The Critique of Judgment. Immanuel Kant

and the pleasure can express nothing else than its harmony with the cognitive faculties which come into play in the reflective Judgement, and so far as they are in play; and hence can only express a subjective formal purposiveness of the Object. For that apprehension of forms in the Imagination can never take place without the reflective Judgement, though undesignedly, at least comparing them with its faculty of referring intuitions to concepts. If now in this comparison the Imagination (as the faculty of a priori intuitions) is placed by means of a given representation undesignedly in agreement with the Understanding, as the faculty of concepts, and thus a feeling of pleasure is aroused, the object must then be regarded as purposive for the reflective Judgement. Such a judgement is an aesthetical judgement upon the purposiveness of the Object, which does not base itself upon any present concept of the object, nor does it furnish any such. In the case of an object whose form (not the matter of its representation, as sensation), in the mere reflection upon it (without reference to any concept to be obtained of it), is judged as the ground of a pleasure in the representation of such an Object, this pleasure is judged as bound up with the representation necessarily; and, consequently, not only for the subject which apprehends this form, but for every judging being in general. The object is then called beautiful; and the faculty of judging by means of such a pleasure (and, consequently, with universal validity) is called Taste. For since the ground of the pleasure is placed merely in the form of the object for reflection in general—and, consequently, in no sensation of the object, and also without reference to any concept which anywhere involves design—it is only the conformity to law in the empirical use of the Judgement in general (unity of the Imagination with the Understanding) in the subject, with which the representation of the Object in reflection, whose conditions are universally valid a priori, harmonises. And since this harmony of the object with the faculties of the subject is contingent, it brings about the representation of its purposiveness in respect of the cognitive faculties of the subject.

      Here now is a pleasure, which, like all pleasure or pain that is not produced through the concept of freedom (i.e. through the preceding determination of the higher faculties of desire by pure Reason), can never be comprehended from concepts, as necessarily bound up with the representation of an object. It must always be cognised as combined with this only by means of reflective perception; and, consequently, like all empirical judgements, it can declare no objective necessity and lay claim to no a priori validity. But the judgement of taste also claims, as every other empirical judgement does, to be valid for every one; and in spite of its inner contingency this is always possible. The strange and irregular thing is that it is not an empirical concept, but a feeling of pleasure (consequently not a concept at all), which by the judgement of taste is attributed to every one,—just as if it were a predicate bound up with the cognition of the Object—and which is connected with the representation thereof.

      A singular judgement of experience, e.g., when we perceive a moveable drop of water in an ice-crystal, may justly claim that every one else should find it the same; because we have formed this judgement, according to the universal conditions of the determinant faculty of Judgement, under the laws of a possible experience in general. Just in the same way he who feels pleasure in the mere reflection upon the form of an object without respect to any concept, although this judgement be empirical and singular, justly claims the agreement of every one; because the ground of this pleasure is found in the universal, although subjective, condition of reflective judgements, viz., the purposive harmony of an object (whether a product of nature or of art) with the mutual relations of the cognitive faculties (the Imagination and the Understanding), a harmony which is requisite for every empirical cognition. The pleasure, therefore, in the judgement of taste is dependent on an empirical representation, and cannot be bound up a priori with any concept (we cannot determine a priori what object is or is not according to taste; that we must find out by experiment). But the pleasure is the determining ground of this judgement only because we are conscious that it rests merely on reflection and on the universal though only subjective conditions of the harmony of that reflection with the cognition of Objects in general, for which the form of the Object is purposive.

      Thus the reason why judgements of taste according to their possibility are subjected to a Critique is that they presuppose a principle a priori, although this principle is neither one of cognition for the Understanding nor of practice for the Will, and therefore is not in any way determinant a priori.

      Susceptibility to pleasure from reflection upon the forms of things (of Nature as well as of Art), indicates not only a purposiveness of the Objects in relation to the reflective Judgement, conformably to the concept of nature in the subject; but also conversely a purposiveness of the subject in respect of the objects according to their form or even their formlessness, in virtue of the concept of freedom. Hence the aesthetical judgement is not only related as a judgement of taste to the beautiful, but also as springing from a spiritual feeling is related to the sublime; and thus the Critique of the aesthetical Judgement must be divided into two corresponding sections.

      VIII. OF THE LOGICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE

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      Purposiveness may be represented in an object given in experience on a merely subjective ground, as the harmony of its form,—in the apprehension (apprehensio) of it prior to any concept,—with the cognitive faculties, in order to unite the intuition with concepts for a cognition generally. Or it may be represented objectively as the harmony of the form of the object with the possibility of the thing itself, according to a concept of it which precedes and contains the ground of this form. We have seen that the representation of purposiveness of the first kind rests on the immediate pleasure in the form of the object in the mere reflection upon it. But the representation of purposiveness of the second kind, since it refers the form of the Object, not to the cognitive faculties of the subject in the apprehension of it, but to a definite cognition of the object under a given concept, has nothing to do with a feeling of pleasure in things, but only with the Understanding in its judgement upon them. If the concept of an object is given, the business of the Judgement in the use of the concept for cognition consists in presentation (exhibitio), i.e. in setting a corresponding intuition beside the concept. This may take place either through our own Imagination, as in Art when we realise a preconceived concept of an object which is a purpose of ours; or through Nature in its Technic (as in organised bodies) when we supply to it our concept of its purpose in order to judge of its products. In the latter case it is not merely the purposiveness of nature in the form of the thing that is represented, but this its product is represented as a natural purpose.—Although our concept of a subjective purposiveness of nature in its forms according to empirical laws is not a concept of the Object, but only a principle of the Judgement for furnishing itself with concepts amid the immense variety of nature (and thus being able to ascertain its own position), yet we thus ascribe to nature as it were a regard to our cognitive faculty according to the analogy of purpose. Thus we can regard natural beauty as the presentation of the concept of the formal (merely subjective) purposiveness, and natural purposes as the presentation of the concept of a real (objective) purposiveness. The former of these we judge of by Taste (aesthetically, by the medium of the feeling of pleasure), the latter by Understanding and Reason (logically, according to concepts).

      On this is based the division of the Critique of Judgement into the Critique of aesthetical and of teleological Judgement. By the first we understand the faculty of judging of the formal purposiveness (otherwise called subjective) of Nature by means of the feeling of pleasure or pain; by the second the faculty of judging its real (objective) purposiveness by means of Understanding and Reason.

      In a Critique of Judgement the part containing the aesthetical Judgement is essential, because this alone contains a principle which the Judgement places quite a priori at the basis of its reflection upon nature; viz., the principle of a formal purposiveness of nature, according to its particular (empirical) laws, for our cognitive faculty, without which the Understanding could not find itself in nature. On the other hand no reason a priori could be specified,—and even the possibility of a reason would not be apparent