Kant 3rd Critique (Bernard)

§30. The deduction of aesthetical judgments on the objects of nature must not be directed to what we call sublime in nature, but only to the beautiful

The claim of an aesthetical judgment to universal validity for every subject requires, as a judgment resting on some a priori principle, a deduction (or legitimatizing of its pretensions), in addition to its exposition, if it is concerned with satisfaction or dissatisfaction in the form of the object. Of this kind are judgments of taste about the beautiful in nature. For in that case the purposiveness has its ground in the object and in its figure, although it does not indicate its reference to other objects in accordance with concepts (for a cognitive judgment), but merely has to do in general with the apprehension of this form, so far as it shows itself conformable to the faculty of concepts and of the presentation (which is identical with the apprehension) of them in the mind. We can thus, in respect of the beautiful in nature, suggest many questions touching the cause of this purposiveness of their forms, e.g. to explain why nature has scattered abroad beauty with such profusion, even in the depth of the ocean, where the human eye (for which alone that purposiveness exists) but seldom penetrates.

But the sublime in nature—if we are passing upon it a pure aesthetical judgment, not mixed up with any concepts of perfection or objective purposiveness, in which case it would be a teleological judgment—may be regarded as quite formless or devoid of figure, and yet as the object of a pure satisfaction; and it may display a subjective purposiveness in the given representation. And we ask if, for an aesthetical judgment of this kind—over and above the exposition of what is thought in it—a deduction also of its claim to any (subjective) a priori principle may be demanded.

To which we may answer that the sublime in nature is improperly so called and that, properly speaking, the word should only be applied to a state of mind, or rather to its foundation in human nature. The apprehension of an otherwise formless and unpurposive object gives merely the occasion through which we become conscious of such a state; the object is thus employed as subjectively purposive, but is not judged as such in itself and on account of its form (it is, as it were, a species finalis accepta, non data). Hence our exposition of judgments concerning the sublime in nature was at the same time their deduction. For when we analyzed the reflection of the judgment in such acts, we found in them a purposive relation of the cognitive faculties, which must be ascribed ultimately to the faculty of purposes (the will), and hence is itself purposive a priori. This, then, immediately involves the deduction, i.e. the justification of the claim of such a judgment to universal and necessary validity.

We shall therefore only have to seek for the deduction of judgments of taste, i.e. of judgments about the beauty of natural things; we shall thus treat satisfactorily the problem with which the whole faculty of aesthetical judgment is concerned.

A deduction, i.e. the guarantee of the legitimacy of a class of judgments, is only obligatory if the judgment lays claim to necessity. This it does if it demands even subjective universality or the agreement of everyone, although it is not a judgment of cognition, but only one of pleasure or pain in a given object, i.e. it assumes a subjective purposiveness thoroughly valid for everyone, which must not be based on any concept of the thing, because the judgment is one of taste.

We have before us in the latter case no cognitive judgment— neither a theoretical one based on the concept of a nature in general formed by the understanding, nor a (pure) practical one based on the idea of freedom, as given a priori by reason. Therefore we have to justify a priori the validity, neither of a judgment which represents what a thing is, nor of one which prescribes that I ought to do something in order to produce it. We have merely to prove for the judgment generally the universal validity of a singular judgment that expresses the subjective purposiveness of an empirical representation of the form of an object, in order to explain how it is possible that a thing can please in the mere act of judging it (without sensation or concept) and how the satisfaction of one man can be proclaimed as a rule for every other, just as the act of judging of an object for the sake of a cognition in general has universal rules.

If, now, this universal validity is not to be based on any collecting of the suffrages of others or on any questioning of them as to the kind of sensations they have, but is to rest, as it were, on an autonomy of the judging subject in respect of the feeling of pleasure (in the given representation), i.e. on his own taste, and yet is not to be derived from concepts, then a judgment like this—such as the judgment of taste is, in fact—has a twofold logical peculiarity. First, there is its a priori universal validity, which is not a logical universality in accordance with concepts, but the universality of a singular judgment. Secondly, it has a necessity (which must always rest on a priori grounds), which however does not depend on any a priori grounds of proof, through the representation of which the assent that everyone concedes to the judgment of taste could be exacted.

The explanation of these logical peculiarities, wherein a judgment of taste is different from all cognitive judgments—if we at the outset abstract from all content, viz, from the feeling of pleasure, and merely compare the aesthetical form with the form of objective judgments as logic prescribes it—is sufficient by itself for the deduction of this singular faculty. We shall then represent and elucidate by examples these characteristic properties of taste.

The judgment of taste determines its object in respect of satisfaction (in its beauty) with an accompanying claim for the assent of everyone, just as if it were objective.

