Kant 3rd Critique (Bernard)

§23. Transition from the faculty which judges of the beautiful to that which judges of the sublime

The beautiful and the sublime agree in this that both please in themselves. Further, neither presupposes a judgment of sense nor a judgment logically determined, but a judgment of reflection. Consequently the satisfaction [belonging to them] does not depend on a sensation, as in the case of the pleasant, nor on a definite concept, as in the case of the good; but it is nevertheless referred to concepts, although indeterminate ones. And so the satisfaction is connected with the mere presentation [of the object] or with the faculty of presentation, so that in the case of a given intuition this faculty or the imagination is considered as in agreement with the faculty of concepts of understanding or reason, regarded as promoting these latter. Hence both kinds of judgments are singular, and yet announce themselves as universally valid for every subject; although they lay claim merely to the feeling of pleasure, and not to any cognition of the object.

But there are also remarkable differences between the two. The beautiful in nature is connected with the form of the object, which consists in having [definite] boundaries. The sublime, on the other hand, is to be found in a formless object, so far as in it or by occasion of it boundlessness is represented, and yet its totality is also present to thought. Thus the beautiful seems to be regarded as the presentation of an indefinite concept of understanding, the sublime as that of a like concept of reason. Therefore the satisfaction in the one case is bound up with the representation of quality, in the other with that of quantity.

And the latter satisfaction is quite different in kind from the former, for this (the beautiful) directly brings with it a feeling of the furtherance of life, and thus is compatible with charms and with the play of the imagination. But the other (the feeling of the sublime) is a pleasure that arises only indirectly; viz. it is produced by the feeling of a momentary checking of the vital powers and a consequent stronger outflow of them, so that it seems to be regarded as emotion—not play, but earnest in the exercise of the imagination. Hence it is incompatible with [physical] charm; and as the mind is not merely attracted by the object but is ever being alternately repelled, the satisfaction in the sublime does not so much involve a positive pleasure as admiration or respect, which rather deserves to be called negative pleasure.

But the inner and most important distinction between the sublime and beautiful is, certainly, as follows. (Here, as we are entitled to do, we only bring under consideration in the first instance the sublime in natural objects, for the sublime of art is always limited by the conditions of agreement with nature.) Natural beauty (which is independent) brings with it a purposiveness in its form by which the object seems to be, as it were, preadapted to our judgment, and thus constitutes in itself an object of satisfaction. On the other hand, that which excites in us, without any reasoning about it, but in the mere apprehension of it, the feeling of the sublime may appear, as regards its form, to violate purpose in respect of the judgment, to be unsuited to our presentative faculty, and as it were to do violence to the imagination; and yet it is judged to be only the more sublime.

Now we may see from this that, in general, we express ourselves incorrectly if we call any object of nature sublime, although we can quite correctly call many objects of nature beautiful. For how can that be marked by an expression of approval which is apprehended in itself as being a violation of purpose? All that we can say is that the object is fit for the presentation of a sublimity which can be found in the mind, for no sensible form can contain the sublime properly so-called. This concerns only ideas of the reason which, although no adequate presentation is possible for them, by this inadequateness that admits of sensible presentation are aroused and summoned into the mind. Thus the wide ocean, disturbed by the storm, cannot be called sublime. Its aspect is horrible; and the mind must be already filled with manifold ideas if it is to be determined by such an intuition to a feeling itself sublime, as it is incited to abandon sensibility and to busy itself with ideas that involve higher purposiveness.

Independent natural beauty discovers to us a technique of nature which represents it as a system in accordance with laws, the principle of which we do not find in the whole of our faculty of understanding. That principle is the principle of purposiveness, in respect of the use of our judgment in regard to phenomena, [which requires] that these must not be judged as merely belonging to nature in its purposeless mechanism, but also as belonging to something analogous to art. It therefore actually extends, not indeed our cognition of natural objects, but our concept of nature, [which is now not regarded] as mere mechanism but as art. This leads to profound investigations as to the possibility of such a form. But in what we are accustomed to call sublime there is nothing at all that leads to particular objective principles and forms of nature corresponding to them; so far from it that, for the most part, nature excites the ideas of the sublime in its chaos or in its wildest and most irregular disorder and desolation, provided size and might are perceived. Hence, we see that the concept of the sublime is not nearly so important or rich in consequences as the concept of the beautiful; and that, in general, it displays nothing purposive in nature itself, but only in that possible use of our intuitions of it by which there is produced in us a feeling of a purposiveness quite independent of nature. We must seek a ground external to ourselves for the beautiful of nature, but seek it for the sublime merely in ourselves and in our attitude of thought, which introduces sublimity into the representation of nature. This is a very needful preliminary remark, which quite separates the ideas of the sublime from that of a purposiveness of nature and makes the theory of the sublime a mere appendix to the aesthetical judging of that purposiveness, because by means of it no particular form is represented in nature, but there is only developed a purposive use which the imagination makes of its representation.

As regards the division of the moments of the aesthetical judging of objects in reference to the feeling of the sublime, the Analytic can proceed according to the same principle as was adopted in the analysis of judgments of taste. For as an act of the aesthetical reflective judgment, the satisfaction in the sublime must be represented just as in the case of the beautiful—according to quantity as universally valid, according to quality as devoid of interest, according to relation as subjective purposiveness, and according to modality as necessary. And so the method here will not diverge from that of the preceding section, unless indeed we count it a difference that in the case where the aesthetical judgment is concerned with the form of the object we began with the investigation of its quality, but here, in view of the formlessness which may belong to what we call sublime, we will begin with quantity, as the first moment of the aesthetical judgment as to the sublime. The reason for this may be seen from the preceding paragraph.

But the analysis of the sublime involves a division not needed in the case of the beautiful, viz. a division into the mathematically and the dynamically sublime.

For the feeling of the sublime brings with it as its characteristic feature a movement of the mind bound up with the judging of the object, while in the case of the beautiful taste presupposes and maintains the mind in restful contemplation. Now this movement ought to be judged as subjectively purposive (because the sublime pleases us), and thus it is referred through the imagination either to the faculty of cognition or of desire. In either reference the purposiveness of the given representation ought to be judged only in respect of this faculty (without purpose or interest), but in the first case it is ascribed to the object as a mathematical determination of the imagination, in the second as dynamical. And hence we have this twofold way of representing the sublime.

We call that sublime which is absolutely great. But to be great and to be a great something are quite different concepts (magnitudo and quantitas). In like manner to say simply (simpliciter) that anything is great is quite different from saying that it is absolutely great (absolute, non comparative magnum). The latter is what is great beyond all comparison. What now is meant by the expression that anything is great or small or of medium size? It is not a pure concept of understanding that is thus signified; still less is it an intuition of sense; and just as little is it a concept of reason, because it brings with it no principle of cognition. It must therefore be a concept of judgment or derived from one, and a subjective purposiveness of the representation in reference to the judgment must lie at its basis. That anything is a magnitude (quantum) may be cognized from the thing itself, without any comparison of it with other things, viz. if there is a multiplicity of the homogeneous constituting one thing. But to cognize how great it is always requires some other magnitude as a measure. But because the judging of magnitude depends, not merely on multiplicity (number), but also on the magnitude of the unit (the measure), and since, to judge of the magnitude of this latter again requires another as measure with which it may be compared, we see that the determination of the magnitude of phenomena can supply no absolute concept whatever of magnitude, but only a comparative one.

