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Critique of Judgment
In THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT (1790), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) seeks to establish the a priori principles underlying the faculty of judgment, just as he did in his previous critiques of pure and practical reason. The first part deals with the subject of our aesthetic sensibility; we respond to certain natural phenomena as beautiful, says Kant, when we recognize in nature a harmonious order that satisfies the mind's own need for order. The second half of the critique concentrates on the apparent teleology in nature's design of organisms. Kant argues that our minds are inclined to see purpose and order in nature and this is the main principle underlying all of our judgments. Although this might imply a super sensible Designer, Kant insists that we cannot prove a supernatural dimension or the existence of God. Such considerations are beyond reason and are solely the province of faith.
688 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1781
About the author
Immanuel Kant
2,970 books3,711 followersImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century philosopher from Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He's regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe & of the late Enlightenment. His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics & epistemology, & highlights his own contribution to these areas. Other main works of his maturity are The Critique of Practical Reason, which is about ethics, & The Critique of Judgment, about esthetics & teleology.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
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January 11, 2022
The Sublimity of Measurement
My recent interest is in the aesthetics of measurement, that is, in the criteria we use to chose a scale, or metric, when we make measurements of any kind, scientific or as part of everyday life. This choice of metric is the most important factor in measurement since mistakes in choosing an inappropriate metric are far more significant than any subsequent errors in using a metric. Mistakes in the choice of metric are also far more difficult to detect because they involve judgmental not technical lapses. Judgments about these criteria of importance and value tend to become ‘self-sealing’ by eliminating rival criteria as a matter of course.
Immanuel Kant wrote a great deal about aesthetics but almost all of what he wrote concerns the limited area of beauty in art. This is a subject treated with special depth in The Critique of Judgment. So, although there is unlikely to be much explicit about the broader considerations of aesthetics, I’m hopeful of some inspiration that can be useful in my own theory.
As far as I am aware Kant unfortunately says nothing systematic about measurement. Nevertheless there are hints and suggestions about his views scattered in The Critique of Judgment. My intention is to investigate a few of these clues to his thinking, and to steal them if I can for my own purposes.
As part of his analysis, Kant assesses what he calls ‘teleological judgment’, that is the choices we make about ends, purposes and goals, rather than about the means to achieve these. This is where I shall focus my investigation since it most closely touches on the pivotal question in any measurement: Why? This is a question of value that is typically neglected in the discussion of measurement simply because measurement can appear to be purely instrumental. That it never is places it squarely in the realm of teleological judgment.
For Kant, judgment is a human ‘faculty’, a capability which has certain powers and limits. Judgment is “the capacity to subsume under rules, that is, to distinguish whether something falls under a given rule.” In my terminology this ‘rule’ is the practical name for an aesthetic. In choosing such a rule, we are taking a definite ‘stance’ regarding the world. The rule is both a filter and an ordering principle. The act of judgment presumes, I believe, that the rule is more or less articulate and therefore subject to conscious revision. In other words, we can learn about the rule.
Judgment has two functions therefore: determining and reflecting. Determining involves finding the right ‘universal’, that is concept or word for the situation at hand. Thus this function covers the choice of rule or aesthetic, that is, the metric of measurement. Reflective judgment is particularly relevant to the related activities of aesthetic choice and purposeful behaviour. It is the source of what Kant calls ‘empirical concepts’, that is, for my purposes, the range of aesthetic rules or metrics that one has at one’s disposal.
An aesthetic judgment, Kant says, is based on a ‘feeling’, that is a sensory perception of satisfying ‘rightness’. Unlike subsequent 19th century philosophers and 20th century neo-liberals, Kant does not consider such a feeling fixed or isolated from social effects, so I have no objection to using feeling as the basis for aesthetic judgments in measurement. Once again, since this feeling is the emotional equivalent to a rule, it can be, indeed must be, made more or less explicit in language.
Kant’s ideas about beauty, although stimulating for my purposes, are not directly relevant to the issues of measurement. But his concept of the Sublime is. “The experience of the sublime consists in a feeling of the superiority of our own power of reason, as a supersensible faculty, over nature.” The specific category of the ‘mathematically sublime’ appears especially important for empirical measurement.
The feeling of the mathematically sublime is not one of human arrogance but of a recognition that we can reason beyond that which we can imagine. For example, we can’t imagine what infinity is or looks like, but we can use the idea of infinity in our reasoning with little difficulty. The mathematically sublime, therefore, appears to me as a sort of power of transcendent imagination, what the 19th century American philosopher, C S Peirce would call ‘abduction’. Briefly, this power manifests itself as the ability to create, invent, discover novel hypotheses about the world. Such hypotheses can be neither inductively nor deductively derived. They appear more as intuitive but plausible guesses about what might fit best with our intentions.
My suggestion is that the mathematically sublime is the source of metrics, as both a range of alternatives and as a particular choice from among these. Metrics are not found in nature; they are imposed upon it. As far as we know, only human beings have this power of imposition. Things like numbers and metrics can’t be considered as anything other than ‘real’, but their reality is the consequence of human reasoning not natural evolution. Sublimity strictly speaking “is not contained in anything in nature, but only in our mind”
Thus the mathematically sublime, or abduction, or any other description of this ability is a “faculty of the mind which surpasses every standard of sense.” In other words, the mathematically sublime goes beyond ‘mere’ feeling. It may have its roots in feeling but according to Kant, it then transcends feeling completely. This, I believe, is the pivotal link between aesthetics and measurement in his philosophy. Measurement imposes our purpose on whatever is being measured. This is a crucial recognition. The properties measured are not part of the object, they are the product of our intention.
This recognition also raises the possibility of a ‘morality of measurement’. If we inevitably impose our purposes on things measured, we have at least two moral responsibilities: to consider those purposes explicitly and to recognise that measurement is not a morally neutral or objective activity of inquiry. The aesthetic judgments involved in measurement are arguably the most significant and profound of any in science.
Thank you, Immanuel, for your inspiring thought.
My recent interest is in the aesthetics of measurement, that is, in the criteria we use to chose a scale, or metric, when we make measurements of any kind, scientific or as part of everyday life. This choice of metric is the most important factor in measurement since mistakes in choosing an inappropriate metric are far more significant than any subsequent errors in using a metric. Mistakes in the choice of metric are also far more difficult to detect because they involve judgmental not technical lapses. Judgments about these criteria of importance and value tend to become ‘self-sealing’ by eliminating rival criteria as a matter of course.
