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§ 36.: Of the problem of a Deduction of judgements of Taste - Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement [1892]

Edition used:

Kant’s Critique of Judgement, translated with Introduction and Notes by J.H. Bernard (2nd ed. revised) (London: Macmillan, 1914).

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§ 36.

Of the problem of a Deduction of judgements of Taste

The concept of an Object in general can immediately be combined with the perception of an object, containing its empirical predicates, so as to form a cognitive judgement; and it is thus that a judgement of experience is produced.1 At the basis of this lie a priori concepts of the synthetical unity of the manifold of intuition, by which the manifold is thought as the determination of an Object. These concepts (the Categories) require a Deduction, which is given in the Critique of pure Reason; and by it we can get the solution of the problem, how are synthetical a priori cognitive judgements possible? This problem concerns then the a priori principles of the pure Understanding and its theoretical judgements.

But with a perception there can also be combined a feeling of pleasure (or pain) and a satisfaction, that accompanies the representation of the Object and serves instead of its predicate; thus there can result an aesthetical non-cognitive judgement. At the basis of such a judgement—if it is not a mere judgement of sensation but a formal judgement of reflection, which imputes the same satisfaction necessarily to every one,—must lie some a priori principle; which may be merely subjective (if an objective one should prove impossible for judgements of this kind), but also as such may need a Deduction, that we may thereby comprehend how an aesthetical judgement can lay claim to necessity. On this is founded the problem with which we are now occupied, how are judgements of taste possible? This problem then has to do with the a priori principles of the pure faculty of Judgement in aesthetical judgements; i.e. judgements in which it has not (as in theoretical ones) merely to subsume under objective concepts of Understanding, and in which it is subject to a law, but in which it is, itself, subjectively, both object and law.

This problem then may be thus represented: how is a judgement possible, in which merely from our own feeling of pleasure in an object, independently of its concept, we judge that this pleasure attaches to the representation of the same Object in every other subject, and that a priori without waiting for the accordance of others?

It is easy to see that judgements of taste are synthetical, because they go beyond the concept and even beyond the intuition of the Object, and add to that intuition as predicate something that is not a cognition, viz. a feeling of pleasure (or pain). Although the predicate (of the personal pleasure bound up with the representation) is empirical, nevertheless, as concerns the required assent of every one the judgements are a priori, or desire to be regarded as such; and this is already involved in the expressions of this claim. Thus this problem of the Critique of Judgement belongs to the general problem of transcendental philosophy, how are synthetical a priori judgements possible?

[1 ][For the distinction, an important one in Kant, between judgements of experience and judgements of perception, see his Prolegomena,§ 18 . Cf. Kant’s Critical Philosophy for English Readers, vol. i. p. 116.]