If now I say simply that anything is great, it appears that I have no comparison in view, at least none with an objective measure, because it is thus not determined at all how great the object is. But although the standard of comparison is merely subjective, yet the judgment nonetheless claims universal assent; this man is beautiful and he is tall are judgments, not limited merely to the judging subject, but, like theoretical judgments, demanding the assent of everyone.

In a judgment by which anything is designated simply as great, it is not merely meant that the object has a magnitude, but that this magnitude is superior to that of many other objects of the same kind, without, however, any exact determination of this superiority. Thus there is always at the basis of our judgment a standard which we assume as the same for everyone; this, however, is not available for any logical (mathematically definite) judging of magnitude, but only for aesthetical judging of the same, because it is a merely subjective standard lying at the basis of the reflective judgment upon magnitude. It may be empirical, as, e.g., the average size of the men known to us, of animals of a certain kind, trees, houses, mountains, etc. Or it may be a standard given a priori which, through the defects of the judging subject, is limited by the subjective conditions of presentation in concreto, as, e.g., in the practical sphere, the greatness of a certain virtue or of the public liberty and justice in a country, or, in the theoretical sphere, the greatness of the accuracy or the inaccuracy of an observation or measurement that has been made, etc.

Here it is remarkable that, although we have no interest whatever in an object—i.e. its existence is indifferent to us—yet its mere size, even if it is considered as formless, may bring a satisfaction with it that is universally communicable and that consequently involves the consciousness of a subjective purposiveness in the use of our cognitive faculty. This is not indeed a satisfaction in the object (because it may be formless), as in the case of the beautiful, in which the reflective judgment finds itself purposively determined in reference to cognition in general, but [a satisfaction] in the extension of the imagination by itself.

If (under the above limitation) we say simply of an object it is great, this is no mathematically definite judgment, but a mere judgment of reflection upon the representation of it, which is subjectively purposive for a certain use of our cognitive powers in the estimation of magnitude; and we always then bind up with the representation a kind of respect, as also a kind of contempt, for what we simply call small. Further, the judging of things as great or small extends to everything, even to all their characteristics; thus we describe beauty as great or small. The reason of this is to be sought in the fact that whatever we present in intuition according to the precept of the judgment (and thus represent aesthetically) is always a phenomenon, and thus a quantum.

But if we call anything, not only great, but absolutely great in every point of view (great beyond all comparison), i.e. sublime, we soon see that it is not permissible to seek for an adequate standard of this outside itself, but merely in itself. It is a magnitude which is like itself alone. It follows hence that the sublime is not to be sought in the things of nature, but only in our ideas; but in which of them it lies must be reserved for the Deduction.

The foregoing explanation can be thus expressed: the sublime is that in comparison with which everything else is small. Here we easily see that nothing can be given in nature, however great it is judged by us to be, which could not, if considered in another relation, be reduced to the infinitely small; and conversely there is nothing so small which does not admit of extension by our imagination to the greatness of a world if compared with still smaller standards. Telescopes have furnished us with abundant material for making the first remark, microscopes for the second. Nothing, therefore, which can be an object of the senses is, considered on this basis, to be called sublime. But because there is in our imagination a striving toward infinite progress and in our reason a claim for absolute totality, regarded as a real idea, therefore this very inadequateness for that idea in our faculty for estimating the magnitude of things of sense excites in us the feeling of a supersensible faculty. And it is not the object of sense, but the use which the judgment naturally makes of certain objects on behalf of this latter feeling that is absolutely great, and in comparison every other use is small. Consequently it is the state of mind produced by a certain representation with which the reflective judgment is occupied, and not the object, that is to be called sublime.

We can therefore append to the preceding formulas explaining the sublime this other: the sublime is that, the mere ability to think which shows a faculty of the mind surpassing every standard of sense.

§26. Of that estimation of the magnitude of natural things which is requisite for the idea of the sublime

The estimation of magnitude by means of concepts of number (or their signs in algebra) is mathematical, but that [performed] by mere intuition (by the measurement of the eye) is aesthetical. Now we can come by definite concepts of how great a thing is only by numbers, of which the unit is the measure (at all events by series of numbers progressing to infinity), and so far all logical estimation of magnitude is mathematical. But since the magnitude of the measure must then be assumed known, and this again is only to be estimated mathematically by means of numbers—the unit of which must be another [smaller] measure—we can never have a first or fundamental measure, and therefore can never have a definite concept of a given magnitude. So the estimation of the magnitude of the fundamental measure must consist in this, that we can immediately apprehend it in intuition and use it by the imagination for the presentation of concepts of number. That is, all estimation of the magnitude of the objects of nature is in the end aesthetical (i.e. subjectively and not objectively determined).

Now for the mathematical estimation of magnitude there is, indeed, no maximum (for the power of numbers extends to infinity); but for its aesthetical estimation there is always a maximum, and of this I say that, if it is judged as the absolute measure than which no greater is possible subjectively (for the judging subject), it brings with it the idea of the sublime and produces that emotion which no mathematical estimation of its magnitude by means of numbers can bring about (except so far as that aesthetical fundamental measure remains vividly in the imagination). For the former only presents relative magnitude by means of comparison with others of the same kind, but the latter presents magnitude absolutely, so far as the mind can grasp it in an intuition.

In receiving a quantum into the imagination by intuition, in order to be able to use it for a measure or as a unit for the estimation of magnitude by means of numbers, there are two operations of the imagination involved: apprehension (apprehensio) and comprehension (comprehensio aesthetica). As to apprehension there is no difficulty, for it can go on ad infinitum, but comprehension becomes harder the further apprehension advances, and soon attains to its maximum, viz. the greatest possible aesthetical fundamental measure for the estimation of magnitude. For when apprehension has gone so far that the partial representations of sensuous intuition at first apprehended begin to vanish in the imagination, while this ever proceeds to the apprehension of others, then it loses as much on the one side as it gains on the other; and in comprehension there is a maximum beyond which it cannot go.

Hence can be explained what Savary remarks, in his account of Egypt, viz. that we must keep from going very near the Pyramids just as much as we keep from going too far from them, in order to get the full emotional effect from their size. For if we are too far away, the parts to be apprehended (the stones lying one over the other) are only obscurely represented, and the representation of them produces no effect upon the aesthetical judgment of the subject. But if we are very near, the eye requires some time to complete the apprehension of the tiers from the bottom up to the apex, and then the first tiers are always partly forgotten before the imagination has taken in the last, and so the comprehension of them is never complete. The same thing may sufficiently explain the bewilderment or, as it were, perplexity which it is said seizes the spectator on his first entrance into St. Peter’s at Rome. For there is here a feeling of the inadequacy of his imagination for presenting the ideas of a whole, wherein the imagination reaches its maximum, and, in striving to surpass it, sinks back into itself, by which, however, a kind of emotional satisfaction is produced.