Immanuel Kant wrote a great deal about aesthetics but almost all of what he wrote concerns the limited area of beauty in art. This is a subject treated with special depth in The Critique of Judgment. So, although there is unlikely to be much explicit about the broader considerations of aesthetics, I’m hopeful of some inspiration that can be useful in my own theory.
As far as I am aware Kant unfortunately says nothing systematic about measurement. Nevertheless there are hints and suggestions about his views scattered in The Critique of Judgment. My intention is to investigate a few of these clues to his thinking, and to steal them if I can for my own purposes.
As part of his analysis, Kant assesses what he calls ‘teleological judgment’, that is the choices we make about ends, purposes and goals, rather than about the means to achieve these. This is where I shall focus my investigation since it most closely touches on the pivotal question in any measurement: Why? This is a question of value that is typically neglected in the discussion of measurement simply because measurement can appear to be purely instrumental. That it never is places it squarely in the realm of teleological judgment.
For Kant, judgment is a human ‘faculty’, a capability which has certain powers and limits. Judgment is “the capacity to subsume under rules, that is, to distinguish whether something falls under a given rule.” In my terminology this ‘rule’ is the practical name for an aesthetic. In choosing such a rule, we are taking a definite ‘stance’ regarding the world. The rule is both a filter and an ordering principle. The act of judgment presumes, I believe, that the rule is more or less articulate and therefore subject to conscious revision. In other words, we can learn about the rule.
Judgment has two functions therefore: determining and reflecting. Determining involves finding the right ‘universal’, that is concept or word for the situation at hand. Thus this function covers the choice of rule or aesthetic, that is, the metric of measurement. Reflective judgment is particularly relevant to the related activities of aesthetic choice and purposeful behaviour. It is the source of what Kant calls ‘empirical concepts’, that is, for my purposes, the range of aesthetic rules or metrics that one has at one’s disposal.
An aesthetic judgment, Kant says, is based on a ‘feeling’, that is a sensory perception of satisfying ‘rightness’. Unlike subsequent 19th century philosophers and 20th century neo-liberals, Kant does not consider such a feeling fixed or isolated from social effects, so I have no objection to using feeling as the basis for aesthetic judgments in measurement. Once again, since this feeling is the emotional equivalent to a rule, it can be, indeed must be, made more or less explicit in language.
Kant’s ideas about beauty, although stimulating for my purposes, are not directly relevant to the issues of measurement. But his concept of the Sublime is. “The experience of the sublime consists in a feeling of the superiority of our own power of reason, as a supersensible faculty, over nature.” The specific category of the ‘mathematically sublime’ appears especially important for empirical measurement.
The feeling of the mathematically sublime is not one of human arrogance but of a recognition that we can reason beyond that which we can imagine. For example, we can’t imagine what infinity is or looks like, but we can use the idea of infinity in our reasoning with little difficulty. The mathematically sublime, therefore, appears to me as a sort of power of transcendent imagination, what the 19th century American philosopher, C S Peirce would call ‘abduction’. Briefly, this power manifests itself as the ability to create, invent, discover novel hypotheses about the world. Such hypotheses can be neither inductively nor deductively derived. They appear more as intuitive but plausible guesses about what might fit best with our intentions.
My suggestion is that the mathematically sublime is the source of metrics, as both a range of alternatives and as a particular choice from among these. Metrics are not found in nature; they are imposed upon it. As far as we know, only human beings have this power of imposition. Things like numbers and metrics can’t be considered as anything other than ‘real’, but their reality is the consequence of human reasoning not natural evolution. Sublimity strictly speaking “is not contained in anything in nature, but only in our mind”
Thus the mathematically sublime, or abduction, or any other description of this ability is a “faculty of the mind which surpasses every standard of sense.” In other words, the mathematically sublime goes beyond ‘mere’ feeling. It may have its roots in feeling but according to Kant, it then transcends feeling completely. This, I believe, is the pivotal link between aesthetics and measurement in his philosophy. Measurement imposes our purpose on whatever is being measured. This is a crucial recognition. The properties measured are not part of the object, they are the product of our intention.
This recognition also raises the possibility of a ‘morality of measurement’. If we inevitably impose our purposes on things measured, we have at least two moral responsibilities: to consider those purposes explicitly and to recognise that measurement is not a morally neutral or objective activity of inquiry. The aesthetic judgments involved in measurement are arguably the most significant and profound of any in science.
Thank you, Immanuel, for your inspiring thought.
November 19, 2015
I've previously reviewed both The Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Practical Reason, describing some of the reasons why the reading of the three critiques led to what might be called a conversion experience--or perhaps an intellectual mystical or jnana experience.
For one who has sedulously studied Kant, the third critique is a kind of capstone as it brings a lot of loose threads of his arguments together in a rather ecstatically inspiring manner. I certainly experienced a kind of intellectual ecstasy, repeatedly, during the course of this study--a process which involved most of a summer sitting from eight to fourteen hours a day at the Hungarian Pastry Shop at Cathedral and 110th St. and which included reading a number of his ancillary works as well as the magisterial commentary of the first critique by an early translator, Norman Kemp Smith.
A rather cheap way to get at the point of the third critique would be for someone informed by the Christian tradition to read his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. If you like the Jesus of the gospels--as opposed to the Jesus of Revelation--you will find that to be similarly inspiring, a relatively quick rush. Unfortunately, however, that apologetic does not have the compelling force of the detailed definition and argumentation of the three critiques. You'll have the rush, but it will pass.
And what is the point of the Critical project? Well, of course there are many points which you'll find described pretty clearly in the book description appended under the list of contents to this edition, but the real point is what that much-edited Wikipedia writer refers to in his concluding remark about Fichte et alia. Kant was basically a mystic, even a metaphysician, but much more careful about it than his antimetaphysical successor Nietzsche. This seems a contradiction to the programme of the first critique. It is, but The Critique of Pure Reason simply lays the groundwork for the two following books. We are, so far as we operate as rational beings, Logos incarnate.