To say that this flower is beautiful is the same as to assert its proper claim to satisfy everyone. By the pleasantness of its smell it has no such claim. A smell which one man enjoys gives another a headache. Now what are we to presume from this except that beauty is to be regarded as a property of the flower itself, which does not accommodate itself to any diversity of persons or of their sensitive organs, but to which these must accommodate themselves if they are to pass any judgment upon it? And yet this is not so. For a judgment of taste consists in calling a thing beautiful just because of that characteristic in respect of which it accommodates itself to our mode of apprehension.

Moreover, it is required of every judgment which is to prove the taste of the subject that the subject shall judge by himself, without needing to grope about empirically among the judgments of others, and acquaint himself previously as to their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the same object; thus his judgment should be pronounced a priori, and not be a mere imitation, because the thing actually gives universal pleasure. However, we ought to think that an a priori judgment must contain a concept of the object for the cognition of which it contains the principle, but the judgment of taste is not based upon concepts at all and is in general, not a cognitive, but an aesthetical judgment.

Thus a young poet does not permit himself to be dissuaded out of his conviction that his poem is beautiful, by the judgment of the public or of his friends; and if he gives ear to them he does. so, not because he now judges differently, but because although (in regard to him) the whole public has false taste, in his desire for applause he finds reason for accommodating himself to the common error (even against his judgment). It is only at a later time, when his judgment has been sharpened by exercise, that he voluntarily departs from his former judgments, just as he proceeds with those of his judgments which rest upon reason. Taste merely claims autonomy. To make the judgments of others the determining grounds of his own would be heteronomy.

That we, and rightly, recommend the works of the ancients as models and call their authors classical, thus forming among writers a kind of noble class who give laws to the people by their example, seems to indicate a posteriori sources of taste and to contradict the autonomy of taste in every subject. But we might just as well say that the old mathematicians—who arc regarded up to the present day as supplying models not easily to be dispensed with for the supreme profundity and elegance of their synthetical methods—prove that our reason is only imitative and that we have not the faculty of producing from it, in combination with intuition, rigid proofs by means of the construction of concepts. There is no use of our powers, however free, no use of reason itself (which must create all its judgments a priori from common sources) which would not give rise to faulty attempts if every subject had always to begin anew from the rude basis of his natural state and if others had not preceded him with their attempts. Not that these make mere imitators of those who come after them, but rather by their procedure they put others on the track of seeking in themselves principles and so of pursuing their own course, often a better one. Even in religion—where certainly everyone has to derive the rule of his conduct from himself, because he remains responsible for it and cannot shift the blame of his transgressions upon others, whether his teachers or his predecessors—there is never as much accomplished by means of universal precepts, either obtained from priests or philosophers or gotten from oneself, as by means of an example of virtue or holiness which, exhibited in history, does not dispense with the autonomy of virtue based on the proper and original idea of morality (a priori) or change it into a mechanical imitation. Following, involving something precedent, not imitation, is the right expression for all influence that the products of an exemplary author may have upon others. And this only means that we draw from the same sources as our predecessor did and learn from him only the way to avail ourselves of them. But of all faculties and talents, taste, because its judgment is not determinable by concepts and precepts, is just that one which most needs examples of what has in the progress of culture received the longest approval, that it may not become again uncivilized and return to the crudeness of its first essays.

The judgment of taste is not determinable by grounds of proof, just as if it were merely subjective.

If a man, in the first place, does not find a building, a prospect, or a poem beautiful, a hundred voices all highly praising it will not force his inmost agreement. He may indeed feign that it pleases him, in order that he may not be regarded as devoid of taste; he may even begin to doubt whether he has formed his taste on a knowledge of a sufficient number of objects of a certain kind (just as one who believes that he recognizes in the distance as a forest something which all others regard as a town doubts the judgment of his own sight). But he clearly sees that the agreement of others gives no valid proof of the judgment about beauty. Others might perhaps see and observe for him; and what many have seen in one way, although he believes that he has seen it differently, might serve him as an adequate ground of proof of a theoretical and consequently logical judgment. But that a thing has pleased others could never serve as the basis of an aesthetical judgment. A judgment of others which is unfavorable to ours may indeed rightly make us scrutinize our own carefully, but it can never convince us of its incorrectness. There is therefore no empirical ground of proof which would force a judgment of taste upon anyone.

Still less, in the second place, can an a priori proof determine according to definite rules a judgment about beauty. If a man reads me a poem of his or brings me to a play which does not on the whole suit my taste, he may bring forward in proof of the beauty of his poem Batteux or Lessing, or still more ancient and famous critics of taste, and all the rules laid down by them. Certain passages which displease me may agree very well with rules of beauty (as they have been put forth by these writers and are universally recognized); but I stop my ears, I will listen to no arguments and no reasoning; and I will rather assume that these rules of the critics are false, or at least that they do not apply to the case in question, than admit that my judgment should be determined by grounds of proof a priori. For it is to be a judgment of taste, and not of understanding or reason.