I do not wish to speak as yet of the ground of this satisfaction, which is bound up with a representation from which we should least of all expect it, viz. a representation which makes us remark its inadequacy and consequently its subjective want of purposiveness for the judgment in the estimation of magnitude. I only remark that if the aesthetical judgment is pure (i.e. mingled with no teleological judgment or judgment of reason) and is to be given as a completely suitable example of the critique of the aesthetical judgment, we must not exhibit the sublime in products of art (e.g. buildings, pillars, etc.) where human purpose determines the form as well as the size, nor yet in things of nature the concepts of which bring with them a definite purpose (e.g. animals with a known natural destination), but in rude nature (and in this only in so far as it does not bring with it any charm or emotion produced by actual danger) merely as containing magnitude. For in this kind of representation nature contains nothing monstrous (either magnificent or horrible); the magnitude that is apprehended may be increased as much as you wish, provided it can be comprehended in a whole by the imagination. An object is monstrous if, by its size, it destroys the purpose which constitutes the concept of it. But the mere presentation of a concept is called colossal, which is almost too great for any presentation (bordering on the relatively monstrous), because the purpose of the presentation of a concept is made hard [to carry out] by the intuition of the object being almost too great for our faculty of apprehension. A pure judgment upon the sublime must, however, have no purpose of the object as its determining ground if it is to be aesthetical and not mixed up with any judgment of understanding or reason.

Because everything which is to give disinterested pleasure to the merely reflective judgment must bring with the representation of it, subjective and, as subjective, universally valid purposiveness—although no purposiveness of the form of the object lies (as in the case of the beautiful) at the ground of the judgment—the question arises, What is this subjective purposiveness? And how does it come to be prescribed as the norm by which a ground for universally valid satisfaction is supplied in the mere estimation of magnitude, even in that which is forced up to the point where our faculty of imagination is inadequate for the presentation of the concept of magnitude?

In the process of combination requisite for the estimation of magnitude, the imagination proceeds of itself to infinity without anything hindering it; but the understanding guides it by means of concepts of number, for which it must furnish the schema. And in this procedure, as belonging to the logical estimation of magnitude, there is indeed something objectively purposive—in accordance with the concept of a purpose (as all measurement is)—but nothing purposive and pleasing for the aesthetical judgment. There is also in this designed purposiveness nothing which would force us to push the magnitude of the measure, and consequently the comprehension of the manifold in an intuition, to the bounds of the faculty of imagination, or as far as ever this can reach in its presentations. For in the estimation of magnitude by the understanding (arithmetic) we only go to a certain point, whether we push the comprehension of the units up to the number 10 (as in the decimal scale) or only up to 4 (as in the quaternary scale); the further production of magnitude proceeds by combination or, if the quantum is given in intuition, by apprehension, but merely by way of progression (not of comprehension) in accordance with an assumed principle of progression. In this mathematical estimation of magnitude the understanding is equally served and contented, whether the imagination chooses for unit a magnitude that we can take in in a glance, e.g. a foot or rod, or a German mile or even the earth’s diameter—of which the apprehension is indeed possible, but not the comprehension in an intuition of the imagination (not possible by comprehensio aesthetica, although quite possible by comprehensio logica in a concept of number). In both cases the logical estimation of magnitude goes on without hindrance to infinity.

But now the mind listens to the voice of reason which, for every given magnitude—even for those that can never be entirely apprehended, although (in sensible representation) they are judged as entirely given—requires totality. Reason consequently desires comprehension in one intuition, and so the [joint] presentation of all these members of a progressively increasing series. It does not even exempt the infinite (space and past time) from this requirement; it rather renders it unavoidable to think the infinite (in the judgment of common reason) as entirely given (according to its totality).

But the infinite is absolutely (not merely comparatively) great. Compared with it everything else (of the same kind of magnitudes) is small. And what is most important is that to be able only to think it as a whole indicates a faculty of mind which surpasses every standard of sense. For [to represent it sensibly] would require a comprehension having for unit a standard bearing a definite relation, expressible in numbers, to the infinite, which is impossible. Nevertheless, the bare capability of thinking this infinite without contradiction requires in the human mind a faculty itself supersensible. For it is only by means of this faculty and its idea of a noumenon—which admits of no intuition, but which yet serves as the substrate for the intuition of the world, as a mere phenomenon—that the infinite of the world of sense, in the pure intellectual estimation of magnitude, can be completely comprehended under one concept, although in the mathematical estimation of magnitude by means of concepts of number it can never be completely thought. The faculty of being able to think the infinite of supersensible intuition as given (in its intelligible substrate) surpasses every standard of sensibility and is great beyond all comparison even with the faculty of mathematical estimation, not, of course, in a theoretical point of view and on behalf of the cognitive faculty, but as an extension of the mind which feels itself able in another (practical) point of view to go beyond the limits of sensibility.

Nature is therefore sublime in those of its phenomena whose intuition brings with it the idea of its infinity. This last can only come by the inadequacy of the greatest effort of our imagination to estimate the magnitude of an object. But now, in mathematical estimation of magnitude, the imagination is equal to providing a sufficient measure for every object, because the numerical concepts of the understanding, by means of progression, can make any measure adequate to any given magnitude. Therefore it must be the aesthetical estimation of magnitude in which the effort toward comprehension surpasses the power of the imagination. Here it is felt that we can comprehend in a whole of intuition the progressive apprehension, and at the same time we perceive the inadequacy of this faculty, unbounded in its progress, for grasping and using any fundamental measure available for the estimation of magnitude with the easiest application of the understanding. Now the proper unchangeable fundamental measure of nature is its absolute whole, which, regarding nature as a phenomenon, would be infinity comprehended. But since this fundamental measure is a self-contradictory concept (on account of the impossibility of the absolute totality of an endless progress), that magnitude of a natural object on which the imagination fruitlessly spends its whole faculty of comprehension must carry our concept of nature to a supersensible substrate (which lies at its basis and also at the basis of our faculty of thought). As this, however, is great beyond all standards of sense, it makes us judge as sublime, not so much the object, as our own state of mind in the estimation of it.

Therefore, just as the aesthetical judgment in judging the beautiful refers the imagination in its free play to the understanding, in order to harmonize it with the concepts of the latter in general (without any determination of them), so does the same faculty, when judging a thing as sublime, refer itself to the reason, in order that it may subjectively be in accordance with its ideas (no matter what they are)—i.e. that it may produce a state of mind conformable to them and compatible with that brought about by the influence of definite (practical) ideas upon feeling.

We hence see also that true sublimity must be sought only in the mind of the [subject] judging, not in the natural object the judgment upon which occasions this state. Who would call sublime, e.g., shapeless mountain masses piled in wild disorder upon one another with their pyramids of ice, or the gloomy, raging sea? But the mind feels itself raised in its own judgment if, while contemplating them without any reference to their form, and abandoning itself to the imagination and to the reason—which, although placed in combination with the imagination without any definite purpose, merely extends it—it yet finds the whole power of the imagination inadequate to its ideas.