For one who has sedulously studied Kant, the third critique is a kind of capstone as it brings a lot of loose threads of his arguments together in a rather ecstatically inspiring manner. I certainly experienced a kind of intellectual ecstasy, repeatedly, during the course of this study--a process which involved most of a summer sitting from eight to fourteen hours a day at the Hungarian Pastry Shop at Cathedral and 110th St. and which included reading a number of his ancillary works as well as the magisterial commentary of the first critique by an early translator, Norman Kemp Smith.
A rather cheap way to get at the point of the third critique would be for someone informed by the Christian tradition to read his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. If you like the Jesus of the gospels--as opposed to the Jesus of Revelation--you will find that to be similarly inspiring, a relatively quick rush. Unfortunately, however, that apologetic does not have the compelling force of the detailed definition and argumentation of the three critiques. You'll have the rush, but it will pass.
And what is the point of the Critical project? Well, of course there are many points which you'll find described pretty clearly in the book description appended under the list of contents to this edition, but the real point is what that much-edited Wikipedia writer refers to in his concluding remark about Fichte et alia. Kant was basically a mystic, even a metaphysician, but much more careful about it than his antimetaphysical successor Nietzsche. This seems a contradiction to the programme of the first critique. It is, but The Critique of Pure Reason simply lays the groundwork for the two following books. We are, so far as we operate as rational beings, Logos incarnate.
July 5, 2023
Nu ik de derde kritiek gelezen heb, stop ik met filosofie lezen.
September 18, 2014
Cette dernière critique du célèbre philosophe prussien du XVIIIème siècle aborde deux thèmes : d’une part la question du jugement esthétique, d’autre part celle de la téléologie.
Sa première critique (Critique de la raison pure) avait pour objet la métaphysique : il justifiait d’en faire l’objet d’une étude malgré les coups sévères que lui avaient porté l’empirisme en établissant une curieuse distinction psychologique entre jugement a priori et a posteriori (c'est-à-dire influé ou non par la sensation), et en supposant que les premiers étaient quelque chose. Il ne prouvait rien, confirmait l’impossibilité de toute connaissance possible sur ces matières, mais sauvegardait par contre fermement la légitimité de rêvasser à sa guise sur ces questions obscures et disputées. Beaucoup de complexité et de jargon pour une idée simple, mais la bonne intention de mettre un terme à des criailleries inutiles.
La seconde critique (Critique of Practical Reason) partait de ces considérations pour aborder la question morale, déjà abordée dans ses Fondements de la métaphysique des moeurs: là Kant craque, et nous explique que c’est mieux d’avoir certaines idées métaphysiques si on veut que la morale soit possible, et donc qu’on devrait les postuler non parce qu’on prétend savoir qu’elles sont vraies, mais parce que sinon ce serait affreux, et qu’elles sont nécessaires dans la pratique. C’est très joli, sauf que le lien qu’il fait entre métaphysique et morale, en l’occurrence la vieille question increvable du libre-arbitre, n’a aucune autre espèce de solidité que l’aplomb avec lequel il le pose, aplomb qui entraîne vers le fond son argument tombé à l’eau. A mon avis, il aurait pu s’en tenir au scepticisme, et la morale aurait été sauve de toute façon.
Dans cet ouvrage-ci, il s’agit de regarder la question du jugement esthétique, le problème étant la diversité de ceux-ci entre les individus tout pendant qu’il connaît une règle universelle. C’est encore un bon sujet ou caser sa distinction consistant à découper l’âme entre ce qui est infecté par les sensations et ce qui ne l’est pas : évoquer la possibilité de jugement esthétiques a priori permet de postuler une règle du beau universelle, mais la postuler seulement, et non pas la connaître. La question est fort intéressante, mais les outils ne sont pas les meilleurs. Pour moi, c’est un peu trop de peines et de complications pour une idée qui aurait peut-être pu être exposée plus simplement, sans sacrifier à la rigueur.
La dernière partie est un peu décevante, car elle reprend un thème déjà largement traité dans le première critique, ici l’idée métaphysique de téléologie, ou pour parler français, de savoir si une intelligence à pensé à une finalité pour le monde, où si ce dernier continue gentiment son petit train comme il peut. Comme de raison, Kant revient à une position quasi-sceptique, et nie à la théologie ses prétentions en matière de physique, tout en confirmant bien évidemment le droit de chacun de penser à sa guise sur ces sujets, surtout si ça peut s’avérer utile en pratique.
L’appareil critique est très fourni. J’ai trouvé piquantes les références faites aux nombreux philosophes ayant vécu après Kant qui se sont semble-t-il amusé à l’interpréter dans des sens tout à fait divers et contradictoires. Je n’aime pas beaucoup toute cette tradition, ce jargon inutile pour envelopper des idées somme toute pas si complexes, et qui ne sont pas si neuves : on en retrouve l’essentiel chez Platon. L’idée phare et originale de Kant, la séparation de la sensation et de l’âme, ne me convainc pas car peu évidente à envisager. Ses critiques me laissent donc déçu. Mais en dehors de ce reproche, il faut avouer que Kant est plutôt sympathique, apaisant, et ouvert: il mérite bien que l’on soit favorablement disposé à son égard. Il n’y a plus qu’à lire le reste de ses écrits.
August 31, 2015
اولاش اذیت کرد. مثل دو تا نقد دیگهی کانت. ولی باهاش که راه بیای، اصطلاحاش که دستت بیاد، عاشق اینم میشی. مثل اون دو تا نقد دیگهی کانت.
البته اینجا کانت خیلی لطیفتر از کانتیه که توی نقد عقل محض میبینیم. ناسلامتی داره از زیباییشناسی حرف میزنی.
از بهترین کتابدرسیهایی بود که خوندم و فقط خدا میدونه اگه کانت اینو ننوشته بود تاریخ زیباییشناسی به کجا میرفت.
البته اینجا کانت خیلی لطیفتر از کانتیه که توی نقد عقل محض میبینیم. ناسلامتی داره از زیباییشناسی حرف میزنی.
از بهترین کتابدرسیهایی بود که خوندم و فقط خدا میدونه اگه کانت اینو ننوشته بود تاریخ زیباییشناسی به کجا میرفت.
December 6, 2007
This is probably my favorite of Kant's three critiques (Pure and Practical Reason being the other two). However, when it comes to reading Kant, saying "favorite" is not quite right: he was such a bad writer, and such a brilliant thinker, its hard to deal with some times.