It seems that this is one of the chief reasons why this aesthetical faculty of judgment has been given the name of taste. For though a man enumerate to me all the ingredients of a dish and remark that each is separately pleasant to me, and further extol with justice the wholesomeness of this particular food, yet am I deaf to all these reasons; I try the dish with my tongue and my palate, and thereafter (and not according to universal principles) do I pass my judgment.

In fact, the judgment of taste always takes the form of a singular judgment about an object. The understanding can form a universal judgment by comparing the object in point of the satisfaction it affords with the judgment of others upon it: e.g., 'All tulips are beautiful. But then this is not a judgment of taste but a logical judgment, which takes the relation of an object to taste as the predicate of things of a certain species. That judgment, however, in which I find an individual given tulip beautiful, i.e. in which I find my satisfaction in the object to be universally valid, is alone a judgment of taste. Its peculiarity consists in the fact that, although it has merely subjective validity, it claims the assent of all subjects, exactly as it would do if it were an objective judgment resting on grounds of knowledge that could be established by a proof.

By a principle of taste I mean a principle under the condition of which we could subsume the concept of an object and thus infer, by means of a syllogism, that the object is beautiful. But that is absolutely impossible. For I must immediately feel pleasure in the representation of the object, and of that I can be persuaded by no grounds of proof whatever. Although, as Hume says, all critics can reason more plausibly than cooks, yet the same fate awaits them. They cannot expect the determining ground of their judgment [to be derived] from the force of the proofs, but only from the reflection of the subject upon its own proper state (of pleasure or pain), all precepts and rules being rejected.

But although critics can and ought to pursue their reasonings so that our judgments of taste may be corrected and extended, it is not with a view to set forth the determining ground of this kind of aesthetical judgments in a universally applicable formula, which is impossible; but rather to investigate the cognitive faculties and their exercise in these judgments, and to explain by examples the reciprocal subjective purposiveness. the form of which, as has been shown above, in a given representation, constitutes the beauty of the object. Therefore the critique of taste is only subjective as regards the representation through which an object is given to us, viz, it is the art or science of reducing to rules the reciprocal relation between the understanding and the imagination in the given representation (without reference to any preceding sensation or concept). That is, it is the art or science of reducing to rules their accordance or discordance, and of determining the conditions of this. It is an art, if it only shows this by examples; it is a science if it derives the possibility of such judgments from the nature of these faculties, as cognitive faculties in general. We have here, in Transcendental Critique, only to do with the latter. It should develop and justify the subjective principle of taste, as an a priori principle of the judgment. This critique, as an art merely seeks to apply, in the judging of objects, the physiological (here psychological), and therefore empirical, rules according to which taste actually proceeds (without taking any account of their possibility); and it criticizes the products of beautiful art just as, regarded as a science, it criticizes the faculty by which they are judged.

§35. The principle of taste is the subjective principle of judgment in general

The judgment of taste is distinguished from a logical judgment in this that the latter subsumes a representation under the concept of the object, while the former does not subsume it under any concept; because otherwise the necessary universal agreement [in these judgments] would be capable of being compelled by proofs. Nevertheless it is like the latter in this that it claims universality and necessity, though not according to concepts of the object, and consequently a merely subjective necessity. Now because the concepts in a judgment constitute its content (what belongs to the cognition of the object), but the judgment of taste is not determinable by concepts, it is based only on the subjective formal condition of a judgment in general. The subjective condition of all judgments is the faculty of judgment itself. This, when used with reference to a representation by which an object is given, requires the accordance of two representative powers, viz, imagination (for the intuition and comprehension of the manifold) and understanding (for the concept as a representation of the unity of this comprehension). Now because no concept of the object lies here at the basis of the judgment, it can only consist in the subsumption of the imagination itself (in the case of a representation by which an object is given), under the conditions that the understanding requires to pass from intuition to concepts. That is, because the freedom of the imagination consists in the fact that it schematizes without any concept, the judgment of taste must rest on a mere sensation of the reciprocal activity of the imagination in its freedom and the understanding with its conformity to law. It must therefore rest on a feeling, which makes us judge the object by the purposiveness of the representation (by which an object is given) in respect of the furtherance of the cognitive faculty in its free play. Taste, then, as subjective judgment, contains a principle of subsumption, not of intuitions under concepts, but of the faculty of intuitions or presentations (i.e. the imagination) under the faculty of the concepts (i.e. the understanding), so far as the former in its freedom harmonizes with the latter in its conformity to law.

In order to discover this ground of legitimacy by a deduction of the judgments of taste, we can only take as a clue the formal peculiarities of this kind of judgments, and consequently can only consider their logical form.

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 judgment; and it is thus that a judgment of experience is produced. 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 judgments possible? This problem concerns then the a priori principles of the pure understanding and its theoretical judgments.

