his friends. And even if he lends
them an ear, he does so,-not because he has now come to a different
judgement, but because, though the whole public, at least so far as
his work is concerned, should have false taste, he still, in his
desire for recognition, finds good reason to accommodate himself to
the popular error (even against his own judgement). It is only in
aftertime, when his judgement has been sharpened by exercise, that
of his own free will and accord he deserts his former judgements
behaving in just the same way as with those of his judgements which
depend wholly upon reason. Taste lays claim simply to autonomy. To
make the judgements of others the determining ground of one's own
would be heteronomy.
The fact that we recommend the works of the ancients as models,
and rightly too, and call their authors classical, as constituting
sort of nobility among writers that leads the way and thereby gives
laws to the people, seems to indicate a posteriori sources of taste
and to contradict the autonomy of taste in each individual. But we
might just as well say that the ancient mathematicians, who, to this
day, are looked upon as the almost indispensable models of perfect
thoroughness and elegance in synthetic methods, prove that reason also
is on our part only imitative, and that it is incompetent with the
deepest intuition to produce of itself rigorous proofs by means of the
construction of concepts. There is no employment of our powers, no
matter how free, not even of reason itself (which must create all
its judgements from the common a priori source), which, if each
individual had always to start afresh with the crude equipment of
his natural state, would not get itself involved in blundering
attempts, did not those of others tie before it as a warning. Not that
predecessors make those who follow in their steps mere imitators,
but by their methods they set others upon the track of seeking in
themselves for the principles, and so of adopting their own, often
better, course. Even in religion-where undoubtedly every one bas to
derive his rule of conduct from himself, seeing that he himself
remains responsible for it and, when he goes wrong, cannot shift the
blame upon others as teachers or leaders-general precepts learned at
the feet either of priests or philosophers, or even drawn from ones'
own resources, are never so efficacious as an example of virtue or
holiness, which, historically portrayed, does not dispense with the
autonomy of virtue drawn from the spontaneous and original idea of
morality (a priori), or convert this into a mechanical process of
imitation. Following which has reference to a precedent, and not
imitation, is the proper expression for all influence which the
products of an exemplary author may exert upon others and this means
no more than going to the same sources for a creative work as those to
which he went for his creations, and learning from one's predecessor
no more than the mode of availing oneself of such sources. Taste, just
because its judgement cannot be determined by concepts or precepts, is
among all faculties and talents the very one that stands most in
need of examples of what has in the course of culture maintained
itself longest in esteem. Thus it avoids an early lapse into crudity
and a return to the rudeness of its earliest efforts.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 140}
-
SS 33. Second peculiarity of the judgement of taste.
-
Proofs are of no avail whatever for determining the judgement of
taste, and in this connection matters stand just as they would were
that judgement simply subjective.
If any one does not think a building, view, or poem beautiful, then,
in the first place, he refuses, so far as his inmost conviction
goes, to allow approval to be wrung from him by a hundred voices all
lauding it to the skies. Of course he may affect to be pleased with
it, so as not to be considered as wanting in taste. He may even
begin to harbour doubts as to whether he has formed his taste upon
an acquaintance with a sufficient number of objects of a particular
kind (just as one who in the distance recognizes, as he believes,
something as a wood which every one else regards as a town, becomes
doubtful of the judgement of his own eyesight). But, for all that,
he clearly perceives that the approval of others affords no valid
proof, available for the estimate of beauty. He recognizes that
others, perchance, may see and observe for him, and that what many
have seen in one and the same way may, for the purpose of a
theoretical, and therefore logical, judgement, serve as an adequate
ground of proof for or albeit he believes he saw otherwise, but that
what has pleased others can never serve him as the ground of an
aesthetic judgement. The judgement of others, where unfavourable to
ours, may, no doubt, rightly make us suspicious in respect of our own,
but convince us that it is wrong it never can. Hence there is no
empirical ground of proof that can coerce any one's judgement of
taste.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 145}
In the second place, a proof a priori according to definite rules is
still less capable of determining the judgement as to beauty. If any
one reads me his poem, or brings me to a play, which, all said and
done, fails to commend itself to my taste, then let him adduce Batteux
or Lessing, or still older and more famous critics of taste, with
all the host of rules laid down by them, as a proof of the beauty of
his poem; let certain passages particularly displeasing to me accord
completely with the rules of beauty (as set out by these critics and
universally recognized): I stop my ears: I do not want to hear any
reasons or any arguing about the matter. I would prefer to suppose
that those rules of the critics were at fault, or at least have no
application, than to allow my judgement to be determined by a priori
proofs. I take my stand on the ground that my judgement is to be one
of taste, and not one of understanding or reason.
This would appear to be one of the chief reasons why this faculty of
aesthetic judgement has been given the name of taste. For a man may
recount to me all the ingredients of a dish, and observe of each and
every one of them that it is just what I like, and, in addition,
rightly commend the wholesomeness of the food; yet I am deaf to all
these arguments. I try the dish with my own tongue and palate, and I
pass judgement according to their verdict (not according to
universal principles).
As a matter of fact, the judgement of taste is invariably laid
down as a singular judgement upon the object. The understanding can,
from the comparison of the object, in point of delight, with the
judgements of others, form a universal judgement, e.g.: "All tulips
are beautiful." But that judgement is then not one of taste, but is
a logical judgement which converts the reference of an object to our
taste into a predicate belonging to things of a certain kind. But it
is only the judgement whereby I regard an individual given tulip as
beautiful, i.e., regard my delight in it as of universal validity,
that is a judgement of taste. Its peculiarity, however, consists in
the fact, that, although it has merely subjective validity, still it
extends its claims to all subjects, as unreservedly as it would if
it were an objective judgement, resting on grounds of cognition and
capable of being proved to demonstration.
-
SS 34. An objective principle of taste is not possible.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 150}
-
A principle of taste would mean a fundamental premiss under the
condition of which one might subsume the concept of an object, and
then, by a syllogism, draw the inference that it is beautiful. That,
however, is absolutely impossible. For I must feel the pleasure
immediately in the representation of the object, and I cannot be
talked into it by any grounds of proof. Thus although critics, as Hume
says, are able to reason more plausibly than cooks, they must still
share the same fate. For the determining ground of their judgement
they are not able to look to the force of demonstrations, but only
to the reflection of the subject upon his own state (of pleasure or
displeasure), to the exclusion of precepts and rules.
There is, however, a matter upon which it is competent for critics
to exercise their subtlety, and upon which they ought to do so, so
long as it tends to the rectification and extension of our
judgements of taste. But that matter is not one of exhibiting the
determining ground of aesthetic judgements of this kind in a
universally applicable formula-which is impossible. Rather is it the
investigation of the faculties of cognition and their function in
these judgements, and the illustration, by the analysis of examples,
of their mutual subjective finality, the form of which in a given
representation has been shown above to constitute the beauty of
their object. Hence with regard to the representation whereby an
object is given, the critique of taste itself is only subjective;
viz., it is the art or science of reducing the mutual relation of
the understanding and the imagination in the given representation
(without reference to antecedent sensation or concept), consequently
their accordance or discordance, to rules, and of determining them
with regard to their conditions. It is art if it only illustrates this
by examples; it is science if it deduces the possibility of such an
estimate from the nature of these faculties as faculties of
knowledge-in general. It is only with the latter, as transcendental
critique, that we have here any concern. Its proper scope is the
development and justification of the subjective principle of taste, as
an a priori principle of judgement. As an art, critique merely looks
to the physiological (here psychological) and, consequently, empirical
rules, according to which in actual fact taste proceeds (passing by
the question of their possibility) and seeks to apply them in
estimating its objects. The latter critique criticizes the products of
fine art, just as the former does the faculty of estimating them.
-
SS 35. The principle of taste is the subjective principle
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 155}
of the general power of judgement.
-
The judgement of taste is differentiated from logical judgement by
the fact that, whereas the latter subsumes a representation under a
concept of the object, the judgement of taste does not subsume under a
concept at all-for, if it did, necessary and universal approval
would be capable of being enforced by proofs. And yet it does bear
this resemblance to the logical judgement, that it asserts a
universality and necessity, not, however, according to concepts of the
object, but a universality and necessity that are, consequently,
merely subjective. Now the concepts in a judgement constitute its
content (what belongs to the cognition of the object). But the
judgement of taste is not determinable by means of concepts. Hence
it can only have its ground in the subjective formal condition of a
judgement in general. The subjective condition of all judgements is
the judging faculty itself, or judgement. Employed in respect of a
representation whereby an object is given, this requires the
harmonious accordance of two powers of representation. These are:
the imagination (for the intuition and the arrangement of the manifold
of intuition), and the understanding (for the concept as a
representation of the unity of this arrangement). Now, since no
concept of the object underlies the judgement here, it can consist
only in the subsumption of the imagination itself (in the case of a
representation whereby an object is given) under the conditions
enabling the understanding in general to advance from the intuition to
concepts. That is to say, since the freedom of the imagination
consists precisely in the fact that it schematizes without a
concept, the judgement of taste must found upon a mere sensation of
the mutually quickening activity of the imagination in its freedom,
and of the understanding with its conformity to law. It must therefore
rest upon a feeling that allows the object to be estimated by the
finality of the representation (by which an object is given) for the
furtherance of the cognitive faculties in their free play. Taste,
then, as a subjective power of judgement, contains a principle of
subsumption, not of intuitions under concepts, but of the faculty of
intuitions or presentations, i.e., of the imagination, under the
faculty of concepts, i.e., the understanding, so far as the former
in its freedom accords with the latter in its conformity to law.
For the discovery of this title by means of a deduction of
judgements of taste, we can only avail ourselves of the guidance of
the formal peculiarities of judgements of this kind, and
consequently the mere consideration of their logical form.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 160}
SS 36. The problem of a deduction of judgements of taste.
-
To form a cognitive judgement we may immediately connect with the
perception of an object the concept of an object in general, the
empirical predicates of which are contained in that perception. In
this way, a judgement of experience is produced. Now this judgement
rests on the foundation of a priori concepts of the synthetical
unity of the manifold of intuition, enabling it to be thought as the
determination of an object. These concepts (the categories) call for a
deduction, and such was supplied in the Critique of Pure Reason.
That deduction enabled us to solve the problem: How are synthetical
a priori cognitive judgements possible? This problem had, accordingly,
to do with the a priori principles of pure understanding and its
theoretical judgements.
But we may also immediately connect with a perception a feeling of
pleasure (or displeasure) and a delight, attending the
representation of the object and serving it instead of a predicate. In
this way there arises a judgement which is aesthetic and not
cognitive. Now, if such a judgement is not merely one of sensation,
but a formal judgement of reflection that exacts this delight from
everyone as necessary, something must lie at its basis as its a priori
principle. This principle may, indeed, be a mere subjective one
(supposing an objective one should be impossible for judgements of
this kind), but, even as such, it requires a deduction to make it
intelligible how an aesthetic judgement can lay claim to necessity.
That, now, is what lies at the bottom of the problem upon which we are
at present engaged, i.e.: How are judgements of taste possible? This
problem, therefore, is concerned with the a priori principles of
pure judgement in aesthetic judgements, i.e., not those in which (as
in theoretical judgements) it has merely to subsume under objective
concepts of understanding, and in which it comes under a law, but
rather those in which it is itself, subjectively, object as well as
law.
We may also put the problem in this way: How a judgement possible
which, going merely upon the individual's own feeling of pleasure in
an object independent of the concept of it, estimates this as a
pleasure attached to the representation of the same object in every
other individual, and does so a priori, i.e., without being allowed to
wait and see if other people will be of the same mind?
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 165}
It is easy to see that judgements of taste are synthetic, for they
go beyond the concept and even the intuition of the object, and join
as predicate to that intuition something which is not even a cognition
at all, namely, the feeling of pleasure (or displeasure). But,
although the predicate (the personal pleasure that is connected with
the representation) is empirical, still we need not go further than
what is involved in the expressions of their claim to see that, so far
as concerns the agreement required of everyone, they are a priori
judgements, or mean to pass for such. This problem of the Critique
of judgement, therefore, is part of the general problem of
transcendental philosophy: How are synthetic a priori judgements
possible?
-
SS 37. What exactly it is that is asserted a priori of an
object in a judgement of taste.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 170}
The immediate synthesis of the representation of an object with
pleasure can only be a matter of internal perception, and, were
nothing more than this sought to be indicated, would only yield a mere
empirical judgement. For with no representation can I a priori connect
a determinate feeling (of pleasure or displeasure) except where I rely
upon the basis of an a priori principle in reason determining the
will. The truth is that the pleasure (in the moral feeling) is the
consequence of the determination of the will by the principle. It
cannot, therefore, be compared with the pleasure in taste. For it
requires a determinate concept of a law: whereas the pleasure in taste
has to be connected immediately with the sample estimate prior to
any concept. For the same reason, also, all judgements of taste are
singular judgements, for they unite their predicate of delight, not to
a concept, but to a given singular empirical representation.
Hence, in a judgement of taste, what is represented a priori as a
universal rule for the judgement and as valid for everyone, is not the
pleasure but the universal validity of this pleasure perceived, as
it is, to be combined in the mind with the mere estimate of an object.
A judgement to the effect that it is with pleasure that I perceive and
estimate some object is an empirical judgement. But if it asserts that
I think the object beautiful, i.e., that I may attribute that
delight to everyone as necessary, it is then an a priori judgement.
-
SS 38. Deduction of judgements of taste.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 175}
Admitting that in a pure judgement of taste the delight in the
object is connected with the mere estimate of its form, then what we
feel to be associated in the mind with the representation of the
object is nothing else than its subjective finality for judgement.
Since, now, in respect of the formal rules of estimating, apart from
all matter (whether sensation or concept), judgement can only be
directed to the subjective conditions of its employment in general
(which is not restricted to the particular mode of sense nor to a
particular concept of the understanding), and so can only be
directed to that subjective factor which we may presuppose in all
men (as requisite for a possible experience generally), it follows
that the accordance of a representation with these conditions of the
judgement must admit of being assumed valid a priori for every one. In
other words, we are warranted in exacting from every one the
pleasure or subjective finality of the representation in respect of
the relation of the cognitive faculties engaged in the estimate of a
sensible object in general*.
-
*In order to be justified in claiming universal agreement an
aesthetic judgement merely resting on subjective grounds, it is
sufficient to assume: (1) that the subjective conditions of this
faculty of aesthetic judgement are identical with all men in what
concerns the relation of the cognitive faculties, there brought into
action, with a view to a cognition in general. This must be true, as
otherwise men would be incapable of communicating their
representations or even their knowledge; (2) that the judgement has
paid regard merely to this relation (consequently merely to the formal
condition of the faculty of judgement), and is pure, i.e., is free
from confusion either with concepts of the object or sensations as
determining grounds. If any mistake is made in this latter point, this
only touches the incorrect application to a particular case of the
right which a law gives us, and does not do away with the right
generally.
-
Remark.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 180}
-
What makes this deduction so easy is that it is spared the necessity
of having to justify the objective reality of a concept. For beauty is
not a concept of the object, and the judgement of taste is not a
cognitive judgement. All that it holds out for is that we are
justified in presupposing that the same subjective conditions of
judgement which we find in ourselves are universally present in
every man, and further that we have rightly subsumed the given
object under these conditions. The latter, no doubt, has to face
unavoidable difficulties which do not affect the logical judgement.
(For there the subsumption is under concepts; whereas in the aesthetic
judgement it is under a mere sensible relation of the imagination
and understanding mutually harmonizing with one another in the
represented form of the object, in which case the subsumption may
easily prove fallacious.) But this in no way detracts from the
legitimacy of the claim of the judgement to count upon universal
agreement-a claim which amounts to no more than this: the
correctness of the principle of judging validly for every one upon
subjective grounds. For as to the difficulty and uncertainty
concerning the correctness of the subsumption under that principle, it
no more casts a doubt upon the legitimacy of the claim to this
validity on the part of an aesthetic judgement generally, or,
therefore, upon the principle itself, than the mistakes (though. not
so often or easily incurred), to which the subsumption of the
logical judgement under its principle is similarly liable, can
render the latter principle, which is objective, open to doubt. But if
the question were: How is it possible to assume a priori that nature
is a complex of objects of taste? the problem would then have
reference to teleology, because it would have to be regarded as an end
of nature belonging essentially to its concept that it should
exhibit forms that are final for our judgement. But the correctness of
this assumption may still be seriously questioned, while the actual
existence of beauties of nature is patent to experience.
-
SS 39. The communicability of a sensation.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 185}
Sensation, as the real in perception, where referred to knowledge,
is called organic sensation and its specific quality may be
represented as completely communicable to others in a like mode,
provided we assume that every one has a like sense to our own. This,
however, is an absolutely inadmissible presupposition in the case of
an organic sensation. Thus a person who is without a sense of smell
cannot have a sensation of this kind communicated to him, and, even if
be does not suffer from this deficiency, we still cannot be certain
that he gets precisely the same sensation from a flower that we get
from it. But still more divergent must we consider men to be in
respect of the agreeableness or disagreeableness derived from the
sensation of one and the same object of sense, and it is absolutely
out of the question to require that pleasure in such objects should be
acknowledged by every one. Pleasure of this kind, since it enters into
the mind through sense-our role, therefore, being a passive one-may be
called the pleasure of enjoyment.