Examples of the mathematically sublime of nature in mere intuition are all the cases in which we are given, not so much a larger numerical concept, as a large unit for the measure of the imagination (for shortening the numerical series). A tree, [the height of] which we estimate with reference to the height of a man, at all events gives a standard for a mountain; and if this were a mile high, it would serve as unit for the number expressive of the earth’s diameter, so that the latter might be made intuitible. The earth’s diameter [would supply a unit] for the known planetary system; this again for the Milky Way; and the immeasurable number of Milky Way systems called nebulae, which presumably constitute a system of the same kind among themselves, lets us expect no bounds here. Now the sublime in the aesthetical judging of an immeasurable whole like this lies, not so much in the greatness of the number [of units], as in the fact that in our progress we ever arrive at yet greater units. To this the systematic division of the universe contributes, which represents every magnitude in nature as small in its turn, and represents our imagination with its entire freedom from bounds, and with it nature, as a mere nothing in comparison with the ideas of reason if it is sought to furnish a presentation which shall be adequate to them.

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

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

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

The measurement of a space (regarded as apprehension) is at the same time a description of it, and thus an objective movement in the act of imagination and a progress. On the other hand, the comprehension of the manifold in the unity—not of thought but of intuition—and consequently the comprehension of the successively apprehended [elements] in one glance is a regress which annihilates the condition of time in this progress of the imagination and makes coexistence intuitible. It is therefore (since the time series is a condition of the internal sense and of an intuition) a subjective movement of the imagination, by which it does violence to the internal sense; this must be the more noticeable, the greater the quantum is which the imagination comprehends in one intuition. The effort, therefore, to receive in one single intuition a measure for magnitude that requires a considerable time to apprehend is a kind of representation which, subjectively considered, is contrary to purpose; but objectively, as requisite for the estimation of magnitude, it is purposive. Thus that very violence which is done to the subject through the imagination is judged as purposive in reference to the whole determination of the mind.

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

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

Might is that which is superior to great hindrances. It is called dominion if it is superior to the resistance of that which itself possesses might. Nature, considered in an aesthetical judgment as might that has no dominion over us, is dynamically sublime.

If nature is to be judged by us as dynamically sublime, it must be represented as exciting fear (although it is not true conversely that every object which excites fear is regarded in our aesthetical judgment as sublime). For in aesthetical judgments (without the aid of concepts) superiority to hindrances can only be judged according to the greatness of the resistance. Now that which we are driven to resist, is an evil and, if we do not find our faculties a match for it, is an object of fear. Hence nature can be regarded by the aesthetical judgment as might, and consequently as dynamically sublime, only so far as it is considered an object of fear.

But we can regard an object as fearful without being afraid of it, viz. if we judge of it in such a way that we merely think a case in which we would wish to resist it and yet in which all resistance would be altogether vain. Thus the virtuous man fears God without being afraid of Him, because to wish to resist Him and His commandments he thinks is a case that he need not apprehend. But in every such case that he thinks as not impossible, he cognizes Him as fearful.

He who fears can form no judgment about the sublime in nature, just as he who is seduced by inclination and appetite can form no judgment about the beautiful. The former flies from the sight of an object which inspires him with awe, and it is impossible to find satisfaction in a terror that is seriously felt. Hence the pleasurableness arising from the cessation of an uneasiness is a state of joy. But this, on account of the deliverance from danger [which is involved], is a state of joy when conjoined with the resolve that we shall no more be exposed to the danger; we cannot willingly look back upon our sensations [of danger], much less seek the occasion for them again.

Bold, overhanging, and as it were threatening rocks; clouds piled up in the sky, moving with lightning flashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence of destruction; hurricanes with their track of devastation; the boundless ocean in a state of tumult; the lofty waterfall of a mighty river, and such like—these exhibit our faculty of resistance as insignificantly small in comparison with their might. But the sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is, provided only that we are in security; and we willingly call these objects sublime, because they raise the energies of the soul above their accustomed height and discover in us a faculty of resistance of a quite different kind, which gives us courage to measure ourselves against the apparent almightiness of nature.

Now, in the immensity of nature and in the insufficiency of our faculties to take in a standard proportionate to the aesthetical estimation of the magnitude of its realm, we find our own limitation, although at the same time in our rational faculty we find a different, nonsensuous standard, which has that infinity itself under it as a unity, in comparison with which everything in nature is small, and thus in our mind we find a superiority to nature even in its immensity. And so also the irresistibility of its might, while making us recognize our own physical impotence, considered as beings of nature, discloses to us a faculty of judging independently of and a superiority over nature, on which is based a kind of self-preservation entirely different from that which can be attacked and brought into danger by external nature. Thus humanity in our person remains unhumiliated, though the individual might have to submit to this dominion. In this way nature is not judged to be sublime in our aesthetical judgments in so far as it excites fear, but because it calls up that power in us (which is not nature) of regarding as small the things about which we are solicitous (goods, health, and life), and of regarding its might (to which we are no doubt subjected in respect of these things) as nevertheless without any dominion over us and our personality to which we must bow where our highest fundamental propositions, and their assertion or abandonment, are concerned. Therefore nature is here called sublime merely because it elevates the imagination to a presentation of those cases in which the mind can make felt the proper sublimity of its destination, in comparison with nature itself.

This estimation of ourselves loses nothing through the fact that we must regard ourselves as safe in order to feel this inspiriting satisfaction and that hence, as there is no seriousness in the danger, there might be also (as might seem to be the case) just as little seriousness in the sublimity of our spiritual faculty. For the satisfaction here concerns only the destination of our faculty which discloses itself in such a case, so far as the tendency to this destination lies in our nature, while its development and exercise remain incumbent and obligatory. And in this there is truth [and reality], however conscious the man may be of his present actual powerlessness, when he turns his reflection to it.

No doubt this principle seems to be too farfetched and too subtly reasoned, and consequently seems to go beyond [the scope of] an aesthetical judgment; but observation of men proves the opposite and shows that it may lie at the root of the most ordinary judgments, although we are not always conscious of it. For what is that which is, even to the savage, an object of the greatest admiration? It is a man who shrinks from nothing, who fears nothing, and therefore does not yield to danger, but rather goes to face it vigorously with the most complete deliberation. Even in the most highly civilized state this peculiar veneration for the soldier remains, though only under the condition that he exhibit all the virtues of peace, gentleness, compassion, and even a becoming care for his own person; because even by these it is recognized that his mind is unsubdued by danger. Hence whatever disputes there may be about the superiority of the respect which is to be accorded them, in the comparison of a statesman and a general, the aesthetical judgment decides for the latter. War itself, if it is carried on with order and with a sacred respect for the rights of citizens, has something sublime in it, and makes the disposition of the people who carry it on thus only the more sublime, the more numerous are the dangers to which they are exposed and in respect of which they behave with courage. On the other hand, a long peace generally brings about a predominant commercial spirit and, along with it, low selfishness, cowardice, and effeminacy, and debases the disposition of the people.

