The Online Library of Liberty

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• Editor’s Introduction
• Preface
• Introduction
• I.: Of the Division of Philosophy
• II.: Of the Realm of Philosophy In General
• III.: Of the Critique of Judgement As a Means of Combining the Two Parts of Philosophy Into a Whole.
• IV.: Of Judgement As a Faculty Legislating a Priori
• V.: The Principle of the Formal Purposiveness of Nature Is a Transcendental Principle of Judgement.
• VI.: Of the Combination of the Feeling of Pleasure With the Concept of the Purposiveness of Nature.
• VII.: Of the Aesthetical Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature.
• VIII.: Of the Logical Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature
• IX.: Of the Connexion of the Legislation of Understanding With That of Reason By Means of the Judgement
• Part I: Critique of the Aesthetical Judgement
• First Division: Analytic of the Aesthetical Judgement
• First Book: Analytic of the Beautiful
• First Moment: of the Judgement of Taste 1 According to Quality
• § 1.: The Judgement of Taste Is Aesthetical
• § 2.: The Satisfaction Which Determines the Judgement of Taste Is Disinterested
• § 3.: The Satisfaction In the Pleasant Is Bound Up With Interest
• § 4.: The Satisfaction In the Good Is Bound Up With Interest
• § 5.: Comparison of the Three Specifically Different Kinds of Satisfaction
• Explanation of the Beautiful Resulting From the First Moment
• Second Moment: of the Judgement of Taste, Viz. According to Quantity
• § 6.: The Beautiful Is That Which Apart From Concepts Is Represented As the Object of a Universal Satisfaction
• § 7.: Comparison of the Beautiful With the Pleasant and the Good By Means of the Above Characteristic
• § 8.: The Universality of the Satisfaction Is Represented In a Judgement of Taste Only As Subjective
• § 9.: Investigation of the Question Whether In the Judgement of Taste the Feeling of Pleasure Precedes Or Follows the Judging of the Object
• Explanation of the Beautiful Resulting From the Second Moment
• Third Moment: of Judgements of Taste, According to the Relation of the Purposes Which Are Brought Into Consideration Therein.
• § 10.: Of Purposiveness In General
• § 11.: The Judgement of Taste Has Nothing At Its Basis But the Form of the Purposiveness of an Object ( Or of Its Mode of Representation )
• § 12.: The Judgement of Taste Rests On a Priori Grounds
• § 13.: The Pure Judgement of Taste Is Independent of Charm and Emotion
• § 14.: Elucidation By Means of Examples
• § 15.: The Judgement of Taste Is Quite Independent of the Concept of Perfection
• § 16.: The Judgement of Taste, By Which an Object Is Declared to Be Beautiful Under the Condition of a Definite Concept, Is Not Pure
• § 17.: Of the Ideal of Beauty
• Explanation of the Beautiful Derived From This Third Moment
• Fourth Moment: of the Judgement of Taste, According to the Modality of the Satisfaction In the Object
• § 18.: What the Modality In a Judgement of Taste Is
• § 19.: The Subjective Necessity, Which We Ascribe to the Judgement of Taste, Is Conditioned
• § 20.: The Condition of Necessity Which a Judgement of Taste Asserts Is the Idea of a Common Sense
• § 21.: Have We Ground For Presupposing a Common Sense?
• § 22.: The Necessity of the Universal Agreement That Is Thought In a Judgement of Taste Is a Subjective Necessity, Which Is Represented As Objective Under the Presupposition of a Common Sense
• Explanation of the Beautiful Resulting From the Fourth Moment
• General Remark On the First Section of the Analytic
• Second Book: Analytic of the Sublime
• § 23.: Transition From the Faculty Which Judges of the Beautiful to That Which Judges of the Sublime
• § 24.: Of the Divisions of an Investigation Into the Feeling of the Sublime
• A.: — of the Mathematically Sublime
• § 25.: Explanation of the Term “ Sublime ”
• § 26.: Of That Estimation of the Magnitude of Natural Things Which Is Requisite For the Idea of the Sublime
• § 27.: Of the Quality of the Satisfaction In Our Judgements Upon the Sublime
• B.: — of the Dynamically Sublime In Nature
• § 28.: Of Nature Regarded As Might
• § 29.: Of the Modality of the Judgement Upon the Sublime In Nature
• General Remark Upon the Exposition of the Aesthetical Reflective Judgement
• Deduction of [pure 1 ] Aesthetical Judgements