On the other hand, delight in an action on the score of its moral
character is not a pleasure of enjoyment, but one of self-asserting
activity and in this coming up to the idea of what it is meant to
be. But this feeling, which is called the moral feeling, requires
concepts and is the presentation of a finality, not free, but
according to law. It, therefore, admits of communication only
through the instrumentality of reason and, if the pleasure is to be of
the same kind for everyone, by means of very determinate practical
concepts of reason.
The pleasure in the sublime in nature, as one of rationalizing
contemplation, lays claim also to universal participation, but still
it presupposes another feeling, that, namely, of our supersensible
sphere, which feeling, however obscure it may be, has a moral
foundation. But there is absolutely no authority for my presupposing
that others will pay attention to this and take a delight in beholding
the uncouth dimensions of nature (one that in truth cannot be ascribed
to its aspect, which is terrifying rather than otherwise).
Nevertheless, having regard to the fact that attention ought to be
paid upon every appropriate occasion to this moral birthright, we
may still demand that delight from everyone; but we can do so only
through the moral law, which, in its turn, rests upon concepts of
reason.
The pleasure in the beautiful is, on the other hand, neither a
pleasure of enjoyment nor of an activity according to law, nor yet one
of a rationalizing contemplation according to ideas, but rather of
mere reflection. Without any guiding-line of end or principle, this
pleasure attends the ordinary apprehension of an object by means of
the imagination, as the faculty of intuition, but with a reference
to the understanding as faculty of concepts, and through the operation
of a process of judgement which bas also to be invoked in order to
obtain the commonest experience. In the latter case, however, its
functions are directed to perceiving an empirical objective concept,
whereas in the former (in the aesthetic mode of estimating) merely
to perceiving the adequacy of the representation for engaging both
faculties of knowledge in their freedom in an harmonious (subjectively
final) employment, i.e., to feeling with pleasure the subjective
bearings of the representation. This pleasure must of necessity depend
for every one upon the same conditions, seeing that they are the
subjective conditions of the possibility of a cognition in general,
and the proportion of these cognitive faculties which is requisite for
taste is requisite also for ordinary sound understanding, the presence
of which we are entitled to presuppose in every one. And, for this
reason also, one who judges with taste (provided he does not make a
mistake as to this consciousness, and does not take the matter for the
form, or charm for beauty) can impute the subjective finality, i.e.,
his delight in the object, to everyone else and suppose his feeling
universally communicable, and that, too, without the mediation of
concepts.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 190}
SS 40. Taste as a kind of sensus communis.
-
The name of sense is often given to judgement where what attracts
attention is not so much its reflective act as merely its result. So
we speak of a sense of truth, of a sense of propriety, or of
justice, etc. And yet, of course, we know, or at least ought well
enough to know, that a sense cannot be the true abode of these
concepts, not to speak of its being competent, even in the slightest
degree, to pronounce universal rules. On the contrary, we recognize
that a representation of this kind, be it of truth, propriety, beauty,
or justice, could never enter our thoughts were we not able to raise
ourselves above the level of the senses to that of higher faculties of
cognition. Common human understanding which as mere sound (not yet
cultivated) understanding, is looked upon as the least we can expect
from any one claiming the name of man, has therefore the doubtful
honour of having the name of common sense (sensus communis) bestowed
upon it; and bestowed, too, in an acceptation of the word common
(not merely in our own language, where it actually has a double
meaning, but also in many others) which makes it amount to what is
vulgar-what is everywhere to be met with-a quality which by no means
confers credit or distinction upon its possessor.
However, by the name sensus communis is to be understood the idea of
a public sense, i.e., a critical faculty which in its reflective act
takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of everyone
else, in order, as it were, to weigh its judgement with the collective
reason of mankind, and thereby avoid the illusion arising from
subjective and personal conditions which could readily be taken for
objective, an illusion that would exert a prejudicial influence upon
its judgement. This is accomplished by weighing the judgement, not
so much with actual, as rather with the merely possible, judgements of
others, and by putting ourselves in the position of everyone else,
as the result of a mere abstraction from the limitations which
contingently affect our own estimate. This, in turn, is effected by so
far as possible letting go the element of matter, i.e., sensation,
in our general state of representative activity, and confining
attention to the formal peculiarities of our representation or general
state of representative activity. Now it may seem that this
operation of reflection is too artificial to be attributed to the
faculty which we call common sense. But this is an appearance due only
to its expression in abstract formulae. In itself nothing is more
natural than to abstract from charm and emotion where one is looking
for a judgement intended to serve as a universal rule.
While the following maxims of common human understanding do not
properly come in here as constituent parts of the critique of taste,
they may still serve to elucidate its fundamental propositions. They
are these: (I) to think for oneself; (2) to think from the
standpoint of everyone else; (3) always to think consistently. The
first is the maxim of unprejudiced thought, the second that of
enlarged thought, the third that of consistent thought. The first is
the maxim of a never-passive reason. To be given to such passivity,
consequently to heteronomy of reason, is called prejudice; and the
greatest of all prejudices is that of fancying nature not to be
subject to rules which the understanding by virtue of its own
essential laws lays at its basis, i.e., superstition. Emancipation
from superstition is called enlightenment*; for although this term
applies also to emancipation from prejudices generally, still
superstition deserves pre-eminently (in sensu eminenti) to be called a
prejudice. For the condition of blindness into which superstition puts
one, which is as much as demands from one as an obligation, makes
the need of being led by others, and consequently the passive state of
the reason, pre-eminently conspicuous. As to the second maxim
belonging to our habits of thought, we have quite got into the way
of calling a man narrow (narrow, as opposed to being of enlarged mind)
whose talents fall short of what is required for employment upon
work of any magnitude (especially that involving intensity). But the
question here is not one of the faculty of cognition, but of the
mental habit of making a final use of it. This, however small the
range and degree to which man's natural endowments extend, still
indicates a man of enlarged mind: if he detaches himself from the
subjective personal conditions of his judgement, which cramp the minds
of so many others, and reflects upon his own judgement from a
universal standpoint (which he can only determine by shifting his
ground to the standpoint of others). The third maxim-that, namely,
of consistent thought-is the hardest of attainment, and is only
attainable by the union of both the former, and after constant
attention to them has made one at home in their observance. We may
say: The first of these is the maxim of understanding, the second that
of judgement, the third of that reason.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 195}
-
*We readily see that enlightenment, while easy, no doubt, in
thesi, in hypothesis is difficult and slow of realization. For not
to be passive with one's reason, but always to be self-legislative, is
doubtless quite an easy matter for a man who only desires to be
adapted to his essential end, and does not seek to know what is beyond
his understanding. But as the tendency in the latter direction is
hardly avoidable, and others are always coming and promising with full
assurance that they are able to satisfy one's curiosity, it must be
very difficult to preserve or restore in the mind (and particularly in
the public mind) that merely negative attitude (which constitutes
enlightenment proper).
-
I resume the thread of the discussion interrupted by the above
digression, and I say that taste can with more justice be called a
sensus communis than can sound understanding; and that the
aesthetic, rather than the intellectual, judgement can bear the name
of a public sense,* i.e., taking it that we are prepared to use the
word sense of an effect that mere reflection has upon the mind; for
then by sense we mean the feeling of pleasure. We might even define
taste as the faculty of estimating what makes our feeling in a given
representation universally communicable without the mediation of a
concept.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 200}
*Taste may be designated a sensus communis aestheticus, common human
understanding a sensus communis logicus.
-
The aptitude of men for communicating their thoughts requires, also,
a relation between the imagination and the understanding, in order
to connect intuitions with concepts, and concepts, in turn, with
intuitions, which both unite in cognition. But there the agreement
of both mental powers is according to law, and under the constraint of
definite concepts. Only when the imagination in its freedom stirs
the understanding, and the understanding apart from concepts puts
the imagination into regular play, does the representation communicate
itself not as thought, but as an internal feeling of a final state
of the mind.
Taste is, therefore, the faculty of forming an a priori estimate
of the communicability of the feeling that, without the mediation of a
concept, are connected with a given representation.
Supposing, now, that we could assume that the mere universal
communicability of our feeling must of itself carry with it an
interest for us (an assumption, however, which we are not entitled
to draw as a conclusion from the character of a merely reflective
judgement), we should then be in a position to explain how the feeling
in the judgement of taste comes to be exacted from everyone as a
sort of duty.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 205}
-
SS 41. The empirical interest in the beautiful.
-
Abundant proof bas been given above to show that the judgement of
taste by which something is declared beautiful must have no interest
as its determining ground. But it does not follow from this that,
after it has once been posited as a pure aesthetic judgement, an
interest cannot then enter into combination with it. This combination,
however, can never be anything but indirect. Taste must, that is to
say, first of all be represented in conjunction with something else,
if the delight attending the mere reflection upon an object is to
admit of having further conjoined with it a pleasure in the real
existence of the object (as that wherein all interest consists). For
the saying, a posse ad esse non valet consequentia,* which is
applied to cognitive judgements, holds good here in the case of
aesthetic judgements. Now this "something else" may be something
empirical, such as an inclination proper to the nature of human
beings, or it may be something intellectual, as a property of the will
whereby it admits of rational determination a priori. Both of these
involve a delight in the existence of the object, and so can lay the
foundation for an interest in what has already pleased of itself and
without regard to any interest whatsoever.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 210}
*["From possibility to actuality."]
-
The empirical interest in the beautiful exists only in society.
And if we admit that the impulse to society is natural to mankind, and
that the suitability for and the propensity towards it, i.e.,
sociability, is a property essential to the requirements of man as a
creature intended for society, and one, therefore, that belongs to
humanity, it is inevitable that we should also look upon taste in
the light of a faculty for estimating whatever enables us to
communicate even our feeling to every one else, and hence as a means
of promoting that upon which the natural inclination of everyone is
set.
With no one to take into account but himself, a man abandoned on a
desert island would not adorn either himself or his hut, nor would
he look for flowers, and still less plant them, with the object of
providing himself with personal adornments. Only in society does it
occur to him to be not merely a man, but a man refined after the
manner of his kind (the beginning of civilization)-for that is the
estimate formed of one who has the bent and turn for communicating his
pleasure to others, and who is not quite satisfied with an object
unless his feeling of delight in it can be shared in communion with
others. Further, a regard to universal communicability is a thing
which every one expects and requires from every one else, just as if
it were part of an original compact dictated by humanity itself. And
thus, no doubt, at first only charms, e.g., colours for painting
oneself (roucou among the Caribs and cinnabar among the Iroquois),
or flowers, sea-shells, beautifully coloured feathers, then, in the
course of time, also beautiful forms (as in canoes, wearing-apparel,
etc.) which convey no gratification, i.e., delight of enjoyment,
become of moment in society and attract a considerable interest.
Eventually, when civilization has reached its height it makes this
work of communication almost the main business of refined inclination,
and the entire value of sensations is placed in the degree to which
they permit of universal communication. At this stage, then, even
where the pleasure which each one has in an object is but
insignificant and possesses of itself no conspicuous interest, still
the idea of its universal communicability almost indefinitely augments
its value.
This interest, indirectly attached to the beautiful by the
inclination towards society, and, consequently, empirical, is,
however, of no importance for us here. For that to which we have alone
to look is what can have a bearing a priori, even though indirect,
upon the judgement of taste. For, if even in this form an associated
interest should betray itself, taste would then reveal a transition on
the part of our critical faculty. from the enjoyment of sense to the
moral feeling. This would not merely mean that we should be supplied
with a more effectual guide for the final employment of taste, but
taste would further be presented as a link in the chain' of the
human faculties a priori upon which all legislation, depend. This much
may certainly be said of the empirical interest in objects of taste,
and in taste itself, that as taste thus pays homage to inclination,
however refined, such interest will nevertheless readily fuse also
with all inclinations and passions, which in society attain to their
greatest variety and highest degree, and the interest in the
beautiful, if this is made its ground, can but afford a very ambiguous
transition from the agreeable to the good. We have reason, however, to
inquire whether this transition may not still in some way be furthered
by means of taste when taken in its purity.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 215}
-
SS 42. The intellectual interest in the beautiful.
-
It has been with the best intentions that those who love to see in
the ultimate end of humanity, namely the morally good, the goal of all
activities to which men are impelled by the inner bent of their
nature, have regarded it as a mark of a good moral character to take
an interest in the beautiful generally. But they have, not without
reason, been contradicted, by others, who appeal to the fact of
experience, that virtuosi in matters of taste being not alone often,
but one might say as a general rule, vain, capricious, and addicted to
injurious passions, could perhaps more rarely than others lay claim to
any pre-eminent attachment to moral principles. And so it would
seem, not only that the feeling for the beautiful is specifically
different from the moral feeling (which as a matter of fact is the
case), but also that the interest which we may combine with it will
hardly consort with the moral, and certainly not on grounds of inner
affinity.
Now I willingly admit that the interest in the beautiful of art
(including under this heading the artificial use of natural beauties
for personal adornment, and so from vanity) gives no evidence at all
of a habit of mind attached to the morally good, or even inclined that
way. But, on the other hand, I do maintain that to take an immediate
interest in the beauty of nature (not merely to have taste in
estimating it) is always a mark of a good soul; and that, where this
interest is habitual, it is at least indicative of a temper of mind
favourable to the moral feeling that it should readily associate
itself with the contemplation of nature. It must, however, be borne in
mind that I mean to refer strictly to the beautiful forms of nature,
and to put to one side the charms which she is wont so lavishly to
combine with them; because, though the interest in these is no doubt
immediate, it is nevertheless empirical.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 220}
One who alone (and without any intention of communicating his
observations to others) regards the beautiful form of a wild flower, a
bird, an insect, or the like, out of admiration and love of them,
and being loath to let them escape him in nature, even at the risk
of some misadventure to himself-so far from there being any prospect
of advantage to him-such a one takes an immediate, and in fact
intellectual, interest in the beauty of nature. This means that he
is not alone pleased with nature's product in respect of its form, but
is also pleased at its existence, and is so without any charm of sense
having a share in the matter, or without his associating with it any
end whatsoever.
In this connection, however, it is of note that were we to play a
trick on our lover of the beautiful, and plant in the ground
artificial flowers (which can be made so as to look just like
natural ones), and perch artfully carved birds on the branches of
trees, and he were to find out how he had been taken in, the immediate
interest which these things previously had for him would at once
vanish-though, perhaps, a different interest might intervene in its
stead, that, namely, of vanity in decorating his room with them for
the eyes of others. The fact is that our intuition and reflection must
have as their concomitant the thought that the beauty in question is
nature's handiwork; and this is the sole basis of the immediate
interest that is taken in it. Failing this, we are either left with
a bare judgement of taste void of all interest whatever, or else
only with one that is combined with an interest that is mediate,
involving, namely, a reference to society; which latter affords no
reliable indication of morally good habits of thought.
The superiority which natural beauty has over that of art, even
where it is excelled by the latter in point of form, in yet being
alone able to awaken an immediate interest, accords with the refined
and well-grounded habits of thought of all men who have cultivated
their moral feeling. If a man with taste enough to judge of works of
fine art with the greatest correctness and refinement readily quits
the room in which he meets with those beauties that minister to vanity
or, at least, social joys, and betakes himself to the beautiful in
nature, so that he may there find as it were a feast for his soul in a
train of thought which he can never completely evolve, we will then
regard this his choice even with veneration, and give him credit for a
beautiful soul, to which no connoisseur or art collector can lay claim
on the score of the interest which his objects have for him. Here,
now, are two kinds of objects which in the judgement of mere taste
could scarcely contend with one another for a superiority. What
then, is the distinction that makes us hold them in such different
esteem?
We have a faculty of judgement which is merely aesthetic-a faculty
of judging of forms without the aid of concepts, and of finding, in
the mere estimate of them, a delight that we at the same time make
into a rule for every one, without this judgement being founded on
an interest, or yet producing one. On the other hand, we have also a
faculty of intellectual judgement for the mere forms of practical
maxims (so far as they are of themselves qualified for universal
legislation)-a faculty of determining an a priori delight, which we
make into a law for everyone, without our judgement being founded on
any interest, though here it produces one. The pleasure or displeasure
in the former judgement is called that of taste; the latter is
called that of the moral feeling.
But, now, reason is further interested in ideas (for which in our
moral feeling it brings about an immediate interest), having also
objective reality. That is to say, it is of interest to reason that
nature should at least show a trace or give a hint that it contains in
itself some ground or other for assuming a uniform accordance of its
products with our wholly disinterested delight (a delight which we
cognize-a priori as a law for every one without being able to ground
it upon proofs). That being so, reason must take an interest in
every manifestation on the part of nature of some such accordance.