In any case, this is very interesting because he looks at judgment as a reflective action, both concerning objects of art that are beautiful or sublime, and teleological reflection in nature.
In any case, this is very interesting because he looks at judgment as a reflective action, both concerning objects of art that are beautiful or sublime, and teleological reflection in nature.
March 24, 2016
Whist I have to admit I had to read this for study, I'm phenomenally glad that I did. It's horribly impenetrable, though. Very, very hard work to get through, let alone digest. Do I understand Kant? No, not really. Can I talk about him and his ideas comfortably? Well, yes, kind of. Would I recommend this? Not as light reading, or for fun. If you want to understand Kant, there are far more accessible works by better writers explaining him!
July 5, 2012
the book I most respect and least enjoyed reading
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January 16, 2012Isn't this, like, one of the most important books on philosophical aesthetics or something? No one told me that Kant actually tries to tell jokes in it (most of it is not jokes, though, and even the jokes aren't really that funny).
I feel like for me to rate this book would be ridiculous, so I am not doing that.
I feel like for me to rate this book would be ridiculous, so I am not doing that.
April 3, 2020
It would be difficult to overstate Kant's importance, or the greatness of his three critiques, which must be understood as three parts of one unified project, and, I should add, must be read in sequence. European thought still operates within the horizons that Kant demarcated, and as a matter of intellectual history alone, I regard Kant as one of the greatest and most significant thinkers of our world's heritage. As regards to his philosophy, it is fundamental to our conception of what philosophy is, in the same way that Bach and Beethoven tell us what it means to make music.
In his previous critiques, Kant has analyzed the true (what can we know with certainty?) and the good (what ought I to do?), thereby addressing two members of Plato's holy trinity of good, the true, and the beautiful. In the third critique, Kant turns his attention to beauty, and in his analysis of aesthetics, he discerns a curious characteristic regarding the manner in which humans perceive and articulate aesthetic judgments: they regard their determinations of beauty as not merely expressions of personal taste, but as somehow binding for all people. In his reading, we do not regard a sunset as merely beautiful "for us," but prereflexively believe that anyone who sees a sunset must take it to be beautiful.
In analyzing how it is that we posit aesthetic judgments as somehow more than merely subjective expressions of taste, Kant finds that there is no basis for an a priori determination of beauty through either reason or the understanding. That is to say, we cannot posit a universally-binding determination of beauty on the basis of a priori synthetic reasoning (the subject of his first critique), or on the basis of practical norms that must be voluntarily affirmed by all rational agents (the subject of his second critique). In short, this points to a new faculty of human consciousness that demands its own account, which he will call judgment.
There is a lot that one could object to in this account. For example, one could ask if we are not simply mistaken in thinking that our judgments of beauty have any kind of binding force - this objection certainly occurred to me, along with many others.
But I came to conclude in my reading of this work that its value lies not on the level of detail or minutia. When one steps back and brings his larger purpose into view, the power of his argument and analysis becomes clear.
In this case, what Kant is pointing to is that there are some judgments that we perceive to be stronger than mere expressions of opinion, but which cannot be deduced in the same way that we can derive geometry, for example, from various regularities in how all conscious beings perceive space and time.
Ultimately, I believe what he is intuiting is an early prototype of systems thinking, and this is only the first point in this book where I would be powerfully reminded of complexity theory and self-organization. More on that later.
For now, suffice to say that I believe Kant is absolutely right in saying there are kinds of judgments which are not merely subjective, but are intersubjective. In some deep sense, they are deliberations that emerge through the interaction of many individual subjects, and they are not reducible to the sum of individual determinations of taste, just as the movements of a flock of starlings only emerge from the whole acting in conscious, coordinated motion with one another.
And I would also agree that aesthetic judgments are on this order. I would submit that there are expressions of taste that are so misguided as to verge on being factually wrong - if someone argues, for example, that the "Twilight" novels are better-written than Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," saying "I disagree with that opinion," does not really encompass the scope of my disagreement.
And I agree with Kant that the basis for that determination ultimately lies in the fact that judgments of taste are not altogether individual, but are made in coordinated movement with the social groups in which we are embedded, and in that sense are emergent, and transpersonal. In a key passage, Kant argues that one basis for an intersubjective character in aesthetic judgments lies in the fact that we are all humans with similar cognitive and perceptual faculties, and that it is a fundamental law of intelligibility that we assume other conscious agents are basically like us. I absolutely agree - there would be no possibility of understanding speech if we could not assume that when someone says "I want a cookie," we know exactly what they mean without further elaboration.
In a move that cements this work as one of inspired genius, Kant then applies his analysis of human judgment to the domain of teleology, arguing that our determinations that certain things are "for" some purpose is a judgment of the same faculty - an intersubjective judgment that is not merely our personal opinion. Teleological judgments operate in the same weird gray area as aesthetic judgments - even more so. On the one hand, we cannot establish on the basis of pure reason that teeth, regarded as mere objects of experience, are "for" biting and chewing, nor can we be satisfied to say that the determination that they are for biting and chewing is merely our opinion. Something else is going on here.
This is where Kant's book got really exciting for me, and where I believe his work most anticipates systems theory. His analysis of things as functional wholes finds that objects of experience must be perceived as organic totalities in order to be perceived as purposive, and this strongly relates to how, for example, the biologist Stuart Kauffman explains self-organization as a driver of evolution. The point that Kauffman and many others make is that individual organisms do not merely evolve as individuals, their populations evolve as well, because selective pressures operate at multiple levels of analysis. The objects of nature that we regard as purposive do show qualities of emergence - that is, behaviors that are irreducible to the sum of the individual acts of their component parts - and this phenomenon has been well described by many branches of science in the last fifty years. See, for example, Ilya Prigogine's work on complexity.
Kant associates our judgment of purposiveness with our sense that many objects of nature and many natural systems appear to us to function as if by design. This leads him to something like a theory of intelligent design, but to his enormous credit, he carefully maintains that we cannot take the appearance of design by intelligence as proof for such an origin, and admits that there may be physical processes at work that can account for purposiveness in nature that are simply unknown to the sciences of his day.