• § 30.: The Deduction of Aesthetical Judgements On the Objects of Nature Must Not Be Directed to What We Call Sublime In Nature, But Only to the Beautiful.
• § 31.: Of the Method of Deduction of Judgements of Taste
• § 32.: First Peculiarity of the Judgement of Taste
• § 33.: Second Peculiarity of the Judgement of Taste
• § 34.: There Is No Objective Principle of Taste Possible
• § 35.: The Principle of Taste Is the Subjective Principle of Judgement In General
• § 36.: Of the Problem of a Deduction of Judgements of Taste
• § 37.: What Is Properly Asserted a Priori of an Object In a Judgement of Taste
• § 38.: Deduction of Judgements of Taste
• § 39.: Of the Communicability of a Sensation
• § 40.: Of Taste As a Kind of Sensus Communis
• § 41.: Of the Empirical Interest In the Beautiful
• § 42.: Of the Intellectual Interest In the Beautiful
• § 43.: Of Art In General
• § 44.: Of Beautiful Art
• § 45.: Beautiful Art Is an Art, In So Far As It Seems Like Nature
• § 46.: Beautiful Art Is the Art of Genius
• § 47.: Elucidation and Confirmation of the Above Explanation of Genius
• § 48.: Of the Relation of Genius to Taste
• § 49.: Of the Faculties of the Mind That Constitute Genius
• § 50.: Of the Combination of Taste With Genius In the Products of Beautiful Art
• § 51.: Of the Division of the Beautiful Arts
• § 52.: Of the Combination of Beautiful Arts In One and the Same Product
• § 53.: Comparison of the Respective Aesthetical Worth of the Beautiful Arts
• § 54.: Remark
• Second Division: Dialectic of the Aesthetical Judgement
• § 55: § 56.
• § 57.: Solution of the Antinomy of Taste
• § 58.: Of the Idealism of the Purposiveness of Both Nature and Art As the Unique Principle of the Aesthetical Judgement.
• § 59.: Of Beauty As the Symbol of Morality
• Appendix
• § 60.: Of the Method of Taste
• Part II: Critique of the Teleological Judgement
• § 61.: Of the Objective Purposiveness of Nature
• First Division: Analytic of the Teleological Judgement
• § 62.: Of the Objective Purposiveness Which Is Merely Formal As Distinguished From That Which Is Material
• § 63.: Of the Relative, As Distinguished From the Inner, Purposiveness of Nature
• § 64.: Of the Peculiar Character of Things As Natural Purposes
• § 65.: Things Regarded As Natural Purposes Are Organised Beings
• § 66.: Of the Principle of Judging of Internal Purposiveness In Organised Beings
• § 67.: Of the Principle of the Teleological Judging of Nature In General As a System of Purposes
• § 68.: Of the Principle of Teleology As Internal Principle of Natural Science
• Second Division
• Dialectic of the Teleological Judgement
• § 69.: What Is an Antinomy of the Judgement?
• § 70.: Representation of This Antinomy
• § 71.: Preliminary to the Solution of the Above Antinomy
• § 72.: Of the Different Systems Which Deal With the Purposiveness of Nature
• § 73.: None of the Above Systems Give What They Pretend
• § 74.: The Reason That We Cannot Treat the Concept of a Technic of Nature Dogmatically Is the Fact That a Natural Purpose Is Inexplicable
• § 75.: The Concept of an Objective Purposiveness of Nature Is a Critical Principle of Reason For the Reflective Judgement
• § 76.: Remark
• § 77.: Of the Peculiarity of the Human Understanding, By Means of Which the Concept of a Natural Purpose Is Possible
• § 78.: Of the Union of the Principle of the Universal Mechanism of Matter With the Teleological Principle In the Technic of Nature.
• § 79.: Whether Teleology Must Be Treated As If It Belonged to the Doctrine of Nature
• § 80.: Of the Necessary Subordination of the Mechanical to the Teleological Principle In the Explanation of a Thing As a Natural Purpose.
• § 81.: Of the Association of Mechanism With the Teleological Principle In the Explanation of a Natural Purpose As a Natural Product.
• § 82.: Of the Teleological System In the External Relations of Organised Beings
• § 83.: Of the Ultimate Purpose of Nature As a Teleological System
• § 84.: Of the Final Purpose of the Existence of a World, I.E. Of Creation Itself
• § 85.: Of Physico-theology
• § 86.: Of Ethico-theology
• § 87.: Of the Moral Proof of the Being of God
• § 88.: Limitation of the Validity of the Moral Proof
• § 89.: Of the Use of the Moral Argument
• § 90.: Of the Kind of Belief In a Teleological Proof of the Being of God
• § 91.: Of the Kind of Belief Produced By a Practical Faith

VI.