Hence the mind cannot reflect on the beauty of nature without at the
same time finding its interest engaged. But this interest is akin to
the moral. One, then, who takes such an interest in the beautiful in
nature can only do so in so far as he has previously set his
interest deep in the foundations of the morally good. On these grounds
we have reason for presuming the presence of at least the germ of a
good moral disposition in the case of a man to whom the beauty of
nature is a matter of immediate interest.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 225}
It will be said that this interpretation of aesthetic judgements
on the basis of kinship with our moral feeling has far too studied
an appearance to be accepted as the true construction of the cypher in
which nature speaks to us figuratively in its beautiful forms. But,
first of all, this immediate interest in the beauty of nature is not
in fact common. It is peculiar to those whose habits of thought are
already trained to the good or else are eminently susceptible of
such training; and under the circumstances the analogy in which the
pure judgement of taste that, without relying upon any interest, gives
us a feeling of delight, and at the same time represents it a priori
as proper to mankind in general, stands to the moral judgement that
does just the same from concepts, is one which, without any clear,
subtle, and deliberate reflection, conduces to a like immediate
interest being taken in the objects of the former judgement as in
those of the latter-with this one difference, that the interest in the
first case is free, while in the latter it is one founded on objective
laws. In addition to this, there is our admiration of Nature, which in
her beautiful products displays herself as art, not as mere matter
of chance, but, as it were, designedly, according to a law-directed
arrangement, and as finality apart from any end. As we never meet with
such an end outside ourselves, we naturally look for it in
ourselves, and, in fact, in that which constitutes the ultimate end of
our existence-the moral side of our being. (The inquiry into the
ground of the possibility of such a natural finality will, however,
first come under discussion in the Teleology.)
The fact that the delight in beautiful art does not, in the pure
judgement of taste, involve an immediate interest, as does that in
beautiful nature, may be readily explained. For the former is either
such an imitation of the latter as goes the length of deceiving us, in
which case it acts upon us in the character of a natural beauty, which
we take it to be; or else it is an intentional art obviously
directed to our delight. In the latter case, however, the delight in
the product would, it is true, be brought about immediately by
taste, but there would be nothing but a mediate interest in the
cause that lay beneath-an interest, namely, in an art only capable
of interesting by its end, and never in itself. It will, perhaps, be
said that this is also the case where an object of nature only
interests by its beauty so far as a moral idea is brought into
partnership therewith. But it is not the object that is of immediate
interest, but rather the inherent character of the beauty qualifying
it for such a partnership-a character, therefore, that belongs to
the very essence of beauty.
The charms in natural beauty, which are to be found blended, as it
were, so frequently with beauty of form, belong either to the
modifications of light (in colouring) or of sound (in tones). For
these are the only sensations which permit not merely of a feeling
of the senses, but also of reflection upon the form of these
modifications of sense, and so embody as it were a language in which
nature speaks to us and which has the semblance of a higher meaning.
Thus the white colour of the lily seems to dispose the mind to ideas
of innocence, and the other seven colours, following the series from
the red to the violet, similarly to ideas of (1) sublimity, (2)
courage, (3) candour, (4) amiability, (5) modesty, (6) constancy,
(7) tenderness. The bird's song tells of joyousness and contentment
with its existence. At least so we interpret nature-whether such be
its purpose or not. But it is the indispensable requisite of the
interest which we here take in beauty, that the beauty should be
that of nature, and it vanishes completely as soon as we are conscious
of having been deceived, and that it is only the work of art-so
completely that even taste can then no longer find in it anything
beautiful nor sight anything attractive. What do poets set more
store on than the nightingale's bewitching and beautiful note, in a
lonely thicket on a still summer evening by the soft light of the
moon? And yet we have instances of how, where no such songster was
to be found, a jovial host has played a trick on the guests with him
on a visit to enjoy the country air, and has done so to their huge
satisfaction, by biding in a thicket a rogue of a youth who (with a
reed or rush in his mouth) knew how to reproduce this note so as to
hit off nature to perfection. But the instant one realizes that it
is all a fraud no one will long endure listening to this song that
before was regarded as so attractive. And it is just the same with the
song of any other bird. It must be nature, or be mistaken by us for
nature, to enable us to take an immediate interest in the beautiful as
such; and this is all the more so if we can even call upon others to
take a similar interest. And such a demand we do in fact make, since
we regard as coarse and low the habits of thought of those who have no
feeling for beautiful nature (for this is the word we use for
susceptibility to an interest in the contemplation of beautiful
nature), and who devote themselves to the mere enjoyments of sense
found in eating and drinking.
-
SS 43. Art in general.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 230}
-
(1.) Art is distinguished from nature as making (facere) is from
acting or operating in general (agere), and the product or the
result of the former is distinguished from that of the latter as
work (opus) from operation (effectus).
By right it is only production through freedom, i.e., through an act
of will that places reason at the basis of its action, that should
be termed art. For, although we are pleased to call what bees
produce (their regularly constituted cells) a work of art, we only
do so on the strength of an analogy with art; that is to say, as
soon as we call to mind that no rational deliberation forms the
basis of their labour, we say at once that it is a product of their
nature (of instinct), and it is only to their Creator that we
ascribe it as art.
If, as sometimes happens, in a search through a bog, we light on a
piece of hewn wood, we do not say it is a product of nature but of
art. Its producing cause had an end in view to which the object owes
its form. Apart from such cases, we recognize an art in everything
formed in such a way that its actuality must have been preceded by a
representation of the thing in its cause (as even in the case of the
bees), although the effect could not have been thought by the cause.
But where anything is called absolutely a work of art, to
distinguish it from a natural product, then some work of man is always
understood.
(2.) Art, as human skill, is distinguished also from science (as
ability from knowledge), as a practical from a theoretical faculty, as
technic from theory (as the art of surveying from geometry). For
this reason, also, what one can do the' moment one only knows what
is to be done, hence without-anything more than sufficient knowledge
of the desired result, is not called art. To art that alone belongs
which the possession of the most complete knowledge does not involve
one's having then and there the skill to do it. Camper, describes very
exactly how the best shoe must be made, but he, doubtless, was not
able to turn one out himself.*
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 235}
-
*In my part of the country, if you set a common man a problem like
that of Columbus and his egg, he says, "There is no art in that, it is
only science": i.e., you can do it if you know how; and he says just
the same of all the would-be arts of jugglers. To that of the
tight-rope dancer, on the other hand, he has not the least compunction
in giving the name of art.
-
(3.) Art is further distinguished from handicraft. The first is
called free, the other may be called industrial art. We look on the
former as something which could only prove final (be a success) as
play, i.e., an occupation which is agreeable on its own account; but
on the second as labour, i.e., a business, which on its own account is
disagreeable (drudgery), and is only attractive by means of what it
results in (e.g., the pay), and which is consequently capable of being
a compulsory imposition. Whether in the list of arts and crafts we are
to rank watchmakers as artists, and smiths on the contrary as
craftsmen, requires a standpoint different from that here adopted-one,
that is to say, taking account of the proposition of the talents which
the business undertaken in either case must necessarily involve.
Whether, also, among the so-called seven free arts some may not have
been included which should be reckoned as sciences, and many, too,
that resemble handicraft, is a matter I will not discuss here. It is
not amiss, however, to remind the reader of this: that in all free
arts something of a compulsory character is still required, or, as
it is called, a mechanism, without which the soul, which in art must
be free, and which alone gives life to the work, would be bodyless and
evanescent (e.g., in the poetic art there must be correctness and
wealth of language, likewise prosody and metre). For not a few leaders
of a newer school believe that the best way to promote a free art is
to sweep away all restraint and convert it from labour into mere play.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 240}
SS 44. Fine art
-
There is no science of the beautiful, but only a critique. Nor,
again, is there an elegant (schone) science, but only a fine
(schone) art. For a science of the beautiful would have to determine
scientifically, i.e., by means of proofs, whether a thing was to be
considered beautiful or not; and the judgement upon beauty,
consequently, would, if belonging to science, fail to be a judgement
of taste. As for a beautiful science-a science which, as such, is to
be beautiful, is a nonentity. For if, treating it as a science, we
were to ask for reasons and proofs, we would be put off with elegant
phrases (bons mots). What has given rise to the current expression
elegant sciences is, doubtless, no more than this, that common
observation has, quite accurately, noted the fact that for fine art,
in the fulness of its perfection, a large store of science is
required, as, for example, knowledge of ancient languages,
acquaintance with classical authors, history, antiquarian learning,
etc. Hence these historical sciences, owing to the fact that they form
the necessary preparation and groundwork for fine art, and partly also
owing to the fact that they are taken to comprise even the knowledge
of the products of fine art (rhetoric and poetry), have by a-confusion
of words, actually got the name of elegant sciences.
Where art, merely seeking to actualize a possible object to the
cognition of which it is adequate, does whatever acts are required for
that purpose. then it is mechanical. But should the feeling of
pleasure be what it has immediately in view, it is then termed
aesthetic art. As such it may be either agreeable or fine art. The
description "agreeable art" applies where the end of the art is that
the pleasure should accompany the representations considered as mere
sensations, the description "fine art" where it is to accompany them
considered as modes of cognition.
Agreeable arts are those which have mere enjoyment for their object.
Such are all the charms that can gratify a dinner party:
entertaining narrative, the art of starting the whole table in
unrestrained and sprightly conversation, or with jest and laughter
inducing a certain air of gaiety. Here, as the saying goes, there
may be much loose talk over the glasses, without a person wishing to
be brought to book for all he utters, because it is only given out for
the entertainment of the moment, and not as a lasting matter to be
made the subject of reflection or repetition. (Of the same sort is
also the art of arranging the table for enjoyment, or, at large
banquets, the music of the orchestra-a quaint idea intended to act
on the mind merely as an agreeable noise fostering a genial spirit,
which, without any one paying the smallest attention to the
composition, promotes the free flow of conversation between guest
and guest.) In addition must be included play of every kind which is
attended with no further interest than that of making the time pass by
unheeded.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 245}
Fine art, on the other hand, is a mode of representation which is
intrinsically final, and which, although devoid of an end, has the
effect of advancing the culture of the mental powers in the
interests of social communication.
The universal communicability of a pleasure involves in its very
concept that the pleasure is not one of enjoyment arising out of
mere sensation, but must be one of reflection. Hence aesthetic art, as
art which is beautiful, is one having for its standard the
reflective judgement and not organic sensation.
-
SS 45. Fine art is an art, so far as it has at the same
time the appearance of being nature.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 250}
-
A product of fine art must be recognized to be art and not
nature. Nevertheless the finality in its form must appear just as free
from the constraint of arbitrary rules as if it were a product of mere
nature. Upon this feeling of freedom in the play of our cognitive
faculties-which play has at the same time to be final rests that
pleasure which alone is universally communicable without being based
on concepts. Nature proved beautiful when it wore the appearance of
art; and art can only be termed beautiful, where we are conscious of
its being art, while yet it has the appearance of nature.
For, whether we are dealing with beauty of nature or beauty of
art, we may make the universal statement: That is beautiful which
pleases in the mere estimate of it (not in sensation or by means of
a concept). Now art has always got a definite intention of producing
something. Were this "something," however, to be mere sensation
(something merely subjective), intended to be accompanied with
pleasure, then such product would, in our estimation of it, only
please through the agency of the feeling of the senses. On the other
hand, were the intention one directed to the production of a
definite object, then, supposing this were attained by art, the object
would only please by means of a concept. But in both cases the art
would please, not in the mere estimate of it, i.e., not as fine art,
but rather as mechanical art.
Hence the finality in the product of fine art, intentional though it
be, must not have the appearance of being intentional; i.e., fine
art must be clothed with the aspect of nature, although we recognize
it to be art. But the way in which a product of art seems like
nature is by the presence of perfect exactness in the agreement with
rules prescribing how alone the product can be what it is intended
to be, but with an absence of laboured effect (without academic form
betraying itself), i.e., without a trace appearing of the artist
having always had the rule present to him and of its having fettered
his mental powers.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 255}
SS 46. Fine art is the art of genius.
-
Genius is the talent (natural endowment) which gives the rule to
art. Since talent, as an innate productive faculty of the artist,
belongs itself to nature, we may put it this way: Genius is the innate
mental aptitude (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art.
Whatever may be the merits of this definition, and whether it is
merely arbitrary, or whether it is adequate or not to the concept
usually associated with the word genius (a point which the following
sections have to clear up), it may still be shown at the outset
that, according to this acceptation of the word, fine arts must
necessarily be regarded as arts of genius.
For every art presupposes rules which are laid down as the
foundation which first enables a product, if it is to be called one of
art, to be represented as possible. The concept of fine art,
however, does not permit of the judgement upon the beauty of its
product being derived from any rule that has a concept for its
determining ground, and that depends, consequently, on a concept of
the way in which the product is possible. Consequently fine art cannot
of its own self excogitate the rule according to which it is to
effectuate its product. But since, for all that, a product can never
be called art unless there is a preceding rule, it follows that nature
in the individual (and by virtue of the harmony of his faculties) must
give the rule to art, i.e., fine art is only possible as a product
of genius.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 260}
From this it may be seen that genius (1) is a talent for producing
that for which no definite rule can be given, and not an aptitude in
the way of cleverness for what can be learned according to some
rule; and that consequently originality must be its primary
property. (2) Since there may also be original nonsense, its
products must at the same time be models, i.e., be exemplary; and,
consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they
must serve that purpose for others, i.e., as a standard or rule of
estimating. (3) It cannot indicate scientifically how it brings
about its product, but rather gives the rule as nature. Hence, where
an author owes a product to his genius, he does not himself know how
the ideas for it have entered into his head, nor has he it in his
power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate
the same to others in such precepts as would put them in a position to
produce similar products. (Hence, presumably, our word Genie is
derived from genius, as the peculiar guardian and guiding spirit given
to a man at his birth, by the inspiration of which those original
ideas were obtained.) (4) Nature prescribes the rule through genius
not to science but to art, and this also only in so far as it is to be
fine art.
-
SS 47. Elucidation and confirmation of the above
explanation of genius.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 265}
Every one is agreed on the point of the complete opposition
between genius and the spirit of imitation. Now since learning is
nothing but imitation, the greatest ability, or aptness as a pupil
(capacity), is still, as such, not equivalent to genius. Even though a
man weaves his own thoughts or fancies, instead of merely taking in
what others have thought, and even though he go so far as to bring
fresh gains to art and science, this does not afford a valid reason
for calling such a man of brains, and often great brains, a genius, in
contradistinction to one who goes by the name of shallow-pate, because
he can never do more than merely learn and follow a lead. For what
is accomplished in this way is something that could have been learned.
Hence it all lies in the natural path of investigation and
reflection according to rules, and so is not specifically
distinguishable from what may be acquired as the result of industry
backed up by imitation. So all that Newton bas set forth in his
immortal work on the Principles of Natural Philosophy may well be
learned, however great a mind it took to find it all out, but we
cannot learn to write in a true poetic vein, no matter how complete
all the precepts of the poetic art may be, or however excellent its
models. The reason is that all the steps that Newton had to take
from the first elements of geometry to his greatest and most
profound discoveries were such as he could make intuitively evident
and plain to follow, not only for himself but for every one else. On
the other hand, no Homer or Wieland can show how his ideas, so rich at
once in fancy and in thought, enter and assemble themselves in his
brain, for the good reason that he does not himself know, and so
cannot teach others. In matters of science, therefore, the greatest
inventor differs only in degree from the most laborious imitator and
apprentice, whereas he differs specifically from one endowed by nature
for fine art. No disparagement, however, of those great men, to whom
the human race is so deeply indebted, is involved in this comparison
of them with those who on the score of their talent for fine art are
the elect of nature. The talent for science is formed for the
continued advances of greater perfection in knowledge, with all its
dependent practical advantages, as also for imparting the same to
others. Hence scientists can boast a ground of considerable
superiority over those who merit the honour of being called
geniuses, since genius reaches a point at which art must make a
halt, as there is a limit imposed upon it which it cannot transcend.
This limit has in all probability been long since attained. In
addition, such skill cannot be communicated, but requires to be
bestowed directly from the hand of nature upon each individual, and so
with him it dies, awaiting the day when nature once again endows
another in the same way-one who needs no more than an example to set
the talent of which he is conscious at work on similar lines.
Seeing, then, that the natural endowment of art (as fine art) must
furnish the rule, what kind of rule must this be? It cannot be one set
down in a formula and serving as a precept-for then the judgement upon
the beautiful would be determinable according to concepts. Rather must
the rule be gathered from the performance, i.e., from the product,
which others may use to put their own talent to the test, so as to let
it serve as a model, not for imitation, but for following. The
possibility of this is difficult to explain. The artist's ideas arouse
like ideas on the part of his pupil, presuming nature to have
visited him with a like proportion of the mental Powers. For this
reason, the models of fine art are the only means of handing down this
art to posterity. This is something which cannot be done by mere
descriptions (especially not in the line of the arts of speech), and
in these arts, furthermore, only those models can become classical
of which the ancient, dead languages, preserved as learned, are the
medium.
Despite the marked difference that distinguishes mechanical art,
as an art merely depending upon industry and learning, from fine
art, as that of genius, there is still no fine art in which
something mechanical, capable of being at once comprehended and
followed in obedience to rules, and consequently something academic,
does not constitute the essential condition of the art. For the
thought of something as end must be present, or else its product would
not be ascribed to an art at all, but would be a mere product of
chance. But the effectuation of an end necessitates determinate
rules which we cannot venture to dispense with. Now, seeing that
originality of talent is one (though not the sole) essential factor
that goes to make up the character of genius, shallow minds fancy that
the best evidence they can give of their being full-blown geniuses
is by emancipating themselves from all academic constraint of rules,
in the belief that one cuts a finer figure on the back of an
ill-tempered than of a trained horse. Genius can do no more than
furnish rich material for products of fine art; its elaboration and
its form require a talent academically trained, so that it may be
employed in such a way as to stand the test of judgement. But, for a
person to hold forth and pass sentence like a genius in matters that
fall to the province of the most patient rational investigation, is
ridiculous in the extreme.1 One is at a loss to know whether to
laugh more at the impostor who envelops himself in such a cloud-in
which we are given fuller scope to our imagination at the expense of
all use of our critical faculty-or at the simple-minded public which
imagines that its inability clearly to cognize and comprehend this
masterpiece of penetration is due to its being invaded by new truths
en masse, in comparison with which, detail, due to carefully weighed
exposition and an academic examination of root principles, seems to it
only the work of a tyro.