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 noncognitive judgment. At the basis of such a judgment—if it is not a mere judgment of sensation but a formal judgment of reflection, which imputes the same satisfaction necessarily to everyone—must lie some a priori principle, which may be merely subjective (if an objective one should prove impossible for judgments of this kind), but also as such may need a deduction, that we may thereby comprehend how an aesthetical judgment can lay claim to necessity. On this is founded the problem with which we are now occupied: how are judgments of taste possible? This problem, then, has to do with the a priori principles of the pure faculty of judgment in aesthetical judgments, i.e. judgments 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 judgment 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 judgments 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 everyone the judgments 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 Judgment belongs to the general problem of transcendental philosophy: how are synthetical a priori judgments possible?

§37. What is properly asserted a priori of an object in a judgment of taste

That the representation of an object is immediately bound up with pleasure can only be internally perceived; and if we did not wish to indicate anything more than this, it would give a merely empirical judgment. For I cannot combine a definite feeling (of pleasure or pain) with any representation, except where there is at bottom an a priori principle in the reason determining the will. In that case the pleasure (in the moral feeling) is the consequence of the principle, but cannot be compared with the pleasure in taste, because it requires a definite concept of a law; and the latter pleasure, on the contrary, must be bound up with the mere act of judging, prior to all concepts. Hence also all judgments of taste are singular judgments, because they do not combine their predicate of satisfaction with a concept, but with a given individual empirical representation.

And so it is not the pleasure, but the universal validity of this pleasure, perceived as mentally bound up with the mere judgment upon an object, which is represented a priori in a judgment of taste as a universal rule for the judgment and valid for everyone. It is an empirical judgment [to say] that I perceive and judge an object with pleasure. But it is an a priori judgment [to say] that I find it beautiful, i.e. I attribute this satisfaction necessarily to everyone.

If it be admitted that, in a pure judgment of taste, the satisfaction in the object is combined with the mere act of judging its form, it is nothing else than its subjective purposiveness for the judgment which we feel to be mentally combined with the representation of the object. The judgment, as regards the formal rules of its action, apart from all matter (whether sensation or concept), can only be directed to the subjective conditions of its employment in general (it is applied neither to a particular mode of sense nor to a particular concept of the understanding), and consequently to that subjective [element] which we can presuppose in all men (as requisite for possible cognition in general). Thus the agreement of a representation with these conditions of the judgment must be capable of being assumed as valid a priori for everyone. That is, we may rightly impute to everyone the pleasure or the subjective purposiveness of the representation for the relation between the cognitive faculties in the act of judging a sensible object in general.*

* In order to be justified in claiming universal assent for an aesthetical judgment that rests merely on subjective grounds, it is sufficient to assume: (1) That the subjective conditions of the judgment, as regards the relation of the cognitive powers thus put into activity to a cognition in general, are the same in all men. This must be true, because otherwise men would not be able to communicate their representations or even their knowledge. (2) The judgment must merely have reference to this relation (consequently to the formal condition of the judgment) aed he pure, i.e. not mingled either with concepts of the object or with sensations, as determining grounds. If there has been any mistake as regards this latter condition, then there is only an inaccurate application of the privilege, which a law gives us, to a particular case; but that does not destroy the privilege itself in general.

This deduction is thus easy, because it has no need to justify the objective reality of any concept, for beauty is not a concept of the object and the judgment of taste is not cognitive. It only maintains that we are justified in presupposing universally in every man those subjective conditions of the judgment which we find in ourselves; and further, that we have rightly subsumed the given object under these conditions. The latter has indeed unavoidable difficulties which do not beset the logical judgment. There we subsume under concepts, but in the aesthetical judgment under a merely sensible relation between the imagination and understanding mutually harmonizing in the representation of the form of the object—in which case the subsumption may easily be deceptive. Yet the legitimacy of the claim of the judgment in counting upon universal assent is not thus annulled; it reduces itself merely to judging as valid for everyone the correctness of the principle from subjective grounds. For as to the difficulty or doubt concerning the correctness of the subsumption under that principle, it makes the legitimacy of the claim of an aesthetical judgment in general to such validity and the principle of the same as little doubtful as the alike (though neither so commonly nor readily) faulty subsumption of the logical judgment under its principle can make the latter, an objective principle, doubtful. But if the question were to be, How is it possible to assume nature a priori to be a complex of objects of taste? this problem has reference to teleology, because it must be regarded as a purpose of nature essentially belonging to its concept to exhibit forms that are purposive for our judgment. But the correctness of this latter assumption is very doubtful, whereas the efficacy of natural beauties is patent to experience.