It appears to conflict with this solution of the concept of the sublime, so far as sublimity is ascribed to might, that we are accustomed to represent God as presenting Himself in His wrath and yet in His sublimity, in the tempest, the storm, the earthquake, etc.; and that it would be foolish and criminal to imagine a superiority of our minds over these works of His and, as it seems, even over the designs of such might. Hence it would appear that no feeling of the sublimity of our own nature, but rather subjection, abasement, and a feeling of complete powerlessness, is a fitting state of mind in the presence of such an object; and this is generally bound up with the idea of it during natural phenomena of this kind. In religion in general, prostration, adoration with bent head, with contrite, anxious demeanor and voice, seems to be the only fitting behavior in presence of the Godhead, and hence most peoples have adopted and still observe it. But this state of mind is far from being necessarily bound up with the idea of the sublimity of a religion and its object. The man who is actually afraid, because he finds reasons for fear in himself, while conscious by his culpable disposition of offending against a might whose will is irresistible and at the same time just, is not in the frame of mind for admiring the divine greatness. For this a mood of calm contemplation and a quite free judgment are needed. Only if he is conscious of an upright disposition pleasing to God do those operations of might serve to awaken in him the idea of the sublimity of this Being, for then he recognizes in himself a sublimity of disposition conformable to His will; and thus he is raised above the fear of such operations of nature, which he no longer regards as outbursts of His wrath. Even humility, in the shape of a stern judgment upon his own faults—which otherwise, with a consciousness of good intentions, could be easily palliated from the frailty of human nature—is a sublime state of mind, consisting in a voluntary subjection of himself to the pain of remorse, in order that the causes of this may be gradually removed. In this way religion is essentially distinguished from superstition. The latter establishes in the mind, not reverence for the sublime, but fear and apprehension of the all-powerful Being to whose will the terrified man sees himself subject, without according Him any high esteem. From this nothing can arise but a seeking of favor and flattery, instead of a religion which consists in a good life.

Sublimity, therefore, does not reside in anything of nature, but only in our mind, in so far as we can become conscious that we are superior to nature within, and therefore also to nature without us (so far as it influences us). Everything that excites this feeling in us, e.g. the might of nature which calls forth our forces, is called then (although improperly) sublime. Only by supposing this idea in ourselves and in reference to it are we capable of attaining to the idea of the sublimity of that Being which produces respect in us, not merely by the might that it displays in nature, but rather by means of the faculty which resides in us of judging it fearlessly and of regarding our destination as sublime in respect of it.

There are numberless beautiful things in nature about which we can assume and even expect, without being widely mistaken, the harmony of everyone’s judgment with our own. But in respect of our judgment upon the sublime in nature, we cannot promise ourselves so easily the accordance of others. For a far greater culture, as well of the aesthetical judgment as of the cognitive faculties which lie at its basis, seems requisite in order to be able to pass judgment on this peculiarity of natural objects.

That the mind be attuned to feel the sublime postulates a susceptibility of the mind for ideas. For in the very inadequacy of nature to these latter, and thus only by presupposing them and by straining the imagination to use nature as a schema for them, is to be found that which is terrible to sensibility and yet is attractive. [It is attractive] because reason exerts a dominion over sensibility in order to extend it in conformity with its proper realm (the practical) and to make it look out into the infinite, which is for it an abyss. In fact, without development of moral ideas, that which we, prepared by culture, call sublime presents itself to the uneducated man merely as terrible. In the indications of the dominion of nature in destruction, and in the great scale of its might, in comparison with which his own is a vanishing quantity, he will only see the misery, danger, and distress which surround the man who is exposed to it. So the good, and indeed intelligent, Savoyard peasant (as Herr von Saussure relates) unhesitatingly called all lovers of snow-mountains fools. And who knows whether he would have been so completely wrong if Saussure had undertaken the danger to which he exposed himself merely, as most travelers do, from amateur curiosity, or that he might be able to give a pathetic account of them? But his design was the instruction of men, and this excellent man gave the readers of his travels soul-stirring sensations such as he himself had, into the bargain.

But although the judgment upon the sublime in nature needs culture (more than the judgment upon the beautiful), it is not therefore primarily produced by culture and introduced in a merely conventional way into society. Rather has it its root in human nature, even in that which, alike with common understanding, we can impute to and expect of everyone, viz. in the tendency to the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e. to what is moral.

Hereon is based the necessity of that agreement of the judgment of others about the sublime with our own which we include in the latter. For just as we charge with want of taste the man who is indifferent when passing judgment upon an object of nature that we regard as beautiful, so we say of him who remains unmoved in the presence of that which we judge to be sublime: He has no feeling. But we claim both from every man, and we presuppose them in him if he has any culture at all—only with the difference that we expect the former directly of everyone because in it the judgment refers the imagination merely to the understanding, the faculty of concepts; but the latter because in it the imagination is related to the reason, the faculty of ideas, only under a subjective presupposition (which, however, we believe we are authorized in imputing to everyone), viz. the presupposition of the moral feeling in man. Thus it is that we ascribe necessity to this aesthetical judgment also.

In this modality of aesthetical judgments, vie. in the necessity claimed for them, lies an important moment of the critique of judgment. For it enables us to recognize in them an a priori principle, and raises them out of empirical psychology, in which otherwise they would remain buried among the feelings of gratification and grief (only with the unmeaning addition of being called finer feelings). Thus it enables us too to place the judgment among those faculties that have a priori principles at their basis, and so to bring it into transcendental philosophy.

In reference to the feeling of pleasure an object is to be classified as either pleasant, or beautiful, or sublime, or good (absolutely) (jucundum, pulchrum, sublime, honestum).

The pleasant, as motive of desire, is always of one and the same kind, no matter whence it comes and however specifically different the representation (of sense, and sensation objectively considered) may be. Hence, in judging its influence on the mind, account is taken only of the number of its charms (simultaneous and successive), and so only of the mass, as it were, of the pleasant sensation; and this can be made intelligible only by quantity. It has no reference to culture, but belongs to mere enjoyment. On the other hand, the beautiful requires the representation of a certain quality of the object, that can be made intelligible and reduced to concepts (although it is not so reduced in an aesthetical judgment and it cultivates us, in that it teaches us to attend to the purposiveness in the feeling of pleasure. The sublime consists merely in the relation by which the sensible in the representation of nature is judged available for a possible supersensible use. The absolutely good, subjectively judged according to the feeling that it inspires (the object of the moral feeling), as capable of determining the powers of the subject through the representation of an absolutely compelling law, is specially distinguished by the modality of a necessity that rests a priori upon concepts. This necessity involves, not merely a claim, but a command for the assent of everyone and belongs in itself to the pure intellectual rather than to the aesthetical judgment, and is by a determinant and not a mere reflective judgment ascribed, not to nature, but to freedom. But the determinability of the subject by means of this idea, and especially of a subject that can feel hindrances in sensibility and at the same time its superiority to them by their subjugation—involving a modification of its state—i.e. the moral feeling, is yet so far cognate to the aesthetical judgment and its formal conditions that it can serve to represent the conformity to law of action from duty as aesthetical, i.e. as sublime or even as beautiful, without losing purity. This would not be so if we were to put it in natural combination with the feeling of the pleasant.