-
SS 48. The relation of genius to taste.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 270}
-
For estimating beautiful objects, as such, what is required is
taste; but for fine art, i.e., the production of such objects, one
needs genius.
If we consider genius as the talent for fine art (which the proper
signification of the word imports), and if we would analyse it from
this point of view into the faculties which must concur to
constitute such a talent, it is imperative at the outset accurately to
determine the difference between beauty of nature, which it only
requires taste to estimate, and beauty of art, which requires genius
for its possibility (a possibility to which regard must also be paid
in estimating such an object).
A beauty of nature is a beautiful thing; beauty of art is a
beautiful representation of a thing.
To enable me to estimate a beauty of nature, as such, I do not
need to be previously possessed of a concept of what sort of a thing
the object is intended to be, i.e., I am not obliged to know its
material finality (the end), but, rather, in forming an estimate of it
apart from any knowledge of the end, the mere form pleases on its
own account. If, however, the object is presented as a product of art,
and is as such to be declared beautiful, then, seeing that art
always presupposes an end in the cause (and its causality), a
concept of what the thing is intended to be must first of all be
laid at its basis. And, since the agreement of the manifold in a thing
with an inner character belonging to it as its end constitutes the
perfection of the thing, it follows that in estimating beauty of art
the perfection of the thing must be also taken into account-a matter
which in estimating a beauty of nature, as beautiful, is quite
irrevelant. It is true that in forming an estimate, especially of
animate objects of nature, e.g., of a man or a horse, objective
finality is also commonly taken into account with a view to
judgement upon their beauty; but then the judgement also ceases to
be purely aesthetic, i.e., a mere judgement of taste. Nature is no
longer estimated as it appears like art, but rather in so far as it
actually is art, though superhuman art; and the teleological judgement
serves as a basis and condition of the aesthetic, and one which the
latter must regard. In such a case, where one says, for example, "That
is a beautiful woman," what one in fact thinks is only this, that in
her form nature excellently portrays the ends present in the female
figure. For one has to extend one's view beyond the mere form to a
concept, to enable the object to be thought in such manner by means of
an aesthetic judgement logically conditioned.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 275}
Where fine art evidences its superiority is in the beautiful
descriptions it gives of things that in nature would be ugly or
displeasing. The Furies, diseases, devastations of war, and the
like, can (as evils) be very beautifully described, nay even
represented in pictures. One kind of ugliness alone is incapable of
being represented conformably to nature without destroying all
aesthetic delight, and consequently artistic beauty, namely, that
which excites disgust. For, as in this strange sensation, which
depends purely on the imagination, the object is represented as
insisting, as it were, upon our enjoying it, while we still set our
face against it, the artificial representation of the object is no
longer distinguishable from the nature of the object itself in our
sensation, and so it cannot possibly be regarded as beautiful. The art
of sculpture, again, since in its products art is almost confused with
nature, has excluded from its creations the direct representation of
ugly objects, and, instead, only sanctions, for example, the
representation of death (in a beautiful genius), or of the warlike
spirit (in Mars), by means of an allegory, or attributes which wear
a pleasant guise, and so only indirectly, through an interpretation on
the part of reason, and not for the pure aesthetic judgement.
So much for the beautiful representation of an object, which is
properly only the form of the presentation of a concept and the
means by which the latter is universally communicated. To give this
form, however, to the product of fine art, taste merely is required.
By this the artist, having practised and corrected his taste by a
variety of examples from nature or art, controls his work and, after
many, and often laborious, attempts to satisfy taste, finds the form
which commends itself to him. Hence this form is not, as it were, a
matter of inspiration, or of a free swing of the mental powers, but
rather of a slow and even painful process of improvement, directed
to making the form adequate to his thought without prejudice to the
freedom in the play of those powers.
Taste is, however, merely a critical, not a productive faculty;
and what conforms to it is not, merely on that account, a work of fine
art. It may belong to useful and mechanical art, or even to science,
as a product following definite rules which are capable of being
learned and which must be closely followed. But the pleasing form
imparted to the work is only the vehicle of communication and a
mode, as it were, of execution, in respect of which one remains to a
certain extent free, notwithstanding being otherwise tied down to a
definite end. So we demand that table appointments, or even a moral
dissertation, and, indeed, a sermon, must bear this form of fine
art, yet without its appearing studied. But one would not call them on
this account works of fine art. A poem, a musical composition, a
picture-gallery, and so forth, would, however, be placed under this
head; and so in a would-be work of fine art we may frequently
recognize genius without taste, and in another taste without genius.
-
SS 49. The faculties of the mind which constitute genius.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 280}
-
Of certain products which are expected, partly at least, to stand on
the footing of fine art, we say they are soulless; and this,
although we find nothing to censure in them as far as taste goes. A
poem may be very pretty and elegant, but is soulless. A narrative
has precision and method, but is soulless. A speech on some festive
occasion may be good in substance and ornate withal, but may be
soulless. Conversation frequently is not devoid of entertainment,
but yet soulless. Even of a woman we may well say, she is pretty,
affable, and refined, but soulless. Now what do we here mean by
"soul"?
Soul (Geist) in an aesthetical sense, signifies the animating
principle in the mind. But that whereby this principle animates the
psychic substance (Seele)-the material which it employs for that
purpose-is that which sets the mental powers into a swing that is
final, i.e., into a play which is self-maintaining and which
strengthens those powers for such activity.
Now my proposition is that this principle is nothing else than the
faculty of presenting aesthetic ideas. But, by an aesthetic idea I
mean that representation of the imagination which induces much
thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever,
i.e., concept, being adequate to it, and which language, consequently,
can never get quite on level terms with or render completely
intelligible. It is easily seen, that an aesthetic idea is the
counterpart (pendant) of a rational idea, which, conversely, is a
concept, to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can
be adequate.
The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a powerful
agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material
supplied to it by actual nature. It affords us entertainment where
experience proves too commonplace; and we even use it to remodel
experience, always following, no doubt, laws that are based on
analogy, but still also following principles which have a higher
seat in reason (and which are every whit as natural to us as those
followed by the understanding in laying hold of empirical nature).
By this means we get a sense of our freedom from the law of
association' (which attaches to the empirical employment of the
imagination), with the result that the material can be borrowed by
us from nature in accordance with that law, but be worked up by us
into something else-namely, what surpasses nature.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 285}
Such representations of the imagination may be termed ideas. This is
partly because they at least strain after something lying out beyond
the confines of experience, and so seek to approximate to a
presentation of rational concepts (i.e., intellectual ideas), thus
giving to these concepts the semblance of an objective reality. But,
on the other hand, there is this most important reason, that no
concept can be wholly adequate to them as internal intuitions. The
poet essays the task of interpreting to sense the rational ideas of
invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity,
creation, etc. Or, again, as to things of which examples occur in
experience, e.g., death, envy, and all vices, as also love, fame,
and the like, transgressing the limits of experience he attempts
with the aid of an imagination which emulates the display of reason in
its attainment of a maximum, to body them forth to sense with a
completeness. of which: nature affords no parallel; and it is in' fact
precisely in the poetic art that the faculty of aesthetic ideas can
show itself to full advantage. This faculty, however, regarded
solely on its own account, is properly no more than a talent' (of
the imagination).
If, now, we attach to a concept a representation of the
imagination belonging to its presentation, but inducing solely on
its own account such a wealth of thought as would never admit of
comprehension in a definite concept, and, as a consequence, giving
aesthetically an unbounded expansion to the concept itself, then the
imagination here displays a creative activity, and it puts the faculty
of intellectual ideas (reason) into motion-a motion, at the instance
of a representation, towards an extension of thought, that, while
germane, no doubt, to the concept of the object, exceeds what can be
laid hold of in that representation or clearly expressed.
Those forms which do not constitute the presentation of a given
concept itself, but which,. as secondary representations of the
imagination, express the derivatives connected with it, and its
kinship with other concepts, are called (aesthetic) attributes of an
object, the concept of Which, as an idea of reason, cannot be
adequately presented. In this way Jupiter's eagle, with the
lightning in its claws, is an attribute of the mighty king of
heaven, and the peacock of its stately queen. They do not, like
logical (aesthetic) attributes of an object, the concept of the
sublimity and majesty of creation, but rather something else-something
that gives the imagination an incentive to spread its flight over a
whole host of kindred representations that provoke more thought than
admits of expression in a concept determined by words. They furnish an
aesthetic idea, which serves the above rational idea as a substitute
for logical presentation, but with the proper function, however, of
animating the mind by opening out for it a prospect into a field of
kindred representations stretching beyond its ken. But it is not alone
in the arts of painting or sculpture, where the name of attribute is
customarily employed, that fine art acts in this way; poetry and
rhetoric also drive the soul that animates their work wholly from
the aesthetic attributes of the objects-attributes which go hand in
hand with the logical, and give the imagination an impetus to bring
more thought into: play in the matter, though in an undeveloped
manner, than allows of being brought within the embrace of a
concept, or, therefore, of being definitely formulated in language.
For the sake of brevity I must confine myself to a few examples
only. When the great king expresses himself in one of his poems by
saying:
-
Oui, finissons sans trouble, et mourons sans regrets,
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 290}
En laissant l'Univers comble de nos bienfaits.
Ainsi l'Astre du jour, au bout de sa carriere,
Repand sur l'horizon une douce lumiere,
Et les derniers rayons qu'il darde dans les airs
Sont les derniers soupirs qu'il donne a l'Univers;
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 295}
-
he kindles in this way his rational idea of a cosmopolitan sentiment
even at the close of life, with help of an attribute which the
imagination (in remembering all the pleasures of a fair summer's day
that is over and gone-a memory of which pleasures is suggested by a
serene evening) annexes to that representation, and which stirs up a
crowd of sensations and secondary representations for which no
expression can be found. On the other hand, even an intellectual
concept may serve, conversely, as attribute for a representation of
sense, and so animate the latter with the idea of the supersensible;
but only by the aesthetic factor subjectively attaching to the
consciousness of the supersensible being employed for the purpose. So,
for example, a certain poet says in his description of a beautiful
morning: "The sun arose, as out of virtue rises peace." The
consciousness of virtue, even where we put ourselves only in thought
in the position of a virtuous man, diffuses in the mind a multitude of
sublime and tranquillizing feelings, and gives a boundless outlook
into a happy future, such as no expression within the compass of a
definite concept completely attains.*
-
*Perhaps there has never been a more sublime utterance, or a thought
more sublimely expressed, than the well-known inscription upon the
Temple of Isis (Mother Nature): "I am all that is, and that was, and
that shall be, and no mortal hath raised the veil from before my
face." Segner made use of this idea in a suggestive vignette on the
frontispiece of his Natural Philosophy, in order to inspire his
pupil at the threshold of that temple into which he was about to
lead him, with such a holy awe as would dispose his mind to serious
attention.
-
In a word, the aesthetic idea is a representation of the
imagination, annexed to a given concept, with which, in the free
employment of imagination, such a multiplicity of partial
representations are bound up, that no expression indicating a definite
concept can be found for it one which on that account allows a concept
to be supplemented in thought by much that is indefinable in words,
and the feeling of which quickens the cognitive faculties, and with
language, as a mere thing of the letter, binds up the spirit (soul)
also.
The mental powers whose union in a certain relation constitutes
genius are imagination and understanding. Now, since the
imagination, in its employment on behalf of cognition, is subjected to
the constraint of the understanding and the restriction of having to
be conformable to the concept belonging' thereto, whereas
aesthetically it is free to furnish of its own accord, over and
above that agreement with the concept, a wealth of undeveloped
material for the understanding, to which the latter paid no regard
in its concept, but which it can make use of, not so much
objectively for cognition, as subjectively for quickening the
cognitive faculties, and hence also indirectly for cognitions, it
may be seen that genius properly consists in the happy relation, which
science cannot teach nor industry learn, enabling one to find out
ideas for a given concept, and, besides, to hit upon the expression
for them-the expression by means of which the subjective mental
condition induced by the ideas as the concomitant of a concept may
be communicated to others. This latter talent is properly that which
is termed soul. For to get an expression for what is indefinable in
the mental state accompanying a particular representation and to
make it universally communicable-be the expression in language or
painting or statuary-is a "thing requiring a faculty for laying hold
of the rapid and transient play of the imagination, and for unifying
it in a concept (which for that very reason is original, and reveals a
new rule which could not have been inferred from any preceding
principles or examples) that admits of communication without any
constraint of rules.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 300}
-
If, after this analysis, we cast a glance back upon the above
definition of what is called genius, we find: First, that it is a
talent for art-not one for science, in which clearly known rules
must take the lead and determine the procedure. Secondly, being a
talent in the line of art, it presupposes a definite concept of the
product-as its end. Hence it presupposes understanding, but, in
addition, a representation, indefinite though it be, of the
material, i.e., of the intuition, required for the presentation of
that concept, and so a relation of the imagination to the
understanding. Thirdly, it displays itself, not so much in the working
out of the projected end in the presentation of a definite concept, as
rather in the portrayal, or expression of aesthetic ideas containing a
wealth of material for effecting that intention. Consequently the
imagination is represented by it in its freedom from all guidance of
rules, but still as final for the presentation of the given concept.
Fourthly, and lastly, the unsought and undesigned subjective
finality in the free harmonizing of the imagination with the
understanding's conformity to law presupposes a proportion and
accord between these faculties such as cannot be brought about by
any observance of rules, whether of science or mechanical imitation,
but can only be produced by the nature of the individual.
Genius, according to these presuppositions, is the exemplary
originality of the natural endowments of an individual in the free
employment of his cognitive faculties. On this showing, the product of
a genius (in respect of so much in this product as is attributable
to genius, and not to possible learning or academic instruction) is an
example, not for imitation (for that would mean the loss of the
element of genius, and just the very soul of the work), but to be
followed by another genius-one whom it arouses to a sense of his own
originality in putting freedom from the constraint of rules so into
force in his art that for art itself a new rule is won-which is what
shows a talent to be exemplary. Yet, since the genius is one of
nature's elect-a type that must be regarded as but a rare
phenomenon-for other clever minds his example gives rise to a
school, that is to say a methodical instruction according to rules,
collected, so far as the circumstances admit, from such products of
genius and their peculiarities. And, to that extent, fine art is for
such persons a matter of imitation, for which nature, through the
medium of a genius gave the rule.
But this imitation becomes aping when the pupil copies everything
down to the deformities which the genius only of necessity suffered to
remain, because they could hardly be removed without loss of force
to the idea. This courage has merit only in the case of a genius. A
certain boldness of expression and, in general, many a deviation
from the common rule becomes him well, but in no sense is it a thing
worthy of imitation. On the contrary it remains all through
intrinsically a blemish, which one is bound to try to remove, but
for which the genius is, as it were, allowed to plead a privilege,
on the ground that a scrupulous carefulness would spoil what is
inimitable in the impetuous ardour of his soul. Mannerism is another
kind of aping-an aping of peculiarity (originality) in general, for
the sake of removing oneself as far as possible from imitators,
while the talent requisite to enable one to be at the same time
exemplary is absent. There are, in fact, two modes (modi) in general
of arranging one's thoughts for utterance. The one is called a
manner (modus aestheticus), the other a method (modus logicus). The
distinction between them is this: the former possesses no standard
other than the feeling of unity in the presentation, whereas the
latter here follows definite principles. As a consequence, the
former is alone admissible for fine art. It is only, however, where
the manner of carrying the idea into execution in a product of art
is aimed at singularity, instead of being made appropriate to the
idea, that mannerism is properly ascribed to such a product. The
ostentatious (precieux), forced, and affected styles, intended to mark
one out from the common herd (though soul is wanting), resemble the
behaviour of a man who, as we say, hears himself talk, or who stands
and moves about as if he were on a stage to be gaped at-action which
invariably betrays a tyro.
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 305}
SS 50. The combination of taste and genius in
products of fine art.
-
To ask whether more stress should be laid in matters of fine art
upon the presence of genius or upon that of taste, is equivalent to
asking whether more turns upon imagination or upon judgement. Now,
imagination rather entitles an art to be called an inspired
(geistreiche) than a fine art. It is only in respect of judgement that
the name of fine art is deserved. Hence it follows that judgement,
being the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non), is at least
what one must look to as of capital importance in forming an
estimate of art as fine art. So far as beauty is concerned, to be
fertile and original in ideas is not such an imperative requirement as
it is that the imagination in its freedom should be in accordance with
the understanding's conformity to law. For, in lawless freedom,
imagination, with all its wealth, produces nothing but nonsense; the
power of judgement, on the other hand, is the faculty that makes it
consonant with understanding.