There are - specifically, the sciences of self-organization and selective adaptation can account empirically and mathematically for many of the phenomena that he is quite right to be baffled by. In the absence of an explanatory mechanism for how the coordinated evolution of complex structures can occur without direction, it is in fact quite rational to ask how on earth a cat could have an eye that sees, if natural systems merely unfold mechanically, driven by the law of entropy. There were quite rational grounds for arguing for the existence of God prior to the development of better explanatory systems to account for purposiveness in natural systems.
Kant concludes the critique with a long "appendix" on theology which I found completely without value, and one of the most boring things I've encountered in his entire corpus.
Most people will probably have heard of this book principally for its discussion of the sublime, which you may notice I have not mentioned yet. It is an interesting argument that would have some special relevance for the Romantics in particular, but compared to what I regard as the primary value of this work, I found it relatively unimportant.
For people generally interested in aesthetics or the roots of Romanticism, I would not recommend this book. If you are not committed to Kant's larger project, then you will surely be repelled by this work. Even for someone steeped in philosophy, it is not easy reading.
For those who are interested in Kant's philosophy per se, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is critical to understanding his complete system, and I found it far more interesting and powerful than his much-better-known writings on moral philosophy. To such readers, I would advise you to be sure you read the other two critiques first - they form a continuous and sequential argument.
In his previous critiques, Kant has analyzed the true (what can we know with certainty?) and the good (what ought I to do?), thereby addressing two members of Plato's holy trinity of good, the true, and the beautiful. In the third critique, Kant turns his attention to beauty, and in his analysis of aesthetics, he discerns a curious characteristic regarding the manner in which humans perceive and articulate aesthetic judgments: they regard their determinations of beauty as not merely expressions of personal taste, but as somehow binding for all people. In his reading, we do not regard a sunset as merely beautiful "for us," but prereflexively believe that anyone who sees a sunset must take it to be beautiful.
In analyzing how it is that we posit aesthetic judgments as somehow more than merely subjective expressions of taste, Kant finds that there is no basis for an a priori determination of beauty through either reason or the understanding. That is to say, we cannot posit a universally-binding determination of beauty on the basis of a priori synthetic reasoning (the subject of his first critique), or on the basis of practical norms that must be voluntarily affirmed by all rational agents (the subject of his second critique). In short, this points to a new faculty of human consciousness that demands its own account, which he will call judgment.
There is a lot that one could object to in this account. For example, one could ask if we are not simply mistaken in thinking that our judgments of beauty have any kind of binding force - this objection certainly occurred to me, along with many others.
But I came to conclude in my reading of this work that its value lies not on the level of detail or minutia. When one steps back and brings his larger purpose into view, the power of his argument and analysis becomes clear.
In this case, what Kant is pointing to is that there are some judgments that we perceive to be stronger than mere expressions of opinion, but which cannot be deduced in the same way that we can derive geometry, for example, from various regularities in how all conscious beings perceive space and time.
Ultimately, I believe what he is intuiting is an early prototype of systems thinking, and this is only the first point in this book where I would be powerfully reminded of complexity theory and self-organization. More on that later.
For now, suffice to say that I believe Kant is absolutely right in saying there are kinds of judgments which are not merely subjective, but are intersubjective. In some deep sense, they are deliberations that emerge through the interaction of many individual subjects, and they are not reducible to the sum of individual determinations of taste, just as the movements of a flock of starlings only emerge from the whole acting in conscious, coordinated motion with one another.
And I would also agree that aesthetic judgments are on this order. I would submit that there are expressions of taste that are so misguided as to verge on being factually wrong - if someone argues, for example, that the "Twilight" novels are better-written than Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," saying "I disagree with that opinion," does not really encompass the scope of my disagreement.
And I agree with Kant that the basis for that determination ultimately lies in the fact that judgments of taste are not altogether individual, but are made in coordinated movement with the social groups in which we are embedded, and in that sense are emergent, and transpersonal. In a key passage, Kant argues that one basis for an intersubjective character in aesthetic judgments lies in the fact that we are all humans with similar cognitive and perceptual faculties, and that it is a fundamental law of intelligibility that we assume other conscious agents are basically like us. I absolutely agree - there would be no possibility of understanding speech if we could not assume that when someone says "I want a cookie," we know exactly what they mean without further elaboration.
In a move that cements this work as one of inspired genius, Kant then applies his analysis of human judgment to the domain of teleology, arguing that our determinations that certain things are "for" some purpose is a judgment of the same faculty - an intersubjective judgment that is not merely our personal opinion. Teleological judgments operate in the same weird gray area as aesthetic judgments - even more so. On the one hand, we cannot establish on the basis of pure reason that teeth, regarded as mere objects of experience, are "for" biting and chewing, nor can we be satisfied to say that the determination that they are for biting and chewing is merely our opinion. Something else is going on here.
This is where Kant's book got really exciting for me, and where I believe his work most anticipates systems theory. His analysis of things as functional wholes finds that objects of experience must be perceived as organic totalities in order to be perceived as purposive, and this strongly relates to how, for example, the biologist Stuart Kauffman explains self-organization as a driver of evolution. The point that Kauffman and many others make is that individual organisms do not merely evolve as individuals, their populations evolve as well, because selective pressures operate at multiple levels of analysis. The objects of nature that we regard as purposive do show qualities of emergence - that is, behaviors that are irreducible to the sum of the individual acts of their component parts - and this phenomenon has been well described by many branches of science in the last fifty years. See, for example, Ilya Prigogine's work on complexity.
Kant associates our judgment of purposiveness with our sense that many objects of nature and many natural systems appear to us to function as if by design. This leads him to something like a theory of intelligent design, but to his enormous credit, he carefully maintains that we cannot take the appearance of design by intelligence as proof for such an origin, and admits that there may be physical processes at work that can account for purposiveness in nature that are simply unknown to the sciences of his day.
There are - specifically, the sciences of self-organization and selective adaptation can account empirically and mathematically for many of the phenomena that he is quite right to be baffled by. In the absence of an explanatory mechanism for how the coordinated evolution of complex structures can occur without direction, it is in fact quite rational to ask how on earth a cat could have an eye that sees, if natural systems merely unfold mechanically, driven by the law of entropy. There were quite rational grounds for arguing for the existence of God prior to the development of better explanatory systems to account for purposiveness in natural systems.
Kant concludes the critique with a long "appendix" on theology which I found completely without value, and one of the most boring things I've encountered in his entire corpus.