If we take the result of the foregoing exposition of the two kinds of aesthetical judgments, there arise therefrom the following short explanations:

The beautiful is what pleases in the mere judgment (and therefore not by the medium of sensation in accordance with a concept of the understanding). It follows at once from this that it must please apart from all interest.

The sublime is what pleases immediately through its opposition to the interest of sense.

Both, as explanations of aesthetical universally valid judging, are referred to subjective grounds—in the one case to grounds of sensibility, in favor of the contemplative understanding; in the other case in opposition to sensibility, but on behalf of the purposes of practical reason. Both, however, united in the same subject, are purposive in reference to the moral feeling. The beautiful prepares us to love disinterestedly something, even nature itself; the sublime prepares us to esteem something highly even in opposition to our own (sensible) interest.

We may describe the sublime thus: it is an object (of nature) the representation of which determines the mind to think the unattainability of nature regarded as a presentation of ideas.

Literally taken and logically considered, ideas cannot be presented. But if we extend our empirical representative faculty (mathematically or dynamically) to the intuition of nature, reason infallibly intervenes, as the faculty expressing the independence of absolute totality, and generates the unsuccessful effort of the mind to make the representation of the senses adequate to these [ideas]. This effort—and the feeling of the unattainability of the idea by means of the imagination—is itself a presentation of the subjective purposiveness of our mind in the employment of the imagination for its supersensible destination and forces us, subjectively, to think nature itself in its totality as a presentation of something supersensible, without being able objectively to arrive at this presentation.

For we soon see that nature in space and time entirely lacks the unconditioned and, consequently, that absolute magnitude which yet is desired by the most ordinary reason. It is by this that we are reminded that we only have to do with nature as phenomenon and that it must be regarded as the mere presentation of a nature in itself (of which reason has the idea). But this idea of the supersensible, which we can no further determine—so that we cannot know but only think nature as its presentation—is awakened in us by means of an object whose aesthetical appreciation strains the imagination to its utmost bounds, whether of extension (mathematical) or of its might over the mind (dynamical). And this judgment is based upon a feeling of the mind’s destination, which entirely surpasses the realm of the former (i.e. upon the moral feeling), in respect of which the representation of the object is judged as subjectively purposive.

In fact, a feeling for the sublime in nature cannot well be thought without combining therewith a mental disposition which is akin to the moral. And although the immediate pleasure in the beautiful of nature likewise presupposes and cultivates a certain liberality in our mental attitude, i.e. a satisfaction independent of mere sensible enjoyment, yet freedom is thus represented as in play rather than in that law-directed occupation which is the genuine characteristic of human morality, in which reason must exercise dominion over sensibility. But in aesthetical judgments upon the sublime this dominion is represented as exercised by the imagination, regarded as an instrument of reason.

The satisfaction in the sublime of nature is then only negative (while that in the beautiful is positive), viz. a feeling that the imagination is depriving itself of its freedom, while it is purposively determined according to a different law from that of its empirical employment. It thus acquires an extension and a might greater than it sacrifices—the ground of which, however, is concealed from itself—while yet it feels the sacrifice or the deprivation and, at the same time, the cause to which it is subjected. Astonishment that borders upon terror, the dread and the holy awe which seizes the observer at the sight of mountain peaks rearing themselves to heaven, deep chasms and streams raging therein, deep-shadowed solitudes that dispose one to melancholy meditations—this, in the safety in which we know ourselves to be, is not actual fear but only an attempt to feel fear by the aid of the imagination, that we may feel the might of this faculty in combining with the mind’s repose the mental movement thereby excited, and being thus superior to internal nature—and therefore to external—so far as this can have any influence on our feeling of well-being. For the imagination by the laws of association makes our state of contentment dependent on physical [causes]; but it also, by the principles of the schematism of the judgment (being so far, therefore, ranked under freedom), is the instrument of reason and its ideas, and as such has might to maintain our independence of natural influences, to regard as small what in reference to them is great, and so to place the absolutely great only in the proper destination of the subject. The raising of this reflection of the aesthetical judgment so as to be adequate to reason (though without a definite concept of reason) represents the object as subjectively purposive, even by the objective want of accordance between the imagination in its greatest extension and the reason (as the faculty of ideas).

We must here, generally, attend to what has been already noted, that in the transcendental aesthetic of judgment we must speak solely of pure aesthetical judgments; consequently our examples are not to be taken from such beautiful or sublime objects of nature as presuppose the concept of a purpose. For, if so, the purposiveness would be either teleological or would be based on mere sensations of an object (gratification or grief), and thus would be in the former case not aesthetical, in the latter not merely formal. If, then, we call the sight of the starry heaven sublime, we must not place at the basis of our judgment concepts of worlds inhabited by rational beings and regard the bright points, with which we see the space above us filled, as their suns moving in circles purposively fixed with reference to them; but we must regard it, just as we see it, as a distant, all-embracing, vault. Only under such a representation can we range that sublimity which a pure aesthetical judgment ascribes to this object. And in the same way, if we are to call the sight of the ocean sublime, we must not think of it as we [ordinarily] do, as implying all kinds of knowledge (that are not contained in immediate intuition). For example, we sometimes think of the ocean as a vast kingdom of aquatic creatures, or as the great source of those vapors that fill the air with clouds for the benefit of the land, or again as an element which, though dividing continents from each other, yet promotes the greatest communication between them; but these furnish merely teleological judgments. To call the ocean sublime we must regard it as poets do, merely by what strikes the eye—if it is at rest, as a clear mirror of water only bounded by the heaven; if it is restless, as an abyss threatening to overwhelm everything. The like is to be said of the sublime and beautiful in the human figure. We must not regard as the determining grounds of our judgment the concepts of the purposes which all our limbs serve and we must not allow this coincidence to influence our aesthetical judgment (for then it would no longer be pure), although it is certainly a necessary condition of aesthetical satisfaction that there should be no conflict between them. Aesthetical purposiveness is the conformity to law of the judgment in its freedom. The satisfaction in the object depends on the relation in which we wish to place the imagination, always provided that it by itself entertains the mind in free occupation. If, on the other hand, the judgment be determined by anything else—whether sensation or concept—although it may be conformable to law, it cannot be the act of a free judgment.

If, then, we speak of intellectual beauty or sublimity, these expressions are, first, not quite accurate, because beauty and sublimity are aesthetical modes of representation which would not be found in us at all if we were pure intelligences (or even regarded ourselves as such in thought). Secondly, although both, as objects of an intellectual (moral) satisfaction, are so far compatible with aesthetical satisfaction that they rest upon no interest, yet they are difficult to unite with it because they are meant to produce an interest. This, if its presentation is to harmonize with the satisfaction in the aesthetical judgment, could only arise by means of a sensible interest that we combine with it in the presentation; and thus damage would be done to the intellectual purposiveness, and it would lose its purity.