Taste, like judgement in general, is the discipline (or
corrective) of genius. It severely clips its wings, and makes it
orderly or polished; but at the same time it gives it guidance
directing and controlling its flight, so that it may preserve its
character of finality. It introduces a clearness and order into the
plenitude of thought, and in so doing gives stability to the ideas,
and qualifies them at once for permanent and universal approval, for
being followed by others, and for a continually progressive culture.
And so, where the interests of both these qualities clash in a
product, and there has to be a sacrifice of something, then it
should rather be on the side of genius; and judgement, which in
matters of fine art bases its decision on its own proper principles,
will more readily endure an abatement of the freedom and wealth of the
imagination than that the understanding should be compromised.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 310}
The requisites for fine art are, therefore, imagination,
understanding, soul, and taste.*
-
*The first three faculties are first brought into union by means
of the fourth. Hume, in his history, informs the English that although
they are second in their works to no other people in the world in
respect the evidences they afford of the three first qualities
separately considered, still in what unites them they must yield to
their neighbours, the French.
-
SS 51. The division of the fine arts.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 315}
-
Beauty (whether it be of nature or of art) may in general be
termed the expression of aesthetic ideas. But the provision must be
added that with beauty of art this idea must be excited through the
medium of a concept of the object, whereas with beauty of nature the
bare reflection upon a given intuition, apart from any concept of what
the object is intended to be, is sufficient for awakening and
communicating the idea of which that object is regarded as the
expression.
Accordingly, if we wish to make a division of the fine arts, we
can choose for that purpose, tentatively at least, no more
convenient principle than the analogy which art bears to the mode of
expression of which men avail themselves in speech with a view to
communicating themselves to one another as completely as possible,
i.e., not merely in respect of their concepts but in respect of
their sensations also.* Such expression consists in word, gesture, and
tone (articulation, gesticulation, and modulation). It is the
combination of these three modes of expression which alone constitutes
a complete communication of the speaker. For thought, intuition, and
sensation are in this way conveyed to others simultaneously and in
conjunction.
-
*The reader is not to consider this scheme for a possible division
of the fine arts as a deliberate theory. It is only one of the various
attempts that can and ought to be made.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 320}
-
Hence there are only three kinds of fine art: the art of speech,
formative art, and the art of the play of sensations (as external
sense impressions). This division might also be arranged as a
dichotomy, so that fine art would be divided into that of the
expression of thoughts or intuitions, the latter being subdivided
according to the distinction between the form and the matter
(sensation). It would, however, in that case appear too abstract,
and less in line with popular concepztions.
(1) The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the
art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it
were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a
free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the
understanding.
Thus the orator announces a serious business, and for the purpose of
entertaining his audience conducts it as if it were a mere play with
ideas. The poet promises merely an entertaining play with ideas, and
yet for the understanding there enures as much as if the promotion
of its business had been his one intention. The combination and
harmony of the two faculties of cognition, sensibility and
understanding, which, though doubtless indispensable to one another,
do not readily permit of being united without compulsion and
reciprocal abatement, must have the appearance of being undesigned and
a spontaneous occurrence-otherwise it is not fine art. For this reason
what is studied and laboured must be here avoided. For fine art must
be free art in a double sense: i.e., not alone in a sense opposed to
contract work, as not being a work the magnitude of which may be
estimated, exacted, or paid for, according to a definite standard, but
free also in the sense that, while the mind, no doubt, occupies
itself, still it does so without ulterior regard to any other end, and
yet with a feeling of satisfaction and stimulation (independent of
reward).
The orator, therefore, gives something which he does not promise,
viz., an entertaining play of the imagination. On the other hand,
there is something in which he fails to come up to his promise, and
a thing, too, which is his avowed business, namely, the engagement
of the understanding to some end. The poet's promise, on the contrary,
is a modest one, and a mere play with ideas is all he holds out to us,
but he accomplishes something worthy of being made a serious business,
namely, the using of play to provide food for the understanding, and
the giving of life to its concepts by means of the imagination.
Hence the orator in reality performs less than he promises, the poet
more.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 325}
(2) The formative arts, or those for the expression of ideas in
sensuous intuition (not by means of representations of mere
imagination that are excited by words) are arts either of sensuous
truth or of sensuous semblance. The first is called plastic art, the
second painting. Both use figures in space for the expression of
ideas: the former makes figures discernible to two senses, sight and
touch (though, so far as the latter sense is concerned, without regard
to beauty), the latter makes them so to the former sense alone. The
aesthetic idea (archetype, original) is the fundamental basis of
both in the imagination; but the figure which constitutes its
expression (the ectype, the copy) is given either in its bodily
extension (the way the object itself exists) or else in accordance
with the picture which it forms of itself in the eye (according to its
appearance when projected on a flat surface). Or, whatever the
archetype is, either the reference to an actual end or only the
semblance of one may be imposed upon reflection as its condition.
To plastic art, as the first kind of formative fine art, belong
sculpture and architecture. The first is that which presents
concepts of things corporeally, as they might exist in nature
(though as fine art it directs its attention to aesthetic finality).
The second is the art of presenting concepts of things which are
possible only through art, and the determining ground of whose form is
not nature but an arbitrary end-and of presenting them both with a
view to this purpose and yet, at the same time, with aesthetic
finality. In architecture the chief point is a certain use of the
artistic object to which, as the condition, the aesthetic ideas are
limited. In sculpture the mere expression of aesthetic ideas is the
main intention. Thus statues of men, gods, animals, etc., belong to
sculpture; but temples, splendid buildings for public concourse, or
even dwelling-houses, triumphal arches, columns, mausoleums, etc.,
erected as monuments, belong to architecture, and in fact all
household furniture (the work of cabinetmakers, and so forth-things
meant to be used) may be added to the list, on the ground that
adaptation of the product to a particular use is the essential element
in a work of architecture. On the other hand, a mere piece of
sculpture, made simply to be looked at and intended to please on its
own account, is, as a corporeal presentation, a mere imitation of
nature, though one in which regard is paid to aesthetic ideas, and
in which, therefore, sensuous truth should not go the length of losing
the appearance of being an art and a product of the elective will.
Painting, as the second kind of formative art, which presents the
sensuous semblance in artful combination with ideas, I would divide
into that of the beautiful Portrayal of nature, and that of the
beautiful arrangement of its products. The first is painting proper,
the second landscape gardening. For the first gives only the semblance
of bodily extension; whereas the second, giving this, no doubt,
according to its truth, gives only the semblance of utility and
employment for ends other than the play of the imagination in the
contemplation of its forms.* The latter consists in no more than
decking out the ground with the same manifold variety (grasses,
flowers, shrubs, and trees, and even water, hills, and dales) as
that with which nature presents it to our view, only arranged
differently and in obedience to certain ideas. The beautiful
arrangement of corporeal things, however, is also a thing for the
eye only, just like painting-the sense of touch can form no intuitable
representation of such a form, In addition I would place under the
head of painting, in the wide sense, the decoration of rooms by
means of hangings, ornamental accessories, and all beautiful furniture
the sole function of which is to be looked at; and in the same way the
art of tasteful dressing (with rings, snuffboxes, etc.). For a
parterre of various flowers, a room with a variety of ornaments
(including even the ladies' attire), go to make at a festal
gathering a sort of picture which, like pictures in the true sense
of the word (those which are not intended to teach history or
natural science), has no business beyond appealing to the eye, in
order to entertain the imagination in free play with ideas, and to
engage actively the aesthetic judgement independently of any
definite end. No matter how heterogeneous, on the mechanical side, may
be the craft involved in all this decoration, and no matter what a
variety of artists may be required, still the judgement of taste, so
far as it is one upon what is beautiful in this art, is determined
in one and the same way: namely, as a judgement only upon the forms
(without regard to any end) as they present themselves to the eye,
singly or in combination, according to their effect upon the
imagination. The justification, however, of bringing formative art (by
analogy) under a common head with gesture in a speech, lies in the
fact that through these figures the soul of the artists furnishes a
bodily expression for the substance and character of his thought,
and makes the thing itself speak, as it were, in mimic language-a very
common play of our fancy, that attributes to lifeless things a soul
suitable to their form, and that uses them as its mouthpiece.
-
*It seems strange that landscape gardening may be regarded as a kind
of painting, notwithstanding that it presents its forms corporeally.
But, as it takes its forms bodily from nature (the trees, shrubs,
grasses, and flowers taken, originally at least, from wood and
field) it is to that extent not an art such as, let us say, plastic
art. Further, the arrangement which it makes is not conditioned by any
concept of the object or of its end (as is the case in sculpture), but
by the mere free play of the imagination in the act of
contemplation. Hence it bears a degree of resemblance to simple
aesthetic painting that has no definite theme (but by means of light
and shade makes a pleasing composition of atmosphere, land, and
water.)
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 330}
-
(3) The art of the beautiful play of sensations (sensations that
arise from external stimulation), which is a play of sensations that
has nevertheless to permit of universal communication, can only be
concerned with the proportion of the different degrees of tension in
the sense to which the sensation belongs, i.e., with its tone. In this
comprehensive sense of the word, it may be divided into the artificial
play of sensations of hearing and of sight, consequently into music
and the art of colour. It is of note that these two senses, over and
above such susceptibility for impressions as is required to obtain
concepts of external objects by means of these impressions, also admit
of a peculiar associated sensation of which we cannot well determine
whether it is based on sense or reflection; and that this
sensibility may at times be wanting, although the sense, in other
respects, and in what concerns its employment for the cognition of
objects, is by no means deficient but particularly keen. In other
words, we cannot confidently assert whether a colour or a tone (sound)
is merely an agreeable sensation, or whether they are in themselves
a beautiful play of sensations, and in being estimated
aesthetically, convey, as such, a delight in their form. If we
consider the velocity of the vibrations of light, or, in the second
case, of the air, which in all probability far outstrips any
capacity on our part for forming an immediate estimate in perception
of the time interval between them, we should be led to believe that it
is only the effect of those vibrating movements upon the elastic parts
of our body, that can be evident to sense, but that the
time-interval between them is not noticed nor involved in our
estimate, and that, consequently, all that enters into combination
with colours and tones is agreeableness, and not beauty, of their
composition. But, let us consider, on the other hand, first, the
mathematical character both of the proportion of those vibrations in
music, and of our judgement upon it, and, as is reasonable, form an
estimate of colour contrasts on the analogy of the latter. Secondly,
let us consult the instances, albeit rare, of men who, with the best
of sight, have failed to distinguish colours, and, with the sharpest
hearing, to distinguish tones, while for men who have this ability the
perception of an altered quality (not merely of the degree of the
sensation) in the case of the different intensities in the scale of
colours or tones is definite, as is also the number of those which may
be intelligibly distinguished. Bearing all this in mind, we may feel
compelled to look upon the sensations afforded by both, not as mere
sense-impressions, but as the effect of an estimate of form in the
play of a number of sensations. The difference which the one opinion
or the other occasions in the estimate of the basis of music would,
however, only give rise to this much change in its definition, that
either it is to be interpreted, as we have done, as the beautiful play
of sensations (through bearing), or else as one of agreeable
sensations. According to the former interpretation, alone, would music
be represented out and out as a fine art, whereas according to the
latter it would be represented as (in part at least) an agreeable art.
-
SS 52. The combination of the fine arts in one and
the same product.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 335}
-
Rhetoric may in a drama be combined with a pictorial presentation as
well of its subjects as of objects; as may poetry with music in a
song; and this again with a pictorial (theatrical) presentation in
an opera; and so may the play of sensations in a piece of music with
the play of figures in a dance, and so on. Even the presentation of
the sublime, so far as it belongs to fine art, may be brought into
union with beauty in a tragedy in verse, a didactic poem or an
oratorio, and in this combination fine art is even more artistic.
Whether it is also more beautiful (having regard to the multiplicity
of different kinds of delight which cross one another) may in some
of these instances be doubted. Still in all fine art the essential
element consists in the form which is final for observation and for
estimating. Here the pleasure is at the same time culture, and
disposes the soul to ideas, making it thus susceptible of such
pleasure and entertainment in greater abundance. The matter of
sensation (charm or emotion) is not essential. Here the aim is
merely enjoyment, which leaves nothing behind it in the idea, and
renders the soul dull, the object in the course of time distasteful,
and the mind dissatisfied with itself and ill-humoured, owing to a
consciousness that in the judgement of reason its disposition is
perverse.
Where fine arts are not, either proximately or remotely, brought
into combination with moral ideas, which alone are attended with a
selfsufficing delight, the above is the fate that ultimately awaits
them. They then only serve for a diversion, of which one continually
feels an increasing need in proportion as one has availed oneself of
it as a means of dispelling the discontent of one's mind, with the
result that one makes oneself ever more-and more unprofitable and
dissatisfied with oneself. With a view to the purpose first named, the
beauties of nature are in general the most beneficial, if one is early
habituated to observe, estimate, and admire them.
-
SS 53. Comparative estimate of the aesthetic worth
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 340}
of the fine arts.
-
Poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and is least
willing to be led by precepts or example) holds the first rank among
all the arts. It expands the mind by giving freedom to the imagination
and by offering, from among the boundless multiplicity of possible
forms accordant with a given concept, to whose bounds it is
restricted, that one which couples with the presentation of the
concept a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is
completely adequate, and by thus rising aesthetically to ideas. It
invigorates the mind by letting it feel its faculty-free, spontaneous,
and independent of determination by nature of regarding and estimating
nature as phenomenon in the light of aspects which nature of itself
does not afford us in experience, either for sense or understanding,
and of employing it accordingly in behalf of, and as a sort of
schema for, the supersensible. It plays with semblance, which it
produces at will, but not as an instrument of deception; for its
avowed pursuit is merely one of play, which, however, understanding
may turn to good account and employ for its own purpose. Rhetoric,
so far as this is taken to mean the art of persuasion, i.e., the art
of deluding by means of a fair semblance (as ars oratoria), and not
merely excellence of speech (eloquence and style), is a dialectic,
which borrows from poetry only so much as is necessary to win over
men's minds to the side of the speaker before they have weighed the
matter, and to rob their verdict of its freedom. Hence it can be
recommended neither for the bar nor the pulpit. For where civil
laws, the right of individual persons, or the permanent instruction
and determination of men's minds to a correct knowledge and a
conscientious observance of their duty is at stake, then it is below
the dignity of an undertaking of such moment to exhibit even a trace
of the exuberance of wit and imagination, and, still more, of the
art of talking men round and prejudicing them in favour of any one.
For although such art is capable of being at times directed to ends
intrinsically legitimate and praiseworthy, still it becomes
reprehensible on account of the subjective injury done in this way
to maxims and sentiments, even where objectively the action may be
lawful. For it is not enough to do what is right, but we should
practise it solely on the ground of its being right. Further, the
simple lucid concept of human concerns of this kind, backed up with
lively illustrations of it, exerts of itself, in the absence of any
offence against the rules of euphony of speech or of propriety in
the expression of ideas of reason (all which together make up
excellence of speech), a sufficient influence upon human minds to
obviate the necessity of having recourse here to the machinery of
persuasion, which, being equally available for the purpose of
putting a fine gloss or a cloak upon vice-and error, fails to rid
one completely of the lurking suspicion that one is being artfully
hoodwinked. In poetry everything is straight and above board. It shows
its hand: it desires to carry on a mere entertaining play with the
imagination, and one consonant, in respect of form, with the laws of
understanding, and it does not seek to steal upon and ensnare the
understanding with a sensuous presentation.*
-
*I confess to the pure delight which I have ever been afforded by
a beautiful poem; whereas the reading of the best speech of a Roman
forensic orator, a modern parliamentary debater, or a preacher, has
invariably been mingled with an unpleasant sense of disapproval of
an insidious art that knows how, in matters of moment, to move men
like machines to a judgement that must lose all its weight with them
upon calm reflection. Force and elegance of speech (which together
constitute rhetoric) belong to fine art; but oratory (ars oratoria),
being the art of playing for one's own purpose up-the weaknesses of
men (let this purpose be ever so good in intention or even in fact)
merits no respect whatever. Besides, both at Athens and at Rome, it
only attained its greatest height at a time when the state was
hastening to its decay, and genuine patriotic sentiment was a thing of
the past. One who sees the issue clearly, and who has a command of
language in its wealth and its purity, and who is possessed of an
imagination that is fertile and effective in presenting his ideas, and
whose heart, withal, turns with lively sympathy to what is truly
good-he is the vir bonus dicendi peritus, the orator without art,
but of great impressiveness, Cicero would have him, though he may
not himself always always remained faithful to this ideal.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 345}
-
After poetry, if we take charm and mental stimulation into
account, I would give the next place to that art which comes nearer to
it than to any other art of speech, and admits of very natural union
with it, namely the art of tone. For though it speaks by means of mere
sensations without concepts, and so does not, like poetry, leave
behind it any food for reflection, still it moves the mind more
diversely, and, although with transient, still with intenser effect.
It is certainly, however, more a matter of enjoyment than of
culture-the play of thought incidentally excited by it being merely
the effect of a more or less mechanical association-and it possesses
less worth in the eyes of reason than any other of the fine arts.
