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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

§ 27.

Of the quality of the satisfaction in our judgements upon the Sublime

The feeling of our incapacity to attain to an Idea, which is a law for us, is respect. Now the Idea of the comprehension of every phenomenon that can be given us in the intuition of a whole, is an Idea prescribed to us by a law of Reason, which recognises no other measure, definite, valid for every one, and invariable, than the absolute whole. But our Imagination, even in its greatest efforts, in respect of that comprehension, which we expect from it, of a given object in a whole of intuition (and thus with reference to the presentation of the Idea of Reason), exhibits its own limits and inadequacy; although at the same time it shows that its destination is to make itself adequate to this Idea regarded as a law. Therefore the feeling of the Sublime in nature is respect for our own destination, which by a certain subreption we attribute to an Object of nature (conversion of respect for the Idea of humanity in our own subject into respect for the Object). This makes intuitively evident the superiority of the rational determination of our cognitive faculties to the greatest faculty of our Sensibility.

The feeling of the Sublime is therefore a feeling of pain, arising from the want of accordance between the aesthetical estimation of magnitude formed by the Imagination and the estimation of the same formed by Reason. There is at the same time a pleasure thus excited, arising from the correspondence with rational Ideas of this very judgement of the inadequacy of our greatest faculty of Sense; in so far as it is a law for us to strive after these Ideas. In fact it is for us a law (of Reason), and belongs to our destination, to estimate as small, in comparison with Ideas of Reason, everything which nature, regarded as an object of Sense, contains that is great for us; and that which arouses in us the feeling of this supersensible destination agrees with that law. Now the greatest effort of the Imagination in the presentation of the unit for the estimation of magnitude indicates a reference to something absolutely great; and consequently a reference to the law of Reason, which bids us take this alone as the supreme measure of magnitude. Therefore the inner perception of the inadequacy of all sensible standards for rational estimation of magnitude indicates a correspondence with rational laws; it involves a pain, which arouses in us the feeling of our supersensible destination, according to which it is purposive and therefore pleasurable to find every standard of Sensibility inadequate to the Ideas of Understanding.

The mind feels itself moved in the representation of the Sublime in nature; whilst in aesthetical judgements about the Beautiful it is in restful contemplation. This movement may (especially in its beginnings) be compared to a vibration, i.e. to a quickly alternating attraction towards, and repulsion from, the same Object. The transcendent (towards which the Imagination is impelled in its apprehension of intuition) is for the Imagination like an abyss in which it fears to lose itself; but for the rational Idea of the supersensible it is not transcendent but in conformity with law to bring about such an effort of the Imagination, and consequently here there is the same amount of attraction as there was of repulsion for the mere Sensibility. But the judgement itself always remains in this case only aesthetical, because—without having any determinate concept of the Object at its basis—it merely represents the subjective play of the mental powers (Imagination and Reason) as harmonious through their very contrast. For just as Imagination and Understanding, in judging of the Beautiful, generate a subjective purposiveness of the mental powers by means of their harmony, so [here1 ] Imagination and Reason do so by means of their conflict. That is, they bring about a feeling that we possess pure self-subsistent Reason, or a faculty for the estimation of magnitude, whose pre-eminence can be made intuitively evident only by the inadequacy of that faculty [Imagination] which is itself unbounded in the presentation of magnitudes (of sensible objects).

The measurement of a space (regarded as apprehension) is at the same time a description of it, and thus an objective movement in the act of Imagination and a progress. 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 [elements] in one glance, is a regress, which annihilates the condition of time in this progress of the Imagination and makes coexistence intuitible.2 It is therefore (since the time-series is a condition of the internal sense and of an intuition) a subjective movement of the Imagination, by which it does violence to the internal sense; this must be the more noticeable, the greater the quantum is which the Imagination comprehends in one intuition. The effort, therefore, to receive in one single intuition a measure for magnitudes that requires an appreciable time to apprehend, is a kind of representation, which, subjectively considered, is contrary to purpose: but objectively, as requisite for the estimation of magnitude, it is purposive. Thus that very violence which is done to the subject through the Imagination is judged as purposive in reference to the whole determination of the mind.

The quality of the feeling of the Sublime is that it is a feeling of pain in reference to the faculty by which we judge aesthetically of an object, which pain, however, is represented at the same time as purposive. This is possible through the fact that the very incapacity in question discovers the consciousness of an unlimited faculty of the same subject, and that the mind can only judge of the latter aesthetically by means of the former.

In the logical estimation of magnitude the impossibility of ever arriving at absolute totality, by means of the progress of the measurement of things of the sensible world in time and space, was cognised as objective, i.e. as an impossibility of thinking the infinite as entirely given; and not as merely subjective or that there was only an incapacity to grasp it. For there we have not to do with the degree of comprehension in an intuition, regarded as a measure, but everything depends on a concept of number. But in aesthetical estimation of magnitude the concept of number must disappear or be changed, and the comprehension of the Imagination in reference to the unit of measure (thus avoiding the concepts of a law of the successive production of concepts of magnitude) is alone purposive for it.—If now a magnitude almost reaches the limit of our faculty of comprehension in an intuition, and yet the Imagination is invited by means of numerical magnitudes (in respect of which we are conscious that our faculty is unbounded) to aesthetical comprehension in a greater unit, then we mentally feel ourselves confined aesthetically within bounds. But nevertheless the pain in regard to the necessary extension of the Imagination for accordance with that which is unbounded in our faculty of Reason, viz. the Idea of the absolute whole, and consequently the very unpurposiveness of the faculty of Imagination for rational Ideas and the arousing of them, are represented as purposive. Thus it is that the aesthetical judgement itself is subjectively purposive for the Reason as the source of Ideas, i.e. as the source of an intellectual comprehension for which all aesthetical comprehension is small; and there accompanies the reception of an object as sublime a pleasure, which is only possible through the medium of a pain.

B.

—Of the Dynamically Sublime in Nature

[1 ][Second Edition.]

[2 ][With this should be compared the similar discussion in the Critique of Pure Reason, Dialectic, bk. ii. c. ii. § 1 , On the System of Cosmological Ideas.]