OF THE COMBINATION OF THE FEELING OF PLEASURE WITH THE CONCEPT OF THE PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE.

The thought harmony of nature in the variety of its particular laws with our need of finding universality of principles for it, must be judged as contingent in respect of our insight, but yet at the same time as indispensable for the needs of our Understanding, and consequently as a purposiveness by which nature is harmonised with our design, which, however, has only knowledge for its aim. The universal laws of the Understanding, which are at the same time laws of nature, are just as necessary (although arising from spontaneity) as the material laws of motion. Their production presupposes no design on the part of our cognitive faculty, because it is only by means of them that we, in the first place, attain a concept of what the cognition of things (of nature) is, and attribute them necessarily to nature as Object of our cognition in general. But, so far as we can see, it is contingent that the order of nature according to its particular laws, in all its variety and heterogeneity possibly at least transcending our comprehension, should be actually conformable to these [laws]. The discovery of this [order] is the business of the Understanding which is designedly borne towards a necessary purpose, viz. the bringing of unity of principles into nature, which purpose then the Judgement must ascribe to nature, because the Understanding cannot here prescribe any law to it.

The attainment of that design is bound up with the feeling of pleasure, and since the condition of this attainment is a representation a priori,—as here a principle for the reflective Judgement in general,—therefore the feeling of pleasure is determined by a ground a priori and valid for every man, and that merely by the reference of the Object to the cognitive faculty, the concept of purposiveness here not having the least reference to the faculty of desire. It is thus quite distinguished from all practical purposiveness of nature.

In fact, although from the agreement of perceptions with laws in accordance with universal natural concepts (the categories), we do not and cannot find in ourselves the slightest effect upon the feeling of pleasure, because the Understanding necessarily proceeds according to its nature without any design; yet, on the other hand, the discovery that two or more empirical heterogeneous laws of nature may be combined under one principle comprehending them both, is the ground of a very marked pleasure, often even of an admiration, which does not cease, though we may be already quite familiar with the objects of it. We no longer find, it is true, any marked pleasure in the comprehensibility of nature and in the unity of its divisions into genera and species, whereby are possible all empirical concepts, through which we cognise it according to its particular laws. But this pleasure has certainly been present at one time, and it is only because the commonest experience would be impossible without it that it is gradually confounded with mere cognition and no longer arrests particular attention. There is then something in our judgements upon nature which makes us attentive to its purposiveness for our Understanding—an endeavour to bring, where possible, its dissimilar laws under higher ones, though still always empirical—and thus, if successful, makes us feel pleasure in that harmony of these with our cognitive faculty, which harmony we regard as merely contingent. On the other hand, a representation of nature would altogether displease, by which it should be foretold to us that in the smallest investigation beyond the commonest experience we should meet with a heterogeneity of its laws, which would make the union of its particular laws under universal empirical laws impossible for our Understanding. For this would contradict the principle of the subjectively-purposive specification of nature in its genera, and also of our reflective Judgement in respect of such principle.

This presupposition of the Judgement is, however, at the same time so indeterminate as to how far that ideal purposiveness of nature for our cognitive faculty should be extended, that if we were told that a deeper or wider knowledge of nature derived from observation must lead at last to a variety of laws, which no human Understanding could reduce to a principle, we should at once acquiesce. But still we more gladly listen to one who offers hope that the more we know nature internally, and can compare it with external members now unknown to us, the more simple shall we find it in its principles, and that the further our experience reaches the more uniform shall we find it amid the apparent heterogeneity of its empirical laws. For it is a mandate of our Judgement to proceed according to the principle of the harmony of nature with our cognitive faculty so far as that reaches, without deciding (because it is not the determinant Judgement which gives us this rule) whether or not it is bounded anywhere. For although in respect of the rational use of our cognitive faculty we can determine such bounds, this is not possible in the empirical field.