Hence, like all enjoyment, it calls for constant change, and does
not stand frequent repetition without inducing weariness. Its charm,
which admits of such universal communication, appears to rest on the
following facts. Every expression in language has an associated tone
suited to its sense. This tone indicates, more or less, a mode in
which the speaker is affected, and in turn evokes it in the hearer
also, in whom conversely it then also excites the idea which in
language is expressed with such a tone. Further, just as modulation
is, as it were, a universal language of sensations intelligible to
every man, so the art of tone wields the full force of this language
wholly on its own account, namely, as a language of the affections,
and in this way, according to the law of association, universally
communicates the aesthetic ideas that are naturally combined
therewith. But, further, inasmuch as those aesthetic ideas are not
concepts or determinate thoughts, the form of the arrangement of these
sensations (harmony and melody), taking the place of the place of
the form of a language, only serves the purpose of giving an
expression to the aesthetic idea of an integral whole of an
unutterable wealth of thought that fills the measure of a certain
theme forming the dominant affection in the piece. This purpose is
effectuated by means of a proposition in the accord of the
sensations (an accord which may be brought mathematically under
certain rules, since it rests, in the case of tones, upon the
numerical relation of the vibrations of the air in the same time, so
far as there is a combination of the tones simultaneously or in
succession). Although this mathematical form is not represented by
means of determinate concepts, to it alone belongs the delight which
the mere reflection upon such a number of concomitant or consecutive
sensations couples with this their play, as the universally valid
condition of its beauty, and it is with reference to it alone that
taste can lay claim to a right to anticipate the judgement of every
man.
But mathematics, certainly, does not play the smallest part in the
charm and movement of the mind produced by music. Rather is it only
the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non) of that proportion
of the combining as well as changing impressions which makes it
possible to grasp them all in one and prevent them from destroying one
another, and to let them, rather, conspire towards the production of a
continuous movement and quickening of the mind by affections that
are in unison with it, and thus towards a serene self-enjoyment.
If, on the other hand, we estimate the worth of the fine arts by the
culture they supply to the mind, and adopt for our standard the
expansion of the faculties whose confluence, in judgement, is
necessary for cognition, music, then, since it plays merely with
sensations, 'has the lowest place among the fine arts-just as it has
perhaps the highest among those valued at the same time for their
agreeableness. Looked at in this light, it is far excelled by the
formative arts. For, in putting the imagination into a play which is
at once free and adapted to the understanding, they all the while
carry on a serious business, since they execute a product which serves
the Concepts of understanding as a vehicle, permanent and appealing to
us on its own account, for effectuating their union with
sensibility, and thus for promoting, as it were, the urbanity of the
higher powers of cognition. The two kinds of art pursue completely
different courses. Music advances from sensations to indefinite ideas:
formative art from definite ideas to sensations. The latter gives a
lasting impression, the former one that is only fleeting. The former
sensations imagination can recall and agreeably entertain itself with,
while the latter either vanish entirely, or else, if involuntarily
repeated by the imagination, are more annoying to us than agreeable.
Over and above all this, music has a certain lack of urbanity about
it. For owing chiefly to the character of its instruments, it scatters
its influence abroad to an uncalled-for extent (through the
neighbourhood), and thus, as it were, becomes obtrusive and deprives
others, outside the musical circle, of their freedom. This is a
thing that the arts that address themselves to the eye do not do,
for if one is not disposed to give admittance to their impressions,
one has only to look the other way. The case is almost on a par with
the practice of regaling oneself with a perfume that exhales its
odours far and wide. The man who pulls his perfumed handkerchief
from his pocket gives a treat to all around whether they like it or
not, and compels them, if they want to breathe at all, to be parties
to the enjoyment, and so the habit has gone out of fashion.*
-
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 350}
*Those who have recommended the singing of hymns at family prayers
have forgotten the amount of annoyance which they give to the
general public by such noisy (and, as a rule, for that very reason,
pharisaical) worship, for they compel their neighbours either to
join in the singing or else abandon their meditations.
-
Among the formative arts I would give the palm to painting: partly
because it is the art of design and, as such, the groundwork of all
the other formative arts; partly because it can penetrate much further
into the region of ideas, and in conformity with them give a greater
extension to the field of intuition than it is open to the others to
do.
-
SS 54. Remark.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 355}
-
As we have often shown, an essential distinction lies between what
pleases simply in the estimate formed of it and what gratifies
(pleases in sensation). The latter is something which, unlike the
former, we cannot demand from every one. Gratification (no matter
whether its cause has its seat even in ideas) appears always to
consist in a feeling of the furtherance of the entire life of the man,
and hence, also of his bodily well-being, i.e., his health. And so,
perhaps, Epicurus was not wide of the mark when he said that at bottom
all gratification is bodily sensation, and only misunderstood
himself in ranking intellectual and even practical delight under the
head of gratification. Bearing in mind the latter distinction, it is
readily explicable how even the gratification a person feels is
capable of displeasing him (as the joy of a necessitous but
good-natured individual on being made the heir of an affectionate
but penurious father), or how deep pain may still give pleasure to the
sufferer (as the sorrow of a widow over the death of her deserving
husband), or how there may be pleasure over and above gratification
(as in scientific pursuits), or how a pain (as, for example, hatred,
envy, and desire for revenge) may in addition be a source of
displeasure. Here the delight or aversion depends upon reason, and
is one with approbation or disapprobation. Gratification and pain,
on the other hand, can only depend upon feeling, or upon the
prospect of a possible well-being or the reverse (irrespective of
source).
The changing free play of sensations (which do not follow any
preconceived plan) is always a source of gratification, because it
promotes the feeling of health; and it is immaterial whether or not we
experience delight in the object of this play or even in the
gratification itself when estimated in the light of reason. Also
this gratification may amount to an affection, although we take no
interest in the object itself, or none, at least, proportionate to the
degree of the affection. We may divide the above play into that of
games of chance (Gluckspiel), harmony (Tonspiel), and wit
(Gedankenspiel). The first stands in need of an interest, be it of
vanity or selfseeking, but one which falls far short of that
centered in the adopted mode of procurement. All that the second
requires is the change of sensations, each of which has its bearing on
affection, though without attaining to the degree of an affection, and
excites aesthetic ideas. The third springs merely from the change of
the representations in the judgement, which, while unproductive of any
thought conveying an interest, yet enlivens the mind.
What a fund of gratification must be afforded by play, without our
having to fall back upon any consideration of interest, is a matter to
which all our evening parties bear witness for without play they
hardly ever escape falling flat. But the affections of hope, fear,
joy, anger, and derision here engage in play, as every moment they
change their parts and are so lively that, as by an internal motion,
the whole vital function of the body seems to be furthered by the
process-as is proved by a vivacity of the mind produced-although no
one comes by anything in the way of profit or instruction. But as
the play of chance is not one that is beautiful, we will here lay it
aside. Music, on the contrary, and what provokes laughter are two
kinds of play with aesthetic ideas, or even with representations of
the understanding, by which, all said and done, nothing is thought. By
mere force of change they yet are able to afford lively gratification.
This furnishes pretty clear evidence that the quickening effect of
both is physical, despite its being excited by ideas of the mind,
and that the feeling of health, arising from a movement of the
intestines answering to that play, makes up that entire
gratification of an animated gathering upon the spirit and
refinement of which we set such store. Not any estimate of harmony
in tones or flashes of wit, which, with its beauty, serves only as a
necessary vehicle, but rather the stimulated vital functions of the
body, the affection stirring the intestines and the diaphragm, and, in
a word, the feeling of health (of which we are only sensible upon some
such provocation) are what constitute the gratification we
experience at being able to reach the body through the soul and use
the latter as the physician of the former.
In music, the course of this play is from bodily sensation to
aesthetic ideas (which are the objects for the affections), and then
from these back again, but with gathered strength, to the body. In
jest (which just as much as the former deserves to be ranked rather as
an agreeable than a fine art) the play sets out from thoughts which
collectively, so far as seeking sensuous expression, engage the
activity of the body. In this presentation the understanding,
missing what it expected, suddenly lets go its hold, with the result
that the effect of this slackening is felt in the body by the
oscillation of the organs. This favours the restoration of the
equilibrium of the latter, and exerts a beneficial influence upon
the health.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 360}
Something absurd (something in which, therefore, the understanding
can of itself find no delight) must be present in whatever is to raise
a hearty convulsive laugh. Laughter is an all action arising from a
strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing. This very
reduction, at which certainly understanding cannot rejoice, is still
indirectly a source of very lively enjoyment for a moment. Its cause
must consequently lie in the influence of the representation upon
the body and the reciprocal effect of this upon the mind. This,
moreover, cannot depend upon the representation being objectively an
object of gratification (for how can we derive gratification from a
disappointment?) but must rest solely upon the fact that the reduction
is a mere play of representations, and, as such, produces an
equilibrium of the vital forces of the body.
Suppose that some one tells the following story: An Indian at an
Englishman's table in Surat saw a bottle of ale opened, and all the
beer turned into froth and flowing out. The repeated exclamations of
the Indian showed his great astonishment. "Well, what is so
wonderful in that?" asked the Englishman. "Oh, I'm not surprised
myself," said the Indian, "at its getting out, but at how you ever
managed to get it all in." At this we laugh, and it gives us hearty
pleasure. This is not because we think ourselves, maybe, more
quick-witted than this ignorant Indian, or because our understanding
here brings to our notice any other ground of delight. It is rather
that the bubble of our expectation was extended to the full and
suddenly went off into nothing. Or, again, take the case of the heir
of a wealthy relative being minded to make preparations for having the
funeral obsequies on a most imposing scale, but complaining that
things would not go right for him, because (as he said) "the more
money I give my mourners to look sad, the more pleased they look."
At this we laugh outright, and the reason lies in the fact that we had
an expectation which is suddenly reduced to nothing. We must be
careful to observe that the reduction is not one into the positive
contrary of an expected object-for that is always something, and may
frequently pain us-but must be a reduction to nothing. For where a
person arouses great expectation by recounting some tale, and at the
close its untruth becomes at once apparent to us, we are displeased at
it. So it is, for instance, with the tale of people whose hair from
excess of grief is said to have turned white in a single night. On the
other hand, if a wag, wishing to cap the story, tells with the
utmost circumstantiality of a merchant's grief, who, on his return
journey from India to Europe with all his wealth in merchandise, was
obliged by stress of storm to throw everything overboard, and
grieved to such an extent that in the selfsame night his wig turned
grey, we laugh and enjoy the tale. This is because we keep for a
time playing on our own mistake about an object otherwise
indifferent to us, or rather on the idea we ourselves were following
out, and, beating it to and fro, just as if it were a ball eluding our
grasp, when all we intend to do is just to get it into our hands and
hold it tight. Here our. gratification is. not excited by a knave or a
fool getting a rebuff: for, even on its own account, the latter tale
told with an air of seriousness would of itself be enough to set a
whole table into roars of laughter; and the other matter would
ordinarily not be worth a moment's thought.
It is observable that in all such cases the joke must have something
in it capable of momentarily deceiving us. Hence, when the semblance
vanishes into nothing, the mind looks back in order to try it over
again, and thus by a rapidly succeeding tension and relaxation it is
jerked to and fro and put in oscillation. As the snapping of what was,
as it were, tightening up the string takes place suddenly (not by a
gradual loosening), the oscillation must bring about a mental movement
and a sympathetic internal movement of the body. This continues
involuntarily and produces fatigue, but in so doing it also affords
recreation (the effects of a motion conducive to health).
For supposing we assume that some movement in the bodily organs is
associated sympathetically with all our thoughts, it is readily
intelligible how the sudden act above referred to, of shifting the
mind now to one standpoint and now to the other, to enable it to
contemplate its object, may involve a corresponding and reciprocal
straining and slackening of the elastic parts of our intestines, which
communicates itself to the diaphragm (and resembles that felt by
ticklish people), in the course of which the lungs expel the air
with rapidly succeeding interruptions, resulting in a movement
conducive to health. This alone, and not what goes on in the mind,
is the proper cause of the gratification in a thought that at bottom
represents nothing. Voltaire said that heaven has given us two
things to compensate us for the many miseries of life, hope and sleep.
He might have added laughter to the list-if only the means of exciting
it in men of intelligence were as ready to hand, and the wit or
originality of humour which it requires were not just as rare as the
talent is common for inventing stuff that splits the head, as mystic
speculators do, or that breaks your neck, as the genius does, or
that harrows the heart as sentimental novelists do (aye, and moralists
of the same type).
We may, therefore as I conceive, make Epicurus a present of the
point that all gratification, even when occasioned by concepts that
evoke aesthetic ideas, is animal, i.e., bodily sensation. For from
this admission the spiritual feeling of respect for moral ideas, which
is not one of gratification, but a self-esteem (an esteem for humanity
within us) that raises us above the need of gratification, suffers not
a whit-no nor even the less noble feeling of taste.
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 365}
In naivete we meet with a joint product of both the above. Naivete
is the breaking forth of the ingenuousness originally natural to
humanity, in opposition to the art of disguising oneself that has
become a second nature. We laugh at the simplicity that is as yet a
stranger to dissimulation, but we rejoice the while over the
simplicity of nature that thwarts that art. We await the commonplace
manner of artificial utterance, thoughtfully addressed to a fair show,
and lo! nature stands before us in unsullied innocence-nature that
we were quite unprepared to meet, and that he who laid it bare had
also no intention of revealing. That the outward appearance, fair
but false, that usually assumes such importance in our judgement, is
here, at a stroke, turned to a nullity, that, as it were, the rogue in
us is nakedly exposed, calls forth the movement of the mind, in two
successive and opposite directions, agitating the body at the same
time with wholesome motion. But that something infinitely better
than any accepted code of manners, namely purity of mind (or at
least a vestige of such purity), has not become wholly extinct in
human nature, infuses seriousness and reverence into this play of
judgement. But since it is only a manifestation that obtrudes itself
for a moment, and the veil of a dissembling art is soon drawn over
it again, there enters into the above feelings a touch of pity. This
is an emotion of tenderness, playful in its way, that thus readily
admits of combination with this sort of genial laughter. And, in fact,
this emotion is as a rule associated with it, and, at the same time,
is wont to make amends to the person who provides such food for our
merriment for his embarrassment at not being wise after the manner
of men. For that-reason art of being naif is a contradiction. But it
is quite possible to give a representation of naivete in a
fictitious personage, and, rare as the art is, it is a fine art.
With this naivete we must not confuse homely simplicity, which only
avoids spoiling nature by artificiality, because it has no notion of
the conventions of good society.
The humorous manner may also be ranked as a thing which in its
enlivening influence is clearly allied to the gratification provoked
by laughter. It belongs to originality of mind (des Geistes), though
not to the talent for fine art. Humour, in a good sense, means the
talent for being able to put oneself at will into a certain frame of
mind in which everything is estimated on lines that go quite off the
beaten track (a topsy-turvy view of things), and yet on lines that
follow certain principles, rational in the case of such a mental
temperament. A person with whom such variations are not a matter of
choice is said to have humours; but if a person can assume them
voluntarily and of set purpose (on behalf of a lively presentation
drawn from a ludicrous contrast), he and his way of speaking are
termed humorous. This manner belongs, however, to agreeable rather
than to fine art, because the object of the latter must always have an
evident intrinsic worth about it, and thus demands a certain
seriousness in its presentation, as taste does in estimating it.
-
PART1|SEC2
FIRST PART CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT
SECTION II. DIALECTIC OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT.
-
SS 55.
-
For a power of judgement to be dialectical it must first of all be
rationalizing; that is to say, its judgements must lay claim to
universality,* and do so a priori, for it is in the antithesis of such
judgements that dialectic consists. Hence there is nothing dialectical
in the irreconcilability of aesthetic judgements of sense (upon the
agreeable and disagreeable). And in so far as each person appeals
merely to his own private taste, even the conflict of judgements of
taste does not form a dialectic of taste-for no one is proposing to
make his own judgement into a universal rule. Hence the only concept
left to us of a dialectic affecting taste is one of a dialectic of the
critique of taste (not of taste itself) in respect of its
principles: for, on the question of the ground of the possibility of
judgements of taste in general, mutually conflicting concepts
naturally and unavoidably make their appearance. The transcendental
critique of taste will, therefore, only include a part capable of
bearing the name of a dialectic of the aesthetic judgement if we
find an antinomy of the principles of this faculty which throws
doubt upon its conformity to law, and hence also upon its inner
possibility.
-
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 5}
*Any judgement which sets up to be universal may be termed a
rationalizing judgement (indicium ratiocinans); for so far as
universal it may serve as the major premiss of a syllogism. On the
other hand, only a judgement which is thought as the conclusion of a
syllogism, and, therefore, as having an a priori foundation, can be
called rational (indicium ratiocinatum).
-
SS 56. Representation of the antinomy of taste.
-
The first commonplace of taste is contained in the proposition under
cover of which every one devoid of taste thinks to shelter himself
from reproach: every one has his own taste. This is only another way
of saying that the determining ground of this judgement is merely
subjective (gratification or pain), and that the judgement has no
right to the necessary agreement of others.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 10}
Its second commonplace, to which even those resort who concede the
right of the judgement of taste to pronounce with validity for every
one, is: there is no disputing about taste. This amounts to saying
that, even though the determining ground of a judgement of taste be
objective, it is not reducible to definite concepts, so that in
respect of the judgement itself no decision can be reached by
proofs, although it is quite open to us to contend upon the matter,
and to contend with right. For though contention and dispute have this
point in common, that they aim at bringing judgements into
accordance out of and by means of their mutual opposition; yet they
differ in the latter hoping to effect this from definite concepts,
as grounds of proof, and, consequently, adopting objective concepts as
grounds of the judgement. But where this is considered
impracticable, dispute is regarded as alike out of the question.