The object of a pure and unconditioned intellectual satisfaction is the moral law in that might which it exercises in us over all mental motives that precede it. This might only makes itself aesthetically known to us through sacrifices (which causing a feeling of deprivation, though on behalf of internal freedom, in return discloses in us an unfathomable depth of this super9ensible faculty, with consequences extending beyond our ken); thus the satisfaction on the aesthetical side (in relation to sensibility) is negative, i.e. against this interest, but regarded from the intellectual side it is positive and combined with an interest. Hence it follows that the intellectual, in itself purposive, (moral) good, aesthetically judged, must be represented as sublime rather than beautiful, so that it rather awakens the feeling of respect (which disdains charm) than that of love and familiar inclination; for human nature does not attach itself to this good spontaneously, but only by the authority which reason exercises over sensibility. Conversely also, that which we call sublime in nature, whether external or internal (e.g. certain affections), is only represented as a might in the mind to overcome certain hindrances of the sensibility by means of moral fundamental propositions, and only thus does it interest.

I will dwell a moment on this latter point. The idea of the good conjoined with [strong] affection is called enthusiasm. This state of mind seems to be sublime, to the extent that we commonly assert that nothing great could be done without it. Now every affection* is blind, either in the choice of its purpose or, if this be supplied by reason, in its accomplishment; for it is a mental movement which makes it impossible to exercise a free deliberation about fundamental propositions so as to determine ourselves thereby. It can therefore in no way deserve the approval of the reason. Nevertheless, aesthetically, enthusiasm is sublime, because it is a tension of forces produced by ideas, which give an impulse to the mind that operates far more powerfully and lastingly than the impulse arising from sensible representations. But (which seems strange) the absence of affection (apatheia, phlegma in significatu bono) in a mind that vigorously follows its unalterable principles is sublime, and in a far preferable way, because it has also on its side the satisfaction of pure reason. A mental state of this kind is alone called noble; and this expression is subsequently applied to things, e.g. a building, a garment, literary style, bodily presence, etc., when these do not so much arouse astonishment (the affection produced by the representation of novelty exceeding our expectations) as admiration (astonishment that does not cease when the novelty disappears); and this is the case when ideas agree in their presentation undesignedly and artlessly with the aesthetical satisfaction.

* Affections are specifically different from passions. The former are related merely to feeling; the latter belong to the faculty of desire and are inclinations which render difficult or impossible all determination of the [elective] will by principles. The former are stormy and unpremeditated, the latter are steady and deliberate; thus indignation in the form of wrath is an affection, but in the form of hatred (revenge) is a passion. The latter can never and in no reference be called sublime, because while in an affection the freedom of the mind is hindered, in a passion it is abolished. [Cf. Preface to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, 16, where this distinction is more fully drawn out. Affection is described as hasty, and passion is defined as the sensible appetite grown into a permanent inclination.]

Every affection of the strenuous kind (viz. that excites the consciousness of our power to overcome every obstacle—animi strenui) is aesthetically sublime, e.g. wrath, even despair (i.e. the despair of indignation, not of faintheartedness). But affections of the languid kind (which make the very effort of resistance an object of pain—animum languidum) have nothing noble in themselves, but they may be reckoned under the sensuously beautiful. Emotions, which may rise to the strength of affections, are very different. We have both spirited and tender emotions. The latter, if they rise to [strong] affections, are worthless; the propensity to them is called sentimentality. A sympathetic grief that will not admit of consolation, or one referring to imaginary evils to which we deliberately surrender ourselves—being deceived by fancy—as if they were actual, indicates and produces a tender though weak soul, which shows a beautiful side and which can be called fanciful, though not enthusiastic. Romances, lacrymose plays, shallow moral precepts which toy with (falsely) so-called moral dispositions, but in fact make the heart languid, insensible to the severe precept of duty, and incapable of all respect for the worth of humanity in our own person, and for the rights of men (a very different thing from their happiness), and in general incapable of all steady principle; even a religious discourse which recommends a cringing, abject seeking of favor and ingratiation of ourselves, which proposes the abandonment of all confidence in our own faculties in opposition to the evil within us, instead of a sturdy resolution to endeavor to overcome our inclinations by means of those powers which with all our frailty yet remain to us; that false humility which sets the only way of pleasing the Supreme Being in self-depreciation, in whining hypocritical repentance and in a mere passive state of mind—these are not compatible with any frame of mind that can be counted beautiful, still less with one which is to be counted sublime.

But even stormy movements of mind which may be connected under the name of edification with ideas of religion or—as merely belonging to culture—with ideas containing a social interest, can in no way, however they strain the imagination, lay claim to the honor of being sublime presentations unless they leave after them a mental mood which, although only indirectly, has influence upon the mind’s consciousness of its strength and its resolution in reference to that which involves pure intellectual purposiveness (the supersensible). For otherwise all these emotions belong only to motion, which one would fain enjoy for the sake of health. The pleasant exhaustion, consequent upon such disturbance produced by the play of the affections, is an enjoyment of our well-being arising from the restored equilibrium of the various vital forces. This, in the end, amounts to the same thing as that state which Eastern voluptuaries find so delightful, when they get their bodies, as it were, kneaded and all their muscles and joints softly pressed and bent, only that in this case the motive principle is for themost part external, in the other case it is altogether internal. Many a man believes himself to be edified by a sermon when indeed there is no edification at all (no system of good maxims), or to be improved by a tragedy when he is only glad at his ennui being happily dispelled. So the sublime must always have reference to the disposition, i.e. to the maxims which furnish to the intellectual [part] and to the ideas of reason a superiority over sensibility.

We need not fear that the feeling of the sublime will lose by so abstract a mode of presentation—which is quite negative in respect of what is sensible—for the imagination, although it finds nothing beyond the sensible to which it can attach itself, yet feels itself unbounded by this removal of its limitations; and thus that very abstraction is a presentation of the Infinite, which can be nothing but a mere negative presentation, but which yet expands the soul. Perhaps there is no sublimer passage in the Jewish law than the command, Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything which is in heaven or in the earth or under the earth, etc. This command alone can explain the enthusiasm that the Jewish people in their moral period felt for their religion, when they compared themselves with other peoples, or explain the pride which Mahommedanism inspires. The same is true of the moral law and of the tendency to morality in us. It is quite erroneous to fear that, if we deprive this [tendency] of all that can recommend it to sense, it will only involve a cold, lifeless assent and no moving force or emotion. It is quite the other way; for where the senses see nothing more before them, and the unmistakable and indelible idea of morality remains, it would be rather necessary to moderate the impetus of an unbounded imagination, to prevent it from rising to enthusiasm, than through fear of the powerlessness of these ideas to seek aid for them in images and childish ritual. Thus governments have willingly allowed religion to be abundantly provided with the latter accompaniments, and seeking thereby to relieve their subjects of trouble, they have also sought to deprive them of the faculty of extending their spiritual powers beyond the limits that are arbitrarily assigned to them and by means of which they can be the more easily treated as mere passive beings.

