Kant's Critique of Judgement. Immanuel Kant

supersensible.

      Now even if an immeasurable gulf is fixed between the sensible realm of the concept of nature and the supersensible realm of the concept of freedom, so that no transition is possible from the first to the second (by means of the theoretical use of Reason), just as if they were two different worlds of which the first could have no influence upon the second, yet the second is meant to have an influence upon the first. The concept of freedom is meant to actualise in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws, and consequently nature must be so thought that the conformity to law of its form, at least harmonises with the possibility of the purposes to be effected in it according to laws of freedom.—There must, therefore, be a ground of the unity of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of nature, with that which the concept of freedom practically contains; and the concept of this ground, although it does not attain either theoretically or practically to a knowledge of the same, and hence has no peculiar realm, nevertheless makes possible the transition from the mode of thought according to the principles of the one to that according to the principles of the other.

III. OF THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT AS A MEANS OF COMBINING THE TWO PARTS OF PHILOSOPHY INTO A WHOLE.

       Table of Contents

      The Critique of the cognitive faculties, as regards what they can furnish a priori, has properly speaking no realm in respect of Objects, because it is not a doctrine, but only has to investigate whether and how, in accordance with the state of these faculties, a doctrine is possible by their means. Its field extends to all their pretensions, in order to confine them within their legitimate bounds. But what cannot enter into the division of Philosophy may yet enter, as a chief part, into the Critique of the pure faculty of cognition in general, viz. if it contains principles which are available neither for theoretical nor for practical use.

      The natural concepts, which contain the ground of all theoretical knowledge a priori, rest on the legislation of the Understanding.—The concept of freedom, which contains the ground of all sensuously-unconditioned practical precepts a priori, rests on the legislation of the Reason. Both faculties, therefore, besides being capable of application as regards their logical form to principles of whatever origin, have also as regards their content, their special legislations above which there is no other (a priori); and hence the division of Philosophy into theoretical and practical is justified.

      But in the family of the higher cognitive faculties there is a middle term between the Understanding and the Reason. This is the Judgement, of which we have cause for supposing according to analogy that it may contain in itself, if not a special legislation, yet a special principle of its own to be sought according to laws, though merely subjective a priori. This principle, even if it have no field of objects as its realm, yet may have somewhere a territory with a certain character, for which no other principle can be valid.

      But besides (to judge by analogy) there is a new ground for bringing the Judgement into connexion with another arrangement of our representative faculties, which seems to be of even greater importance than that of its relationship with the family of the cognitive faculties. For all faculties or capacities of the soul can be reduced to three, which cannot be any further derived from one common ground: the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the faculty of desire.9 For the faculty of knowledge the Understanding is alone legislative, if (as must happen when it is considered by itself without confusion with the faculty of desire) this faculty is referred to nature as the faculty of theoretical knowledge; for in respect of nature (as phenomenon) it is alone possible for us to give laws by means of natural concepts a priori, i.e. by pure concepts of Understanding.—For the faculty of desire, as a higher faculty according to the concept of freedom, the Reason (in which alone this concept has a place) is alone a priori legislative.—Now between the faculties of knowledge and desire there is the feeling of pleasure, just as the Judgement is intermediate between the Understanding and the Reason. We may therefore suppose provisionally that the Judgement likewise contains in itself an a priori principle. And as pleasure or pain is necessarily combined with the faculty of desire (either preceding this principle as in the lower desires, or following it as in the higher, when the desire is determined by the moral law), we may also suppose that the Judgement will bring about a transition from the pure faculty of knowledge, the realm of natural concepts, to the realm of the concept of freedom, just as in its logical use it makes possible the transition from Understanding to Reason.

      Although, then, Philosophy can be divided only into two main parts, the theoretical and the practical, and although all that we may be able to say of the special principles of Judgement must be counted as belonging in it to the theoretical part, i.e. to rational cognition in accordance with natural concepts; yet the Critique of pure Reason, which must decide all this, as regards the possibility of the system before undertaking it, consists of three parts; the Critique of pure Understanding, of pure Judgement, and of pure Reason, which faculties are called pure because they are legislative a priori.

IV. OF JUDGEMENT AS A FACULTY LEGISLATING A PRIORI

       Table of Contents

      Judgement in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the Universal. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) be given, the Judgement which subsumes the particular under it (even if, as transcendental Judgement, it furnishes a priori, the conditions in conformity with which subsumption under that universal is alone possible) is determinant. But if only the particular be given for which the universal has to be found, the Judgement is merely reflective.

      The determinant Judgement only subsumes under universal transcendental laws given by the Understanding; the law is marked out for it, a priori, and it has therefore no need to seek a law for itself in order to be able to subordinate the particular in nature to the universal.—But the forms of nature are so manifold, and there are so many modifications of the universal transcendental natural concepts left undetermined by the laws given, a priori, by the pure Understanding—because these only concern the possibility of a nature in general (as an object of sense)—that there must be laws for these [forms] also. These, as empirical, may be contingent from the point of view of our Understanding, and yet, if they are to be called laws (as the concept of a nature requires), they must be regarded as necessary in virtue of a principle of the unity of the manifold, though it be unknown to us.—The reflective Judgement, which is obliged to ascend from the particular in nature to the universal, requires on that account a principle that it cannot borrow from experience, because its function is to establish the unity of all empirical principles under higher ones, and hence to establish the possibility of their systematic subordination. Such a transcendental principle, then, the reflective Judgement can only give as a law from and to itself. It cannot derive it from outside (because then it would be the determinant Judgement); nor can it prescribe it to nature, because reflection upon the laws of nature adjusts itself by nature, and not nature by the conditions according to which we attempt to arrive at a concept of it which is quite contingent in respect of these.

      This principle can be no other than the following: As universal laws of nature have their ground in our Understanding, which prescribes them to nature (although only according to the universal concept of it as nature); so particular empirical laws, in respect of what is in them left undetermined by these universal laws, must be considered in accordance with such a unity as they would have if an Understanding (although not our Understanding) had furnished them to our cognitive faculties, so as to make possible a system of experience according to particular laws of nature. Not as if, in this way, such an Understanding must be assumed as actual (for it is only our reflective Judgement to which this Idea serves as a principle—for reflecting, not for determining); but this faculty thus gives a law only to itself and not to nature.

      Now the concept of an Object, so far as it contains the ground of the actuality of this Object, is the purpose; and the agreement of a thing