THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 1790

Immanuel Kant was born in the East Prussian city of Königsberg, studied at its university, and worked there as a tutor and professor for more than forty years, never travelling more than fifty miles from home. Although his outward life was one of legendary calm and regularity, Kant's intellectual work easily justified his own claim to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy. Beginning with his Inaugural Dissertation (1770) on the difference between right- and left-handed spatial orientations, Kant patiently worked out the most comprehensive and influential philosophical programme of the modern era. His central thesis—that the possibility of human knowledge presupposes the active participation of the human mind—is deceptively simple, but the details of its application are notoriously complex.

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. {SEC1BK2 ^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

- {SEC1BK2 ^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:

- {SEC1BK2 ^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.

- {SEC1BK2 ^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.

- {SEC1BK2 ^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. {SEC1BK2 ^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.

- {SEC1BK2 ^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. {SEC1BK2 ^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. {SEC1BK2 ^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. {SEC1BK2 ^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 {SEC1BK2 ^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.

- {SEC1BK2 ^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? {SEC1BK2 ^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.

- {SEC1BK2 ^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.

- {SEC1BK2 ^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*.

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*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.