If sensation, as the real in perception, is related to knowledge, it is called sensation of the sense; and its specific quality may be represented as generally communicable in a uniform way, if we assume that everyone has senses like our own. But this cannot at all be presupposed of any single sensation. To a man who is deficient in the sense of smell, this kind of sensation cannot be communicated; and even if it is not wholly deficient, we cannot be certain that he gets exactly the same sensation from a flower that we have. But even more must we represent men as differing in respect of the pleasantness or unpleasantness involved in the sensation from the same object of sense; and it is absolutely not to be required that every man should take pleasure in the same objects. Pleasure of this kind, because it comes into the mind through the senses, in respect of which therefore we are passive, we may call the pleasure of enjoyment.

Satisfaction in an action because of its moral character is, on the other hand, not the pleasure of enjoyment, but of spontaneity and its accordance with the idea of its destination. But this feeling, called moral, requires concepts and presents, not free purposiveness, but purposiveness that is conformable to law; it therefore admits of being universally communicated only by means of reason and, if the pleasure is to be homogeneous for everyone, by very definite practical concepts of reason.

Pleasure in the sublime in nature, regarded as a pleasure of rational contemplation, also makes claim to universal participation, but it presupposes, besides, a different feeling, viz. that of our supersensible destination, which, however obscurely, has a moral foundation. But that other men will take account of it and will find a satisfaction in the consideration of the wild greatness of nature (that certainly cannot be ascribed to its aspect, which is rather terrifying) I am not absolutely justified in supposing. Nevertheless, in consideration of the fact that on every suitable occasion regard should be had to these moral dispositions, I can impute such satisfaction to every man, but only by means of the moral law, which on its side again is based on concepts of reason.

On the contrary, pleasure in the beautiful is neither a pleasure of enjoyment nor of a law-abiding activity, nor even of rational contemplation in accordance with ideas, but of mere reflection. Without having as rule any purpose or fundamental proposition, this pleasure accompanies the ordinary apprehension of an object by the imagination, as faculty of intuition, in relation with the understanding, as faculty of concepts, by means of a procedure of the judgment which it must also exercise on behalf of the commonest experience; only that in the latter case it is in order to perceive an empirical objective concept, in the former case (in aesthetical judgments) merely to perceive the accordance of the representation with the harmonious (subjectively purposive) activity of both cognitive faculties in their freedom, i.e. to feel with pleasure the mental state produced by the representation. This pleasure must necessarily depend for everyone on the same conditions, for they are subjective conditions of the possibility of a cognition in general; and the proportion between these cognitive faculties requisite for taste is also requisite for that ordinary sound understanding which we have to presuppose in everyone. Therefore he who judges with taste (if only he does not go astray in this act of consciousness and mistake matter for form or charm for beauty) may impute to everyone subjective purposiveness, i.e. his satisfaction in the object, and may assume his feeling to be universally communicable and that without the mediation of concepts.

We often give to the judgment, if we are considering the result rather than the act of its reflection, the name of a sense, and we speak of a sense of truth, or of a sense of decorum, of justice, etc. And yet we know, or at least we ought to know, that these concepts cannot have their place in sense, and further, that sense has not the least capacity for expressing universal rules; but that no representation of truth, fitness, beauty, or justice, and so forth could come into our thoughts if we could not rise beyond sense to higher faculties of cognition. The common understanding of men, which, as the mere healthy (not yet cultivated) understanding, we regard as the least to he expected from anyone claiming the name of man, has therefore the doubtful honor of being given the name of common sense (sensus communis); and in such a way that, by the name common (not merely in our language, where the word actually has a double signification, but in many others), we understand vulgar, that which is everywhere met with, the possession of which indicates absolutely no merit or superiority.

But under the sensus communis we must include the idea of a sense common to all, i.e. of a faculty of judgment which, in its reflection, takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of all other men in thought, in order, as it were, to compare its judgment with the collective reason of humanity, and thus to escape the illusion arising from the private conditions that could be so easily taken for objective, which would injuriously affect the judgment. This is done by comparing our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgments of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man, by abstracting from the limitations which contingently attach to our own judgment. This again is brought about by leaving aside as much as possible the matter of our representative state, i.e. sensation, and simply having respect to the formal peculiarities of our representation or representative state. Now this operation of reflection seems perhaps too artificial to be attributed to the faculty called common sense, but it only appears so when expressed in abstract formulae. In itself there is nothing more natural than to abstract from charm or emotion if we are seeking a judgment that is to serve as a universal rule.