Most people will probably have heard of this book principally for its discussion of the sublime, which you may notice I have not mentioned yet. It is an interesting argument that would have some special relevance for the Romantics in particular, but compared to what I regard as the primary value of this work, I found it relatively unimportant.
For people generally interested in aesthetics or the roots of Romanticism, I would not recommend this book. If you are not committed to Kant's larger project, then you will surely be repelled by this work. Even for someone steeped in philosophy, it is not easy reading.
For those who are interested in Kant's philosophy per se, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is critical to understanding his complete system, and I found it far more interesting and powerful than his much-better-known writings on moral philosophy. To such readers, I would advise you to be sure you read the other two critiques first - they form a continuous and sequential argument.
January 29, 2023
This book is the make it or break it for Kant. It will either tie everything together in a regulative bliss, or, as is evidenced by history, set the demand that reason progresses and solves its dualisms for Hegel. He almost did it.
The possibility of systematization of the philosophy of history is of critical importance to Kant due to the interstitial position it occupies for him between his theoretical and practical philosophy. Harmonizing these two domains works towards bridging what Kant terms the ‘chasm that separates the supersensible from the appearances’ , this is deemed the central project of his Crit J and as such is the place where the theoretical aspects of his philosophy of history are treated most extensively. Due to the scope of areas addressed by Kant’s philosophy of history however, a viable interpretation of how Kant conceives man’s ultimate vocation must be reconstructed from works across the entirety of his oeuvre . Thus the pragmatic anthropology plays a key role in providing a critical foundation for his philosophy of history in both practical and theoretical respects, demonstrating its possibility within the critical terms of Kant’s philosophical architectonic. To demonstrate the tenability of Kant’s philosophy of history the tensions which arise between his a-priori teleological claims concerning the ‘purposivity of history for rational beings, and his a-posteriori empirical studies in ‘practical anthropology’ which investigate natural conditions for human beings, must be mediated. This mediation as practical academic endeavour in Kant’s own work will be shown to find its highest conceptual expression in what he posits as the aim of the practical anthropology, the provision of an answer to the question ‘what is man?’ .
This book demonstrates how Kant’s pragmatic anthropology clarifies man’s relation to the intellectus archetypus in its status as an embodied discursive rational agent that has a vocation in history. First the anthropology demonstrates the epistemic status of a distinctively moral anthropology by alternating between physiological and practical perspectives. Then Kant utilizes this in providing an anthropology of our natural cognition in developing his ‘doctrine of prudence’. It is our continued attempt to effectively answer the question ‘what is man?’ throughout history that simultaneously defines what man is and explains the position of Kant’s philosophy of history in his architectonic.
2:0 Necessity of a Philosophy of History & Criticism
This section will outline why there is a case to be made against Kant’s ability to rationally justify the place of his philosophy of history as a supplement to his broader philosophical system. Due to its difficult position in his system but equal importance in demonstrating the coherence of it, Kant’s philosophy of history has been a popular point of departure for criticism of his philosophy. These criticisms, both contemporary and prominent in Kant’s own time, have often hinged on claims regarding the inability of the dualism in Kant’s system to account for the proper place of the free subject in nature. Historically, the overcoming of the impractical elements of this dualism by positing a new unity of reason based on a practical aesthetic or metaphysically holistic synthesis of these domains, were quickly found in Schiller and Herder respectively. The interest of these post-Kantian philosophers lay in the revision of Kant’s philosophy of history to provide satisfactory answers to prominent enlightenment debates regarding both our optimism towards the possibility of progress, and the metaphysic that motivated this progress. Although the assessment of post-Kantian philosophical systems lies outside the scope of this investigation, due to their internal development of Kant’s transcendental idealism, the criticisms levied by their authors remain informative in their treatment of Kant on his own terms. It is however the possibility of coherently reconstructing, and not radically revising his philosophy that is of interest here, and which will give testament to the tenability of his system as a whole.
Two contemporary reconstructions that deliver a negative verdict of Kant’s philosophy are thus considered here, that of Fackenheim and Yovel. The conclusions drawn from these two commentaries are each representative of one of the two broad categories the reception of Kant’s philosophy of history can be divided into. The first pertains the necessity of seeing the philosophy of history as extraneous to Kant’s system, this sees the exhaustive division between the realms of freedom and necessity in Kant’s system as proving fundamentally unbridgeable. Fackenheim argues along these lines in his 1996 paper Kant’s Concept of History, commenting: ‘few treat it seriously, for it seems unconnected, and indeed incompatible with the main body of his thought’ . The second, more radical approach present in the work of Yovel’s Kant and the Philosophy of History (1989) sees the tension between the demands of rationality and the cunning of nature in history as symptomatic of the dualisms pervasive in Kant’s system. He points here to the internal difficulties in Kants architectonic that disallow the possibility of a mediation between man’s empirical and rational history, a mediation that is necessary for a coherent philosophy of history. In simultaneously demonstrating the necessity and untenability of such a mediation for Kant, Yovel claims this leads to a ‘historical antimony’ within his system that cannot be resolved, and thus proves fatal.
Understanding both the ‘historical antimony’ that motivates Yovel’s critique and the dualisms that Fackenheim references, demands an understanding of the antimonies of reason Kant himself develops across his first two Critiques. To demotivate their claims, one of the central reasons for Kants development of his philosophy of history which finds its metaphysical motivation as a resolution of the antimony of practical reason, will thus first be outlined. He gives his most developed account of this in the sections §§82-83 contained in the final work of his critical writings, the Critique of the Power of Judgement; these crucial passages will be chronologically developed to outline his position (see Section 2.1-2.3). This will demonstrate how Kant argues for the capacity of the individual to act as a link which unifies the domains of freedom and nature, guided ultimately by a regulative ideal through the practical imperatives of the will that hold the highest good as their transcendent object. The criticisms given by Yovel and Fackenheim of Kant’s argument for this will then ultimately only serve to highlight the points in Kant’s theory where it is best supplemented by his practical anthropology.
2:1 End of Nature & Moral Teleology, Crit J §82 - Systematicity
“For the human being, […] he is the ultimate end of the creation here on earth, because he is the only being on earth who forms a concept of ends for himself and who by means of his reason can make a system of ends out of an aggregate of purposively formed things.”