This pure, elevating, merely negative presentation of morality brings with it, on the other hand, no danger of fanaticism, which is a belief in our capacity of seeing something beyond all bounds of sensibility, i.e. of dreaming in accordance with fundamental propositions (or of going mad with reason); and this is so just because this presentation is merely negative. For the inscrutableness of the idea of freedom quite cuts it off from any positive presentation, but the moral law is in itself sufficiently and originally determinant in us, so that it does not permit us to cast a glance at any ground of determination external to itself. If enthusiasm is comparable to madness, fanaticism is comparable to monomania, of which the latter is least of all compatible with the sublime because, in its detail, it is ridiculous. In enthusiasm, regarded as an affection, the imagination is without bridle; in fanaticism, regarded as an inveterate, brooding passion, it is without rule. The first is a transitory accident which sometimes befalls the soundest understanding; the second is a disease which unsettles it.

Simplicity (purposiveness without art) is, as it were, the style of nature in the sublime, and so also of morality, which is a second (supersensible) nature, of which we only know the laws without being able to reach by intuition that supersensible faculty in ourselves which contains the ground of the legislation.

Now the satisfaction in the beautiful, like that in the sublime, is not alone distinguishable from other aesthetical judgments by its universal communicability, but also because it acquires an interest through this very property in reference to society (in which this communication is possible). We must, however, remark that separation from all society is regarded as sublime if it rests upon ideas that overlook all sensible interest. To be sufficient for oneself, and consequently to have no need of society, without at the same time being unsociable, i.e. without flying from it, is something bordering on the sublime, as is any dispensing with wants. On the other hand, to fly from men from misanthropy, because we bear ill-will to them, or from anthropophoby (shyness), because we fear them as foes, is partly hateful, partly contemptible. There is indeed a misanthropy (very improperly so called), the tendency to which frequently appears with old age in many right-thinking men, which is philanthropic enough as far as good will to men is concerned, but which, through long and sad experience, is far removed from satisfaction with men. Evidence of this is afforded by the propensity to solitude, the fantastic wish for a secluded country seat, or (in the case of young persons) by the dream of the happiness of passing one’s life with a little family upon some island unknown to the rest of the world, a dream of which storytellers or writers of Robinsonades know how to make good use. Falsehood, ingratitude, injustice, the childishness of the purposes regarded by ourselves as important and great, in the pursuit of which men inflict upon one another all imaginable evils, are so contradictory to the idea of what men might be if they would, and conflict so with our lively wish to see them better, that, in order that we may not hate them (since we cannot love them), the renunciation of all social joys seems but a small sacrifice. This sadness—not the sadness (of which sympathy is the cause) for the evils which fate brings upon others, but for those things which men do to one another (which depends upon an antipathy in fundamental propositions)—is sublime, because it rests upon ideas, while the former can only count as beautiful. The brilliant and thorough Saussure, in his account of his Alpine travels, says of one of the Savoy mountains, called Bonhomme, There reigns there a certain insipid sadness. He therefore recognized an interesting sadness, which the sight of a solitude might inspire, to which men might wish to transport themselves, that they might neither hear nor experience any more of the world, which, however, would not be quite so inhospitable that it would offer only an extremely painful retreat. I make this remark solely with the design of indicating again that even depression (not dejected sadness) may be counted among the sturdy affections if it has its ground in moral ideas. But if it is grounded on sympathy and, as such, is amiable, it belongs merely to the languid affections. [I make this remark] to call attention to the state of mind which is sublime only in the first case.

We can now compare the above transcendental exposition of aesthetical judgments with the physiological worked out by Burke and by many clearheaded men among us, in order to see whither a merely empirical exposition of the sublime and beautiful leads. Burke, who deserves to be regarded as the most important author who adopts this mode of treatment, infers by this method that the feeling of the sublime rests on the impulse toward self-preservation and on fear, i.e. on a pain, which, not going as far as actually to derange the parts of the body, produces movements which, since they purify the finer or grosser vessels of dangerous or troublesome stoppages, are capable of exciting pleasant sensations, not indeed pleasure, but a kind of satisfying horror, a certain tranquillity tinged with terror. The beautiful, which he founded on love (which he wishes to keep quite separate from desire), he reduces to the relaxing, slackening, and enervating of the fibres of the body, and a consequent weakening, languor, and exhaustion, a fainting, dissolving, and melting away for enjoyment. And he confirms this explanation, not only by cases in which the imagination, in combination with the understanding, can excite in us the feeling of the beautiful or of the sublime, but by cases in which it is combined with sensation. As psychological observations, these analyses of the phenomena of our mind are exceedingly beautiful and afford rich material for the favorite investigations of empirical anthropology. It is also not to be denied that all representations in us, whether, objectively viewed, they are merely sensible or are quite intellectual, may yet subjectively be united to gratification or grief, however imperceptible either may be, because they all affect the feeling of life, and none of them, so far as it is a modification of the subject, can be indifferent. And so, as Epicurus maintained, all gratification or grief may ultimately be corporeal, whether it arises from the representations of the imagination or the understanding, because life without a feeling of bodily organs would be merely a consciousness of existence, without any feeling of well-being or the reverse, i.e. of the furthering or the checking of the vital powers. For the mind is by itself alone life (the principle of life), and hindrances or furtherances must be sought outside it and yet in the man, consequently in union with his body.

If, however, we place the satisfaction in the object altogether in the fact that it gratifies us by charm or emotion, we must not assume that any other man agrees with the aesthetical judgment which we pass, for as to these each one rightly consults his own individual sensibility. But in that case all censorship of taste would disappear, except indeed the example afforded by the accidental agreement of others in their judgments were regarded as commanding our assent; and this principle we should probably resist, and should appeal to the natural right of subjecting the judgment, which rests on the immediate feeling of our own well-being, to our own sense and not to that of any other man.

If, then, the judgment of taste is not to be valid merely egoistically, but according to its inner nature—i.e. on account of itself, and not on account of the examples that others give of their taste—to be necessarily valid pluralistically, if we regard it as a judgment which may exact the adhesion of everyone, then there must lie at its basis some a priori principle (whether objective or subjective) to which we can never attain by seeking out the empirical laws of mental changes. For these only enable us to know how we judge, but do not prescribe to us how we ought to judge. They do not supply an unconditioned command, such as judgments of taste presuppose, inasmuch as they require that the satisfaction be immediately connected with the representation. Thus the empirical exposition of aesthetical judgments may be a beginning of a collection of materials for a higher investigation; but a transcendental discussion of this faculty is also possible, and is an essential part of the Critique of Taste. For if it had not a priori principles, it could not possibly pass sentence on the judgments of others, and it could not approve or blame them with any appearance of right.

The remaining part of the Analytic of the Aesthetical Judgment contains first the [Deduction of Pure Aesthetical Judgments]