The following maxims of common human understanding do not properly come in here, as parts of the Critique of Taste, but yet they may serve to elucidate its fundamental propositions. They are: (1) to think for oneself; (2) to put ourselves in thought in the place of everyone else; (3) always to think consistently. The first is the maxim of unprejudiced thought; the second of enlarged thought; the third of consecutive thought. The first is the maxim of a never passive reason. The tendency to such passivity, and therefore to heteronomy of the reason, is called prejudice; and the greatest prejudice of all is to represent nature as not subject to the rules that the understanding places at its basis by means of its own essential law, i.e. is superstition. Deliverance from superstition is called enlightenment,* because, although this name belongs to deliverance from prejudices in general, yet superstition specially (in sensu eminenti) deserves to be called a prejudice. For the blindness in which superstition places us, which it even imposes on us as an obligation, makes the need of being guided by others, and the consequent passive state of our reason, peculiarly noticeable. As regards the second maxim of the mind, we are otherwise wont to call him limited (borné, the opposite of enlarged) whose talents attain to no great use (especially as regards intensity). But here we are not speaking of the faculty of cognition, but of the mode of thought which makes a purposive use thereof. However small may be the area or the degree to which a man’s natural gifts reach, yet it indicates a man of enlarged thought if he disregards the subjective private conditions of his own judgment, by which so many others are confined, and reflects upon it from a universal standpoint (which he can only determine by placing himself at the standpoint of others). The third maxim, viz. that of consecutive thought, is the most difficult to attain, and can only be attained by the combination of both the former and after the constant observance of them has grown into a habit. We may say that the first of these maxims is the maxim of understanding, the second of judgment, and the third of reason.

* We soon see that, although enlightenment is easy in thesi, yet in hypothesi it is difficult snd slow of accomplishment. For not to be passive as regards reason, but to be always self-legislative, is indeed quite easy for the man who wishes only to be in accordance with his essential purpose and does not desire to know what is beyond his understanding. But since we can hardly avoid seeking this, and there are never wanting others who promise with much confidence that they are able to satisfy our curiosity, it must be very hard to maintain in or restore to the mind (especially the mind of the public) that bare negative which properly constitutes enlightenment.

I take up again the threads interrupted by this digression, and I say that taste can be called sensus communis with more justice than sound understanding can, and that the aesthetical judgment rather than the intellectual may bear the name of a sense common to a11,* if we are willing to use the word sense of an effect of mere reflection upon the mind, for then we understand by sense the feeling of pleasure. We could even define taste as the faculty of judging of that which makes universally communicable, without the mediation of a concept, our feeling in a given representation.

* We may designate taste as sensus communis aestheticus, common understanding as sensus communis logicus.

The skill that men have in communicating their thoughts requires also a relation between the imagination and the understanding in order to associate intuitions with concepts, and concepts again with those concepts, which then combine in a cognition. But in that case the agreement of the two mental powers is according to law, under the constraint of definite concepts. Only where the imagination in its freedom awakens the understanding and is put by it into regular play, without the aid of concepts, does the representation communicate itself, not as a thought, but as an internal feeling of a purposive state of the mind.

Taste is then the faculty of judging a priori of the communicability of feelings that are bound up with a given representation (without the mediation of a concept).

If we could assume that the mere universal communicability of a feeling must carry in itself an interest for us with it (which, however, we are not justified in concluding from the character of a merely reflective judgment), we should be able to explain why the feeling in the judgment of taste comes to be imputed to everyone, so to speak, as a duty.

That the judgment of taste by which something is declared beautiful must have no interest as its determining ground has been sufficiently established above. But it does not follow that, after it has been given as a pure aesthetical judgment, no interest can be combined with it. This combination, however, can only be indirect, i.e. taste must first of all be represented as combined with something else, in order that we may unite with the satisfaction of mere reflection upon an object a pleasure in its existence (as that wherein all interest consists). For here also in aesthetical judgments what we say in cognitive judgments (of things in general) is valid; a posse ad esse non valet consequentia. This something else may be empirical, viz. an inclination proper to human nature, or intellectual, as the property of the will of being capable of a priori determination by reason. Both these involve a satisfaction in the presence of an object, and so can lay the foundation for an interest in what has by itself pleased without reference to any interest whatever.

Empirically the beautiful interests only in society. If we admit the impulse to society as natural to man, and his fitness for it, and his propension toward it, i.e. sociability, as a requisite for man as a being destined for society, and so as a property belonging to humanity, we cannot escape from regarding taste as a faculty for judging everything in respect of which we can communicate our feeling to all other men, and so as a means of furthering that which everyone’s natural inclination desires.

A man abandoned by himself on a desert island would adorn neither his hut nor his person; nor would he seek for flowers, still less would he grow plants, in order to adorn himself therewith. It is only in society that it occurs to him to be, not merely a man, but a refined man after his kind (the beginning of civilization). For such do we judge him to be who is both inclined and apt to communicate his pleasure to others and who is not contented with an object if he cannot feel satisfaction in it in common with others. Again, everyone expects and requires from everyone else this reference to universal communication [of pleasure], as it were from an original compact dictated by humanity itself. Thus, doubtless, in the beginning only those things which attracted the senses, e.g. colors for painting oneself (roucou among the Caribs and cinnabar among the Iroquois), flowers, mussel shells, beautiful feathers, etc.—but in time beautiful forms also (e.g. in their canoes, and clothes, etc.), which bring with them no gratification or satisfaction of enjoyment—were important in society and were combined with great interest. Until at last civilization, having reached its highest point, makes out of this almost the main business of refined inclination, and sensations are only regarded as of worth in so far as they can be universally communicated. Here, although the pleasure which everyone has in such an object is inconsiderable and in itself without any marked interest, yet the idea of its universal communicability increases its worth in an almost infinite degree.