This passage demonstrates a primary goal of Kant’s philosophy of history which is the ability to demonstrate that there is the possibility of a concrete synthesis ‘here on earth’ between our own ends and those we perceive of other ‘purposively formed things’. There is thus a rational ordering of final causes found in nature that develops towards a single end, an end which is ultimately subordinated to human reason or our own ‘concept’ of the highest good. Kant thereby makes reason the cornerstone of his architectonic, and as reason demands systematicity in its ordering of the world, an equal systematicity must be found in Kant’s system. It is the role of the philosophy of history to facilitate that systematicity in demonstrating our ability not only to theoretically cognize the highest good, but also practically will its material existence. As Kant maintains in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason the ‘final end of creation’ is the ‘kingdom of God on earth’ , thereby signifying that the transcendent ideal should be realised in empirical reality.
The synthesis referenced in this passage is thus a step Kant takes towards practical systematicity in drawing a crucial analogy between two conceptions of the supersensible which have been developed in the Crit J, but not yet interrelated. These two conceptions result as the resolutions of distinct antimonies, one developed in the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgement and the other in the Dialectic of Teleological Judgement. These can be roughly distinguished between referring to our ‘inner-life’ in the case of the former, where the supersensible is referenced as the ‘substrate of humanity’ . And the latter as referring to our ability to theorize about the ‘outer’ world, in effect representing the supersensible that coheres mechanistic and teleological accounts of nature. Kant does maintain the self-sufficiency and autonomous validity of theoretical and practical reason in their respective domains of nature and freedom here; having carefully developed their workings in the first and second Critique. However, in developing a distinctly moral teleology he unifies their domains (and thus their supersensible substratum ) under what he here terms an ‘ultimate end’, thereby demonstrating the moral law of freedom to subsume the causal laws of nature. Progress in history is thus simultaneously progress in our outer and inner freedom, each requiring different things, but reciprocals in building towards the same end; this end is the highest good, or otherwise the regulative ideal of history.
2.2 The Highest Good as Regulative Ideal & Moral Theology, Crit J, §83 – Universalisation
“Now if that which is to be promoted as an end through the human being’s connection to nature is to be found within the human being himself, […] The first end of nature would be the happiness, the second the culture of the human being.”
Kant here outlines the two composite elements that constitute the highest good, these are merited happiness and our predisposition to virtue that can be universalised when embodied in human culture. As demonstrated in the previous section, Kant demands that the highest good is practically possible and not directed towards ‘empty imaginary ends’ ; the inclusion of the highest good as the ‘content’ of the will seems to confirm this, but it equally raises a paradox that Kant treats in the Dialectic of the Crit PrR (5:115). The paradox, or as it arises for Kant, the antimony, relates to the inherently dual nature of the moral will; on one hand it’s a-priori formal structure serves as an absolute condition of autonomy and is sufficient for determining ‘the good’, and on the other it demands a ‘total object’ upon which it acts, and therefore must consider empirical conditions for the pursuit of happiness. The relevance of a coherent resolution to both demands is clear for the philosophy of history; if an agent’s action is only determined by a formal law he becomes a passive agent of history merely reacting to its tides in desperate attempt at purity in freedom, and if it is merely an a-posteriori empirical affair he remains unfree and equally subject to natural law. The claims of universal progress further complicate the picture, for the object of the will should not only satisfy the aspect of our inherent ‘radical evil’ that demands immediate and individual happiness, but also include the universal consideration for the human ‘species’ in the form of culture. This corroborates Loudens claim that a full understanding of Kant’s moral philosophy demands recognition of an ‘impure ethics’ that equally considers empirical matters.
The problem of establishing a universal domain of right in history from the limited position of the individual, as it is treated extensively in Kant’s political essays , thus finds its explanatory philosophical counterpart in Kant’s critical system through his explication of the structure of the will . This structure can be developed from the synthetic relation between the two components of the highest good, happiness and virtue, these develop its two stages, the ‘unconditioned’ and the ‘whole’ . As developed in the Analytic of the Crit PrR virtue or the ‘good will’ is the absolute principle of the will and governs the universal principle of its legislation for rational beings; due to its determination in an a-priori fashion, it constitutes the ‘unconditioned’ aspect of the will. It is however our condition as rational finite beings that demands ‘happiness’ as the necessary consequent of virtue, and this is problematic as the two concepts although heterogenous in their supposed end ‘greatly restrict and infringe upon each other’ . It is the antimony of practical reason that arises here that motivates Kant to transcendentally deduce that the two concepts are synthetically related, thereby allowing him to raise the highest good to an unconditioned end. This means that the determination of the will maintains its universal validity and commitment to autonomy, this because its efficient cause is not natural causality but instead a relation to the supersensible. In the terms of Kant’s philosophy of history this means the individual agent’s morality is not determined by his immediate empirical conditions, or otherwise the content of the will is not contingent but necessary, and functions not as the ground of action but instead as its regulative ideal.
This last aspect relates to the moral theology introduced in the dialectic of practical reason, this demands the practical postulation of both the existence of God and our immortality. The dictum of the ‘primacy of practical reason’ which motivates it gives a rationally necessary objective reality to the Ideas of freedom, God, and the soul when we cognize an object theoretically by means of the understanding. It thereby reconceives the highest good as an object of hope, a hope that in following the moral law when acting upon the object of our will the highest good as an end can be attained . It hereby fulfils a basic maxim of the Kantian system which is that ought (sollen) is meaningless without can (können), Kant hereby confirms the possibility of the attainment of an ethical community, albeit in the afterlife. However, the practical necessity of these Ideas does not yet qualify them as teleologically meaningful, in making a transcendent concept of God immanent to practical reason Kant has not yet proved its reality. The analogies thus drawn between our theoretical and practical faculties, or otherwise our separate cognition of freedom and nature, must share a systematic teleological interest embodied in reason itself.