Between these two commonplaces an intermediate proposition is
readily seen to be missing. It is one which has certainly not become
proverbial, but yet it is at the back of every one's mind. It is
that there may be contention about taste (although not a dispute).
This proposition, however, involves the contrary of the first one. For
in a manner in which contention is to be allowed, there must be a:
hope of coming to terms. Hence one must be able to reckon on grounds
of judgement that possess more than private Validity and are thus
not merely subjective. And yet the above principle (Every one has
his own taste) is directly opposed to this.
The principle of taste, therefore, exhibits the following antinomy:
1. Thesis. The judgement of taste is not based upon concepts; for,
if it were, it would be open to dispute (decision by means of proofs).
2. Antithesis. The judgement of taste is based on concepts; for
otherwise, despite diversity of judgement, there could be no room even
for contention in the matter (a claim to the necessary agreement of
others with this judgement).
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 15}
-
SS 57. Solution of the antinomy of taste.
-
There is no possibility of removing the conflict of the above
principles, which underlie every judgement of taste (and which are
only the two peculiarities of the judgement of taste previously set
out in the Analytic) except by showing that the concept to which the
object is to refer in a judgement of this kind is not taken in the
same sense in both maxims of the aesthetic judgement; that this double
sense, or point of view, in our estimate, is necessary for our power
of transcendental judgement; and that nevertheless the false
appearance arising from the confusion of one with the other is a
natural illusion, and so unavoidable.
The judgement of taste must have reference to some concept or other,
as otherwise it would be absolutely impossible for it to lay claim
to necessary validity for every one. Yet it need not on that account
be provable from a concept. For a concept may be either
determinable, or else at once intrinsically undetermined and
indeterminable. A concept of the understanding, which is
determinable by means of predicates borrowed from sensible intuition
and capable of corresponding to it, is of the first kind. But of the
second kind is the transcendental rational concept of the
supersensible, which lies at the basis of all that sensible
intuition and is, therefore, incapable of being further determined
theoretically.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 20}
Now the judgement of taste applies to objects of sense, but not so
as to determine a concept of them for the understanding; for it is not
a cognitive judgement. Hence it is a singular representation of
intuition referable to the feeling of pleasure, and, as such, only a
private judgement. And to that extent it would be limited in its
validity to the individual judging: the object is for me an object
of delight, for others it may be otherwise; every one to his taste.
For all that, the judgement of taste contains beyond doubt an
enlarged reference on the part of the representation of the object
(and at the same time on the part of the subject also), which lays the
foundation of an extension of judgements of this kind to necessity for
every one. This must of necessity be founded upon some concept or
other, but such a concept as does not admit of being determined by
intuition, and affords no knowledge of anything. Hence, too, it is a
concept which does not afford proof of the judgement of taste. But the
mere pure rational concept of the supersensible lying at the basis
of the object (and of the judging subject for that matter) as object
of sense, and thus as phenomenon, is just such a concept. For unless
such a point of view were adopted there would be no means of saving
the claim of the judgement of taste to universal validity. And if
the concept forming the required basis were a concept of
understanding, though a mere confused one, as, let us say, of
perfection, answering to which the sensible intuition of the beautiful
might be adduced, then it would be at least intrinsically possible
to found the judgement of taste upon proofs, which contradicts the
thesis.
All contradiction disappears, however, if I say: The judgement of
taste does depend upon a concept (of a general ground of the
subjective finality of nature for the power of judgement), but one
from which nothing can be cognized in respect of the object, and
nothing proved, because it is in itself indeterminable and useless for
knowledge. Yet, by means of this very concept, it acquires at the same
time validity for every one (but with each individual, no doubt, as
a singular judgement immediately accompanying his intuition):
because its determining ground lies, perhaps, in the concept of what
may be regarded as the supersensible substrate of humanity.
The solution of an antinomy turns solely on the possibility of two
apparently conflicting propositions not being in fact contradictory,
but rather being capable of consisting together, although the
explanation of the possibility of their concept transcends our
faculties of cognition. That this illusion is also natural and for
human reason unavoidable, as well as why it is so, and remains so,
although upon the solution of the apparent contradiction it no
longer misleads us, may be made intelligible from the above
considerations.
For the concept, which the universal validity of a judgement must
have for its basis, is taken in the same sense in both the conflicting
judgements, yet two opposite predicates are asserted of it. The thesis
should therefore read: The judgement of taste is not based on
determinate concepts; but the antithesis: The judgement of taste
does rest upon a concept, although an indeterminate one (that, namely,
of the supersensible substrate of phenomena); and then there would
be no conflict between them.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 25}
Beyond removing this conflict between the claims and
counter-claims of taste we can do nothing. To supply a determinate
objective principle of taste in accordance with which its judgements
might be derived, tested, and proved, is an absolute impossibility,
for then it would not be a judgement of taste. The subjective
principle-that is to say, the indeterminate idea of the
supersensible within us -can only be indicated as the unique key to
the riddle of this faculty, itself concealed from us in its sources;
and there is no means of making it any more intelligible.
The antinomy here exhibited and resolved rests upon the proper
concept of taste as a merely reflective aesthetic judgement, and the
two seemingly conflicting principles are reconciled on the ground that
they may both be true, and this is sufficient. If, on the other
hand, owing to the fact that the representation lying at the basis
of the judgement of taste is singular, the determining ground of taste
is taken, as by some it is, to be agreeableness, or, as others,
looking to its universal validity, would have it, the principle of
perfection, and if the definition of taste is framed accordingly,
the result is an antinomy which is absolutely irresolvable unless we
show the falsity of both propositions as contraries (not as simple
contradictories). This would force the conclusion that the concept
upon which each is founded is self-contradictory. Thus it is evident
that the removal of the antinomy of the aesthetic judgement pursues
a course similar to that followed by the Critique in the solution of
the antinomies of pure theoretical reason; and that the antinomies,
both here and in the Critique of Practical Reason, compel us,
whether we like it or not, to look beyond the horizon of the sensible,
and to seek in the supersensible the point of union of all our
faculties a priori: for we are left with no other expedient to bring
reason into harmony with itself.
-
REMARK 1.
-
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 30}
We find such frequent occasion in transcendental philosophy for
distinguishing ideas from concepts of the understanding that it may be
of use to introduce technical terms answering to the distinction
between them. I think that no objection will be raised to my proposing
some. Ideas, in the most comprehensive sense of the word, are
representations referred to an object according to a certain principle
(subjective or objective), in so far as they can still never become
a cognition of it. They are either referred to an intuition, in
accordance with a merely subjective principle of the harmony of the
cognitive faculties (imagination and understanding), and are then
called aesthetic; or else they are referred to a concept according
to an objective principle and yet are incapable of ever furnishing a
cognition of the object, and are called rational ideas. In the
latter case, the concept is a transcendent concept, and, as such,
differs from a concept of understanding, for which an adequately
answering experience may always be supplied, and which, on that
account, is called immanent.
An aesthetic idea cannot become a cognition, because it is an
intuition (of the imagination) for which an adequate concept can never
be found. A rational idea can never become a cognition, because it
involves a concept (of the supersensible), for which a commensurate
intuition can never be given.
Now the aesthetic idea might, I think, be called an inexponible
representation of the imagination, the rational idea, on the other
hand, an indemonstrable concept of reason. The production of both is
presupposed to be not altogether groundless, but rather (following the
above explanation of an idea in general) to take place in obedience to
certain principles of the cognitive faculties to which they belong
(subjective principles in the case of the former and objective in that
of the latter).
Concepts of the understanding must, as such, always be
demonstrable (if, as in anatomy, demonstration is understood in the
sense merely of presentation). In other words, the object answering to
such concepts must always be capable of being given an intuition (pure
or empirical); for only in this way can they become cognitions. The
concept of magnitude may be given a priori in the intuition of
space, e.g., of the right line, etc.; the concept of cause in
impenetrability, in the impact of bodies, etc. Consequently both may
be verified by means of an empirical intuition, i.e., the thought of
them may be indicated (demonstrated, exhibited) in an example; and
this it must be possible to do: for otherwise there would be no
certainty of the thought not being empty, i.e., having no object.
In logic the expressions demonstrable or indemonstrable are
ordinarily employed only in respect of propositions. A better
designation would be to call the former propositions only mediately,
and the latter, propositions immediately, certain. For pure
philosophy, too, has propositions of both these kinds-meaning
thereby true propositions which are in the one case capable, and in
the other incapable, of proof. But, in its character of philosophy,
while it can, no doubt, prove on a priori grounds, it cannot
demonstrate-unless we wish to give the complete go-by to the meaning
of the word which makes demonstrate (ostendere, exhibere) equivalent
to giving an accompanying presentation of the concept in intuition (be
it in a proof or in a definition). Where the intuition is a priori
this is called its construction, but when even the intuition is
empirical, we have still got the illustration of the object, by
which means objective reality is assured to the concept. Thus an
anatomist is said to demonstrate the human eye when he renders the
concept, of which he has previously given a discursive exposition,
intuitable by means of the dissection of that organ.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 35}
It follows from the above that the rational concept of the
supersensible substrate of all phenomena generally, or even of that
which must be laid at the basis of our elective will in respect of
moral laws, i.e., the rational concept of transcendental freedom, is
at once specifically an indemonstrable-concept, and a rational idea,
whereas virtue is so in a measure. For nothing can be given which in
itself qualitatively answers in experience to the rational concept
of the former, while in the case of virtue no empirical product of the
above causality attains the degree that the rational idea prescribes
as the rule.
Just as the imagination, in the case of a rational idea, fails
with its intuitions to attain to the given concept, so
understanding, in the case of an aesthetic idea, fails with its
concepts ever to attain to the completeness of the internal
intuition which imagination conjoins with a given representation.
Now since the reduction of a representation of the imagination to
concepts is equivalent to giving its exponents, the aesthetic idea may
be called on inexponible representation of the imagination (in its
free play). I shall have an opportunity hereafter of dealing more
fully with ideas of this kind. At present I confine myself to the
remark, that both kinds of ideas, aesthetic ideas as well as rational,
are bound to have their principles, and that the seat of these
principles must in both cases be reason-the latter depending upon
the objective, the former upon the subjective, principles of its
employment.
Consonantly with this, GENIUS may also be defined as the faculty
of aesthetic ideas. This serves at the same time to point out the
reason why it is nature (the nature of the individual) and not a set
purpose, that in products of genius gives the rule to art (as the
production of the beautiful). For the beautiful must not be
estimated according to concepts, but by the final mode in which the
imagination is attuned so as to accord with the faculty of concepts
generally; and so rule and precept are incapable of serving as the
requisite subjective standard for that aesthetic and unconditioned
finality in fine art which has to make a warranted claim to being
bound to please every one. Rather must such a standard be sought in
the element of mere nature in the subject, which cannot be
comprehended under rules or concepts, that is to say, the
supersensible substrate of all the subject's faculties (unattainable
by any concept of understanding), and consequently in that which forms
the point of reference for the harmonious accord of all our
faculties of cognition-the production of which accord is the
ultimate end set by the intelligible basis of our nature. Thus alone
is it possible for a subjective and yet universally valid principle
a priori to lie at the basis of that finality for which no objective
principle can be prescribed.
-
REMARK 2.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 40}
-
The following important observation here naturally presents
itself: There are three kinds of antinomies of pure reason, which,
however, all agree in forcing reason to abandon the otherwise very
natural assumption which takes the objects of sense for
things-in-themselves, and to regard them, instead, merely as
phenomena, and to lay at their basis an intelligible substrate
(something supersensible, the concept of which is only an idea and
affords no proper knowledge). Apart from some such antinomy, reason
could never bring itself to take such a step as-to adopt a principle
so severely restricting the field of its speculation, and to submit to
sacrifices involving the complete dissipation of so many otherwise
brilliant hopes. For even now that it is recompensed for this loss
by the prospect of a proportionately wider scope of action from a
practical point of view, it is not without a pang of regret that it
appears to part company with those hopes, and to break away from the
old ties.
The reason for there being three kinds of antinomies is to be
found in the fact that there are three faculties of cognition,
understanding, judgement, and reason, each of which, being a higher
faculty of cognition, must have its a priori principles. For, so far
as reason passes judgement upon these principles themselves and
their employment, it inexorably requires the unconditioned for the
given conditioned in respect of them all. This can never be found
unless the sensible, instead of being regarded as inherently
appurtenant to things-in-themselves, is treated as a mere
phenomenon, and, as such, being made to rest upon something
supersensible (the intelligible substrate of external and internal
nature) as the thing-in-itself. There is then (1) for the cognitive
faculty an antinomy of reason in respect of the theoretical employment
of understanding carried to the point of the unconditioned; (2) for
the feeling of pleasure and displeasure an antinomy of reason in
respect of the aesthetic employment of judgement; (3) for the
faculty Of desire an antinomy in respect of the practical employment
of self-legislative reason. For all these faculties have their
fundamental a priori principles, and, following an imperative demand
of reason, must be able to judge and to determine their object
unconditionally in accordance with these principles.
As to two of the antinomies of these higher cognitive faculties,
those, namely, of their theoretical and of their practical employment,
we have already shown elsewhere both that they are inevitable, if no
cognisance is taken in such judgements of a supersensible substrate of
the given objects as phenomena, and, on the other hand, that they
can be solved the moment this is done. Now, as to the antinomy
incident to the employment of judgement in conformity with the
demand of reason, and the solution of it here given, we may say that
to avoid facing it there are but the following alternatives. It is
open to us to deny that any a priori principle lies at the basis of
the aesthetic judgement of taste, with the result that all claim to
the necessity of a universal consensus of opinion is an idle and empty
delusion, and that a judgement of taste only deserves to be considered
to this extent correct, that it so happens that a number share the
same opinion, and even this, not, in truth, because an a priori
principle is presumed to lie at the back of this agreement, but rather
(as with the taste of the palate) because of the contingently
resembling organization of the individuals. Or else, in the
alternative, we should have to suppose that the judgement of taste
is in fact a disguised judgement of reason on the perfection
discovered in a thing and the reference of the manifold in it to an
end, and that it is consequently only called aesthetic on account of
the confusion that here besets our reflection, although
fundamentally it is teleological. In this latter case the solution
of the antinomy with the assistance of transcendental ideas might be
declared otiose and nugatory, and the above laws of taste thus
reconciled with the objects of sense, not as mere phenomena, but
even as things-in-themselves. How unsatisfactory both of those
alternatives alike are as a means of escape has been shown in
several places in our exposition of judgements of taste.
If, however, our deduction is at least credited with having been
worked out on correct lines, even though it may not have been
sufficiently clear in all its details, three ideas then stand out in
evidence. Firstly, there is the supersensible in general, without
further determination, as substrate of nature; secondly, this same
supersensible as principle of the subjective finality of nature for
our cognitive faculties; thirdly, the same supersensible again, as
principle of the ends of freedom, and principle of the common accord
of these ends with freedom in the moral sphere.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 45}
-
SS 58. The idealism of the finality alike of nature
and of art, as the unique principle of the
aesthetic judgement.
-
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 50}
The principle of taste may, to begin with, be placed on either of
two footings. For taste may be said invariably to judge on empirical
grounds of determination and such, therefore, as are only given a
posteriori through sense, or else it may be allowed to judge on an a
priori ground. The former would be the empiricism of the critique of
taste, the latter its rationalism. The first would obliterate the
distinction that marks off the object of our delight from the
agreeable; the second, supposing the judgement rested upon determinate
concepts, would obliterate its distinction from the good. In this
way beauty would have its locus standi in the world completely denied,
and nothing but the dignity of a separate name, betokening, maybe, a
certain blend of both the above-named kinds of delight, would be
left in its stead. But we have shown the existence of grounds of
delight which are a priori, and which therefore, can consist with
the principle of rationalism, and which are yet incapable of being
grasped by definite concepts.
As against the above, we may say that the rationalism of the
principle of taste may take the form either of the realism of finality
or of its idealism. Now, as a judgement of taste is not a cognitive
judgement, and as beauty is not a property of the object considered in
its own account, the rationalism of the principle of taste can never
be placed in the fact that the finality in this judgement is
regarded in thought as objective. In other words, the judgement is not
directed theoretically, nor, therefore, logically, either (no matter
if only in a confused estimate), to the perfection of the object,
but only aesthetically to the harmonizing of its representation in the
imagination with the essential principles of judgement generally in
the subject. For this reason the judgement of taste, and the
distinction between its realism and its idealism, can only, even on
the principle of rationalism, depend upon its subjective finality
interpreted in one or other of two ways. Either such subjective
finality is, in the first case, a harmony with our judgement pursued
as an actual (intentional) end of nature (or of art), or else, in
the second case, it is only a supervening final harmony with the needs
of our faculty of judgement in its relation to nature and the forms
which nature produces in accordance with particular laws, and one that
is independent of an end, spontaneous and contingent.