But this interest that indirectly attaches to the beautiful through our inclination to society, and consequently is empirical, is of no importance for us now, because we have only to look to what may have a reference, although only indirectly, to the judgment of taste a priori. For if an interest should also be detected as bound up with this form, taste would detect for our faculty of judging a means of passing from sense enjoyment to moral feeling; and so not only would we be the better guided in employing taste purposively, but there would be thus presented a link in the chain of the human faculties a priori, on which all legislation must depend. We can only say this much about the empirical interest in objects of taste and in taste itself. Since it is subservient to inclination, however refined the latter may be, it may easily be confounded with all the inclinations and passions which attain their greatest variety and highest degree in society; and the interest in the beautiful, if it is grounded thereon, can only furnish a very ambiguous transition from the pleasant to the good. But whether this can or cannot be furthered by taste, taken in its purity, is what we now have to investigate.

With the best intentions, those persons who refer all activities to which their inner natural dispositions impel men to the final purpose of humanity, viz. the morally good, have regarded the taking an interest in the beautiful in general as a mark of good moral character. But it is not without reason that they have been contradicted by others who rely on experience; for this shows that connoisseurs in taste not only often, but generally, are given up to idle, capricious, and mischievous passions, and that they could perhaps make less claim than others to any superiority of attachment to moral principles. Thus it would seem that the feeling for the beautiful is not only (as actually is the case) specifically different from the moral feeling, but that the interest which can be bound up with it is hardly compatible with moral interest, and certainly has no inner affinity therewith.

Now I admit at once that the interest in the beautiful of art (under which I include the artificial use of natural beauties for adornment and so for vanity) furnishes no proof whatever of a disposition attached to the morally good or even inclined thereto. But on the other hand, I maintain that to take an immediate interest in the beauty of nature (not merely to have taste in judging it) is always a mark of a good soul; and that, when this interest is habitual, it at least indicates a frame of mind favorable to the moral feeling if it is voluntarily bound up with the contemplation of nature. It is to be remembered, however, that I here speak strictly of the beautiful forms of nature, and I set aside the charms that she is wont to combine so abundantly with them, because, though the interest in the latter is indeed immediate, it is only empirical.

He who by himself (and without any design of communicating his observations to others) regards the beautiful figure of a wild flower, a bird, an insect, etc., with admiration and love; who would not willingly miss it in nature although it may bring him some damage; who still less wants any advantage from it—he takes an immediate and also an intellectual interest in the beauty of nature. That is, it is not merely the form of the product of nature which pleases him, but its very presence pleases him, the charms of sense having no share in this pleasure and no purpose whatever being combined with it.

But it is noteworthy that if we secretly deceived this lover of the beautiful by planting in the ground artificial flowers (which can be manufactured exactly like natural ones) or by placing artificially carved birds on the boughs of trees, and he discovered the deceit, the immediate interest that he previously took in them would disappear at once, though perhaps a different interest, viz. the interest of vanity in adorning his chamber with them for the eyes of others, would take its place. This thought then must accompany our intuition and reflection on beauty, viz. that nature has produced it; and on this alone is based the immediate interest that we take in it. Otherwise there remains a mere judgment of taste, either devoid of all interest, or bound up with a mediate interest, viz. in that it has reference to society, which latter [interest] furnishes no certain indications of a morally good disposition.

This superiority of natural to artificial beauty in that it alone arouses an immediate interest, although as regards form the former may be surpassed by the latter, harmonizes with the refined and thorough mental attitude of all men who have cultivated their moral feeling. If a man who has taste enough to judge of the products of beautiful art with the greatest accuracy and refinement willingly leaves a chamber where are to be found those beauties that minister to vanity or to any social joys and turns to the beautiful in nature in order to find, as it were, delight for his spirit in a train of thought that he can never completely evolve, we will regard this choice of his with veneration and attribute to him a beautiful soul, to which no connoisseur or lover [of art] can lay claim on account of the interest he takes in his [artistic] objects. What now is the difference in our estimation of these two different kinds of objects, which in the judgment of mere taste it is hard to compare in point of superiority?

We have a faculty of mere aesthetical judgment by which we judge forms without the aid of concepts and find a satisfaction in this mere act of judgment; this we make into a rule for everyone, without this judgment either being based on or producing any interest. On the other hand, we have also a faculty of intellectual judgment which determines an a priori satisfaction for the mere forms of practical maxims (so far as they are in themselves qualified for universal legislation); this we make into a law for everyone, without our judgment being based on any interest whatever, though in this case it produces such an interest. The pleasure or pain in the former judgment is called that of taste, in the latter that of moral feeling.

But it also interests reason that the ideas (for which in moral feeling it arouses an immediate interest) should have objective reality, i.e. that nature should at least show a trace or give an indication that it contains in itself a ground for assuming a regular agreement of its products with our entirely disinterested satisfaction (which we recognize a priori as a law for everyone, without being able to base it upon proofs). Hence reason must take an interest in every expression on the part of nature of an agreement of this kind. Consequently, the mind cannot ponder upon the beauty of nature without finding itself at the same time interested therein. But this interest is akin to moral, and he who takes such an interest in the beauties of nature can do so only in so far as he previously has firmly established his interest in the morally good. If, therefore, the beauty of nature interests a man immediately, we have reason for attributing to him at least a basis for a good moral disposition.

It will be said that this account of aesthetical judgments, as akin to the moral feeling, seems far too studied to be regarded as the true interpretation of that cipher through which nature speaks to us figuratively in her beautiful forms. However, in the first place, this immediate interest in the beautiful is actually not common, but is peculiar to those whose mental disposition either has already been cultivated in the direction of the good or is eminently susceptible of such cultivation. In that case the analogy between the pure judgment of taste which, independently of any interest, causes us to feel a satisfaction and also represents it a priori as suitable to humanity in general, and the moral judgment that does the same thing from concepts without any clear, subtle, and premeditated reflection—this analogy leads to a similar immediate interest in the objects of the former as in those of the latter; only that in the one case the interest is free, in the other it is based on objective laws. To this is to be added our admiration for nature, which displays itself in its beautiful products as art, not merely by chance, but as it were designedly, in accordance with a regular arrangement and as purposiveness without purpose. This latter, as we never meet with it outside ourselves, we naturally seek in ourselves and, in fact, in that which constitutes the ultimate purpose of our being, viz. our moral destination. (Of this question as to the ground of the possibility of such natural purposiveness we shall first speak in the teleology.)

It is easy to explain why the satisfaction in the pure aesthetical judgment in the case of beautiful art is not combined with an immediate interest, as it is in the case of beautiful nature. For the former is either such an imitation of the latter that it reaches the point of deception and then produces the same effect as natural beauty (for which it is taken), or it is an art obviously directed designedly to our satisfaction. In the latter case the satisfaction in the product would, it is true, be brought about immediately by taste, but it would be only a mediate interest in the cause lying at its root, viz. an art that can only interest by means of its purpose and never in itself. It will, perhaps, be said that this is also the case if an object of nature interests us by its beauty only so far as it is associated with a moral idea. But it is not the object itself which immediately interests us, but its character in virtue of which it is qualified for such association, which therefore essentially belongs to it.

The charms in beautiful nature, which are so often found, as it were, fused with beautiful forms, may be referred to modifications either of light (colors) or of sound (tones). For these are the only sensations that imply, not merely a sensible feeling, but also reflection upon the form of these modifications of sense; and thus they involve in themselves as it were a language by which nature speaks to us, which thus seems to have a higher sense. Thus the white color of lilies seems to determine the mind to ideas of innocence; and the seven colors, in order from the red to the violet, seem to suggest the ideas of (1) sublimity, (2) intrepidity, (3) candor, (4) friendliness, (5) modesty, (6) constancy, (7) tenderness. The song of birds proclaims glad-someness and contentment with existence. At least so we interpret nature, whether it have this design or not. But the interest which we here take in beauty has only to do with the beauty of nature; it vanishes altogether as soon as we notice that we are deceived and that it is only art—vanishes so completely that taste can no longer find the thing beautiful or sight find it charming. What is more highly praised by poets than the bewitching and beautiful note of the nightingale in a lonely copse on a still summer evening by the soft light of the moon? And yet we have instances of a merry host, where no such songster was to be found, deceiving to their great contentment the guests who were staying with him to enjoy the country air by hiding in a bush a mischievous boy who knew how to produce this sound exactly like nature (by means of a reed or a tube in his mouth). But as soon as we are aware that it is a cheat, no one will remain long listening to the song which before was counted so charming. And it is just the same with the songs of all other birds. It must be nature or be regarded as nature if we are to take an immediate interest in the beautiful as such, and still more is this the case if we can require that others should take an interest in it too. This happens as a matter of fact when we regard as coarse and ignoble the mental attitude of those persons who have no feeling for beautiful nature (for thus we describe a susceptibility to interest in its contemplation), and who confine themselves to eating and drinking—to the mere enjoyments of sense.