The beautiful forms displayed in the organic world all plead
eloquently on the side of the realism of the aesthetic finality of
nature in support of the plausible assumption that beneath the
production of the beautiful there must lie a preconceived idea in
the producing cause-that is to say an end acting in the interest of
our imagination. Flowers, blossoms, even the shapes of plants as a
whole, the elegance of animal formations of all kinds, unnecessary for
the discharge of any function on their part, but chosen as it were
with an eye to our taste; and, beyond all else, the variety and
harmony in the array of colours (in the pheasant, in crustacea, in
insects, down even to the meanest flowers), so pleasing and charming
to the eyes, but which, inasmuch as they touch the bare surf ace,
and do not even here in any way all act the structure, of these
creatures-a matter which might have a necessary bearing on their
internal ends-seem to be planned entirely with a view to outward
appearance: all these lend great weight to the mode of explanation
which assumes actual ends of nature in favour of our aesthetic
judgement.
On the other hand, not alone does reason, with its maxims
enjoining upon us in all cases to avoid, as far as possible, any
unnecessary multiplication of principles, set itself against this
assumption, but we have nature in its free formations displaying on
all sides extensive mechanical proclivity to producing forms seemingly
made, as it were, for the aesthetic employment of our judgement,
without affording the least support to the supposition of a need for
anything over and above its mechanism, as mere nature, to enable
them to be final for our judgement apart from their being grounded
upon any idea. The above expression, "free formations" of nature,
is, however, here used to denote such as are originally set up in a
fluid at rest where the volatilization or separation of some
constituent (sometimes merely of caloric) leaves the residue on
solidification to assume a definite shape or structure (figure or
texture) which differs with specific differences of the matter, but
for the same matter is invariable. Here, however, it is taken for
granted that, as the true meaning of a fluid requires, the matter in
the fluid is completely dissolved and not a mere admixture of solid
particles simply held there in suspension.
The formation, then, takes place by a concursion, i.e., by a
sudden solidification- not by a gradual transition from the fluid to
the solid state, but, as it were, by a leap. This transition is termed
crystallization. Freezing water offers the most familiar instance of a
formation of this kind. There the process begins by straight threads
of ice forming. These unite at angles of 60", whilst others
similarly attach themselves to them at every point until the whole has
turned into ice. But while this is going on, the water between the
threads of ice does not keep getting gradually more viscous, but
remains as thoroughly fluid as it would be at a much higher
temperature, although it is perfectly ice-cold. The matter that
frees itself that makes its sudden escape at the moment of
solidification-is a considerable quantum of caloric. As this was
merely required to preserve fluidity, its disappearance leaves the
existing ice not a whit colder than the water which but a moment
before was there as fluid.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 55}
There are many salts and also stones of a crystalline figure which
owe their origin in like manner to some earthly substance being
dissolved in water under the influence of agencies little
understood. The drusy configurations of many minerals, of the
cubical sulphide of lead, of the red silver ore, etc., are
presumably also similarly formed in water, and by the concursion of
their particles, on their being forced by some cause or other to
relinquish this vehicle and to unite among themselves in definite
external shapes.
But, further, all substances rendered fluid by heat, which have
become solid as the result of cooling, give, when broken, internal
evidences of a definite texture, thus suggesting the inference that
only for the interference of their own weight or the disturbance of
the air, the exterior would also have exhibited their proper
specific shape. This has been observed in the case of some metals
where the exterior of a molten mass has hardened, but the interior
remained fluid, and then. owing to the withdrawal of the still fluid
portion in the interior, there has been an undisturbed concursion of
the remaining parts on the inside. A number of such mineral
crystallizations, such as spars, hematite, aragonite, frequently
present extremely beautiful shapes such as it might take art all its
time to devise; and the halo in the grotto of Antiparos is merely
the work of water percolating through strata of gypsum.
The fluid state is, to all appearance, on the whole older than the
solid, and plants as well as animal bodies are built up out of fluid
nutritive substance, so far as this takes form undisturbed-in the case
of the latter, admittedly, in obedience, primarily, to a certain
original bent of nature directed to ends (which, as will be shown in
Part II, must not be judged aesthetically, but teleologically by the
principle of realism); but still all the while, perhaps, also
following the universal law of the affinity of substances in the way
they shoot together and form in freedom. In the same way, again, where
an atmosphere, which is a composite of different kinds of gas, is
charged with watery fluids, and these separate from it owing to a
reduction of the temperature, they produce snow-figures of shapes
differing with the actual composition of the atmosphere. These are
frequently of very artistic appearance and of extreme beauty. So
without at all derogating from the teleological principle by which
an organization is judged, it is readily conceivable how with beauty
of flowers, of the plumage of birds, of crustacea, both as to their
shape and their colour, we have only what may be ascribed to nature
and its capacity for originating in free activity aesthetically
final forms, independently of any particular guiding ends, according
to chemical laws, by means of the chemical integration of the
substance requisite for the organization.
But what shows plainly that the principle of the ideality of the
finality in the beauty of nature is the one upon which we ourselves
invariably take our stand in our aesthetic judgements, forbidding us
to have recourse to any realism of a natural end in favour of our
faculty of representation as a principle of explanation, is that in
our general estimate of beauty we seek its standard a priori in
ourselves, and, that the aesthetic faculty is itself legislative in
respect of the judgement whether anything is beautiful or not. This
could not be so on the assumption of a realism of the finality of
nature; because in that case we should have to go to nature for
instruction as to what we should deem beautiful, and the judgement
of taste would be subject to empirical principles. For in such an
estimate the question does not turn on what nature is, or even on what
it is for us in the way of an end, but on how we receive it. For
nature to have fashioned its forms for our delight would inevitably
imply an objective finality on the part of nature, instead of a
subjective finality resting on the play of imagination in its freedom,
where it is we who receive nature with favour, and not nature that
does us a favour. That nature affords us an opportunity for perceiving
the inner finality in the relation of our mental powers engaged in the
estimate of certain of its products, and, indeed, such a finality as
arising from a supersensible basis is to be pronounced necessary and
of universal validity, is a property of nature which cannot belong
to it as its end, or rather, cannot be estimated by us to be such an
end. For otherwise the judgement that would be determined by reference
to such an end would found upon heteronomy, instead of founding upon
autonomy and being free, as befits a judgement of taste.
The principle of the idealism of finality is still more clearly
apparent in fine art. For the point that sensations do not enable us
to adopt an aesthetic realism of finality (which would make art merely
agreeable instead of beautiful) is one which it enjoys in common
with beautiful nature. But the further point that the delight
arising from aesthetic ideas must not be made dependent upon the
successful attainment of determinate ends (as an art mechanically
directed to results), and that, consequently, even in the case of
the rationalism of the principle, an ideality of the ends and not
their reality is fundamental, is brought home to us by the fact that
fine art, as such, must not be regarded as a product of
understanding and science, but of genius, and must, therefore,
derive its rule from aesthetic ideas, which are essentially
different from rational ideas of determinate ends.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 60}
Just as the ideality of objects of sense as phenomena is the only
way of explaining the possibility of their forms admitting of a priori
determination, so, also, the idealism of the finality in estimating
the beautiful in nature and in art is the only hypothesis upon which a
critique can explain the possibility of a judgement of taste that
demands a priori validity for every one (yet without basing the
finality represented in the object upon concepts).
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SS 59. Beauty as the symbol of morality.
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Intuitions are always required to verify the reality of our concepts.
If the concepts are empirical, the intuitions are called examples:
if they are pure concepts of the understanding, the intuitions go by
the name of schemata. But to call for a verification of the
objective reality of rational concepts, i.e., of ideas, and, what is
more, on behalf of the theoretical cognition of such a reality, is
to demand an impossibility, because absolutely no intuition adequate
to them can be given.
All hypotyposis (presentation, subjectio sub adspectum) as a
rendering in terms of sense, is twofold. Either it is schematic, as
where the intuition corresponding to a concept comprehended by the
understanding is given a priori, or else it is symbolic, as where
the concept is one which only reason can think, and to which no
sensible intuition can be adequate. In the latter case the concept
is supplied with an intuition such that the procedure of judgement
in dealing with it is merely analogous to that which it observes in
schematism. In other words, what agrees with the concept is merely the
rule of this procedure, and not the intuition itself. Hence the
agreement is merely in the form of reflection, and not in the content.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 65}
Notwithstanding the adoption of the word symbolic by modern
logicians in a sense opposed to an intuitive mode of representation,
it is a wrong use of the word and subversive of its true meaning;
for the symbolic is only a mode of any intrinsic connection with the
intuition of sentation is, in fact, divisible into the schematic
and the symbolic. Both are hypotyposes, i.e., presentations
(exhibitiones), not mere marks. Marks are merely designations of
concepts by the aid of accompanying sensible signs devoid of any
intrinsic connection with the intuition of the object. Their sole
function is to afford a means of reinvoking the concepts according
to the imagination's law of association-a purely subjective role. Such
marks are either words or visible (algebraic or even mimetic) signs,
simply as expressions for concepts.*
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*The intuitive mode of knowledge must be contrasted with the
discursive mode (not with the symbolic). The former is either
schematic, by mean demonstration, symbolic, as a representation
following a mere analogy.
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All intuitions by which a priori concepts are given a foothold
are, therefore, either schemata or symbols. Schemata contain direct,
symbols indirect, presentations of the concept. Schemata effect this
presentation demonstratively, symbols by the aid of an analogy (for
which recourse is had even to empirical intuitions), in which
analogy judgement performs a double function: first in applying the
concept to the object of a sensible intuition, and then, secondly,
in applying the mere rule of its reflection upon that intuition to
quite another object, of which the former is but the symbol. In this
way, a monarchical state is represented as a living body when it is
governed by constitutional laws, but as a mere machine (like a
handmill) when it is governed by an individual absolute will; but in
both cases the representation is merely symbolic. For there is
certainly no likeness between a despotic state and a handmill, whereas
there surely is between the rules of reflection upon both and their
causality. Hitherto this function has been but little analysed, worthy
as it is of a deeper study. Still this is not the place to dwell
upon it. In language we have many such indirect presentations modelled
upon an analogy enabling the expression in question to contain, not
the proper schema for the concept, but merely a symbol for reflection.
Thus the words ground (support, basis), to depend (to be held up
from above), to flow from (instead of to follow), substance (as
Locke puts it: the support of accidents), and numberless others, are
not schematic, but rather symbolic hypotyposes, and express concepts
without employing a direct intuition for the purpose, but only drawing
upon an analogy with one, i.e., transferring the reflection upon an
object of intuition to quite a new concept, and one with which perhaps
no intuition could ever directly correspond. Supposing the name of
knowledge may be given to what only amounts to a mere mode of
representation (which is quite permissible where this is not a
principle of the theoretical determination of the object in respect of
what it is in itself, but of the practical determination of what the
idea of it ought to be for us and for its final employment), then
all our knowledge of God is merely symbolic; and one who takes it,
with the properties of understanding, will, and so forth, which only
evidence their objective reality in beings of this world, to be
schematic, falls into anthropomorphism, just as, if he abandons
every intuitive element, he falls into Deism which furnishes no
knowledge whatsoever-not even from a practical point of view.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 70}
Now, I say, the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good, and
only in this light (a point of view natural to every one, and one
which every one exacts from others as a duty) does it give us pleasure
with an attendant claim to the agreement of every one else,
whereupon the mind becomes conscious of a certain ennoblement and
elevation above mere sensibility to pleasure from impressions of
sense, and also appraises the worth of others on the score of a like
maxim of their judgement. This is that intelligible to which taste, as
noticed in the preceding paragraph, extends its view. It is, that is
to say, what brings even our higher cognitive faculties into common
accord, and is that apart from which sheer contradiction would arise
between their nature and the claims put forward by taste. In this
faculty, judgement does not find itself subjected to a heteronomy of
laws of experience as it does in the empirical estimate of things-in
respect of the objects of such a pure delight it gives the law to
itself, just as reason does in respect of the faculty of desire. Here,
too, both on account of this inner possibility in the subject, and
on account of the external possibility of a nature harmonizing
therewith, it finds a reference in itself to something in the
subject itself and outside it, and which is not nature, nor yet
freedom, but still is connected with the ground of the latter, i.e.,
the supersensible-a something in which the theoretical faculty gets
bound up into unity with the practical in an intimate and obscure
manner. We shall bring out a few points of this analogy, while
taking care, at the same time, not to let the points of difference
escape us.
(1) The beautiful pleases immediately (but only in reflective
intuition, not, like morality, in its concept). (2) It pleases apart
from all interest (pleasure in the morally good is no doubt
necessarily bound up with an interest, but not with one of the kind
that are antecedent to the judgement upon the delight, but with one
that judgement itself for the first time calls into existence). (3)
The freedom of the imagination (consequently of our faculty in respect
of its sensibility) is, in estimating the beautiful, represented as in
accord with the understanding's conformity to law (in moral judgements
the freedom of the will is thought as the harmony of the latter with
itself according to universal laws of Reason). (4) The subjective
principles of the estimate of the beautiful is represented as
universal, i.e., valid for every man, but as incognizable by means
of any universal concept (the objective principle of morality is set
forth as also universal, i.e., for all individuals, and, at the same
time, for all actions of the same individual, and, besides, as
cognizable by means of a universal concept). For this reason the moral
judgement not alone admits of definite constitutive principles, but is
only possible by adopting these principles and their universality as
the ground of its maxims.
Even common understanding is wont to pay regard to this analogy; and
we frequently apply to beautiful objects of nature or of art names
that seem to rely upon the basis of a moral estimate. We call
buildings or trees majestic and stately, or plains laughing and gay;
even colours are called innocent, modest, soft, because they excite
sensations containing something analogous to the consciousness of
the state of mind produced by moral judgements. Taste makes, as it
were, the transition from the charm of sense to habitual moral
interest possible without too violent a leap, for it represents the
imagination, even in its freedom, as amenable to a final determination
for understanding, and teaches us to find, even in sensuous objects, a
free delight apart from any charm of sense.
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SS 60. APPENDIX. The methodology of taste.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 75}
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The division of a critique into elementology and methodology-a
division which is introductory to science-is one inapplicable to the
critique of taste. For there neither is, nor can be, a science of
the beautiful, and the judgement of taste is not determinable by
principles. For, as to the element of science in every art -a matter
which turns upon truth in the presentation of the object of the
art-while this is, no doubt, the indispensable condition (conditio
sine qua non) of fine art, it is not itself fine art. Fine art,
therefore, has only got a manner (modus), and not a method of teaching
(methodus). The master must illustrate what the pupil is to achieve
and how achievement is to be attained, and the proper function of
the universal rules to which he ultimately reduces his treatment is
rather that of supplying a convenient text for recalling its chief
moments to the pupil's mind, than of prescribing them to him. Yet,
in all this, due regard must be paid to a certain ideal which art must
keep in view, even though complete success ever eludes its happiest
efforts. Only by exciting the pupil's imagination to conformity with a
given concept, by pointing out how the expression falls short of the
idea to which, as aesthetic, the concept itself fails to attain, and
by means of severe criticism, is it possible to prevent his promptly
looking upon the examples set before him as the prototypes of
excellence, and as models for him to imitate, without submission to
any higher standard or to his own critical judgement. This would
result in genius being stifled, and, with it, also the freedom of
the imagination in its very conformity to law-a freedom without
which a fine art is not possible, nor even as much as a correct
taste of one's own for estimating it.
The propaedeutic to all fine art, so far as the highest degree of
its perfection is what is in view, appears to lie, not in precepts,
but in the culture of the mental powers produced by a sound
preparatory education in what are called the humaniora-so called,
presumably, because humanity signifies, on the one hand, the universal
feeling of sympathy, and, on the other, the faculty of being able to
communicate universally one's inmost self-properties constituting in
conjunction the befitting social spirit of mankind, in
contradistinction to the narrow life of the lower animals. There was
an age and there were nations in which the active impulse towards a
social life regulated by laws-what converts a people into a
permanent community-grappled with the huge difficulties presented by
the trying problem of bringing freedom (and therefore equality also)
into union with constraining force (more that of respect and dutiful
submission than of fear). And such must have been the age, and such
the nation, that first discovered the art of reciprocal
communication of ideas between the more cultured and ruder sections of
the community, and how to bridge the difference between the
amplitude and refinement of the former and the natural simplicity
and originality of the latter-in this way hitting upon that mean
between higher culture and the modest worth of nature, that forms
for taste also, as a sense common to all mankind, that true standard
which no universal rules can supply.
Hardly will a later age dispense with those models. For nature
will ever recede farther into the background, so that eventually, with
no permanent example retained from the past, a future age would scarce
be in a position to form a concept of the happy union, in one and
the same people, of the law-directed constraint belonging to the
highest culture, with the force and truth of a free nature sensible of
its proper worth.
However, taste is, in the ultimate analysis, a critical faculty that
judges of the rendering of moral ideas in terms of sense (through
the intervention of a certain analogy in our reflection on both);
and it is this rendering also, and the increased sensibility,
founded upon it, for the feeling which these ideas evoke (termed moral
sense), that are the origin of that pleasure which taste declares
valid for mankind in general and not merely for the private feeling of
each individual. This makes it clear that the true propaedeutic for
laying the foundations of taste is the development of moral ideas
and the culture of the moral feeling. For only when sensibility is
brought into harmony with moral feeling can genuine taste assume a
definite unchangeable form.
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 80}
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