2.3 Systematic Unity of Reason, Crit J, General Remark on the Teleology - Necessity
‘Theology also leads immediately to religion, i.e., to the recognition of our duties as divine commands, since the cognition of our duty and the final end which is therein imposed upon us by reason is what could first produce the determinate concept of God, […] by means of a soundproof rather than an arbitrary interpolation’
It is the ‘soundproof’ rather than an ‘arbitrary interpolation’ of the systematic relation of the ends of reason in its respective domains of freedom and nature that is provided by the Crit J in the form of a theological proof that combines Kant’s moral theology and moral teleology outlined in sections 2.1 and 2.2. The challenge of a conflict between our desire for happiness and the dutiful fulfilment of acts in accordance with the highest good for Kant’s philosophy of history was resolved in the Crit PrR by the practical postulation of the existence of God. As Yovel accuses however, this limits Kant’s explication of the purposive development of the inner and outer domains of reason to a mere ‘subjective encouragement’ , reason therefore lacks a systematic unity remaining opposed to itself through its dualism. With the principle of purposivity as it is introduced by the faculty of judgement in the Crit J Kant reconfigures the idea of duties as motivated by ‘divine possibility’ to duties as ‘divine commands’. Reason itself should be conceived here as making this ‘command’, not merely playing a regulative role but instead manifesting its purposivity in nature according to its own ends.
Kant’s philosophy of history is hereby supplied with a supportive ground that is a logical consequence of what he developed in the Analytic of Teleological Judgement; it is now however applied to reason itself. If theoretical reason must necessarily cognize the parts of its objects as having an internal purposivity, then when reflecting on itself as an object whilst setting its own ends, the respective parts of the faculty of reason, namely practical and theoretical, must also necessarily be unified in their ends.
The possibility of systematization of the philosophy of history is of critical importance to Kant due to the interstitial position it occupies for him between his theoretical and practical philosophy. Harmonizing these two domains works towards bridging what Kant terms the ‘chasm that separates the supersensible from the appearances’ , this is deemed the central project of his Crit J and as such is the place where the theoretical aspects of his philosophy of history are treated most extensively. Due to the scope of areas addressed by Kant’s philosophy of history however, a viable interpretation of how Kant conceives man’s ultimate vocation must be reconstructed from works across the entirety of his oeuvre . Thus the pragmatic anthropology plays a key role in providing a critical foundation for his philosophy of history in both practical and theoretical respects, demonstrating its possibility within the critical terms of Kant’s philosophical architectonic. To demonstrate the tenability of Kant’s philosophy of history the tensions which arise between his a-priori teleological claims concerning the ‘purposivity of history for rational beings, and his a-posteriori empirical studies in ‘practical anthropology’ which investigate natural conditions for human beings, must be mediated. This mediation as practical academic endeavour in Kant’s own work will be shown to find its highest conceptual expression in what he posits as the aim of the practical anthropology, the provision of an answer to the question ‘what is man?’ .
This book demonstrates how Kant’s pragmatic anthropology clarifies man’s relation to the intellectus archetypus in its status as an embodied discursive rational agent that has a vocation in history. First the anthropology demonstrates the epistemic status of a distinctively moral anthropology by alternating between physiological and practical perspectives. Then Kant utilizes this in providing an anthropology of our natural cognition in developing his ‘doctrine of prudence’. It is our continued attempt to effectively answer the question ‘what is man?’ throughout history that simultaneously defines what man is and explains the position of Kant’s philosophy of history in his architectonic.
2:0 Necessity of a Philosophy of History & Criticism
This section will outline why there is a case to be made against Kant’s ability to rationally justify the place of his philosophy of history as a supplement to his broader philosophical system. Due to its difficult position in his system but equal importance in demonstrating the coherence of it, Kant’s philosophy of history has been a popular point of departure for criticism of his philosophy. These criticisms, both contemporary and prominent in Kant’s own time, have often hinged on claims regarding the inability of the dualism in Kant’s system to account for the proper place of the free subject in nature. Historically, the overcoming of the impractical elements of this dualism by positing a new unity of reason based on a practical aesthetic or metaphysically holistic synthesis of these domains, were quickly found in Schiller and Herder respectively. The interest of these post-Kantian philosophers lay in the revision of Kant’s philosophy of history to provide satisfactory answers to prominent enlightenment debates regarding both our optimism towards the possibility of progress, and the metaphysic that motivated this progress. Although the assessment of post-Kantian philosophical systems lies outside the scope of this investigation, due to their internal development of Kant’s transcendental idealism, the criticisms levied by their authors remain informative in their treatment of Kant on his own terms. It is however the possibility of coherently reconstructing, and not radically revising his philosophy that is of interest here, and which will give testament to the tenability of his system as a whole.
Two contemporary reconstructions that deliver a negative verdict of Kant’s philosophy are thus considered here, that of Fackenheim and Yovel. The conclusions drawn from these two commentaries are each representative of one of the two broad categories the reception of Kant’s philosophy of history can be divided into. The first pertains the necessity of seeing the philosophy of history as extraneous to Kant’s system, this sees the exhaustive division between the realms of freedom and necessity in Kant’s system as proving fundamentally unbridgeable. Fackenheim argues along these lines in his 1996 paper Kant’s Concept of History, commenting: ‘few treat it seriously, for it seems unconnected, and indeed incompatible with the main body of his thought’ . The second, more radical approach present in the work of Yovel’s Kant and the Philosophy of History (1989) sees the tension between the demands of rationality and the cunning of nature in history as symptomatic of the dualisms pervasive in Kant’s system. He points here to the internal difficulties in Kants architectonic that disallow the possibility of a mediation between man’s empirical and rational history, a mediation that is necessary for a coherent philosophy of history. In simultaneously demonstrating the necessity and untenability of such a mediation for Kant, Yovel claims this leads to a ‘historical antimony’ within his system that cannot be resolved, and thus proves fatal.
Understanding both the ‘historical antimony’ that motivates Yovel’s critique and the dualisms that Fackenheim references, demands an understanding of the antimonies of reason Kant himself develops across his first two Critiques. To demotivate their claims, one of the central reasons for Kants development of his philosophy of history which finds its metaphysical motivation as a resolution of the antimony of practical reason, will thus first be outlined. He gives his most developed account of this in the sections §§82-83 contained in the final work of his critical writings, the Critique of the Power of Judgement; these crucial passages will be chronologically developed to outline his position (see Section 2.1-2.3). This will demonstrate how Kant argues for the capacity of the individual to act as a link which unifies the domains of freedom and nature, guided ultimately by a regulative ideal through the practical imperatives of the will that hold the highest good as their transcendent object. The criticisms given by Yovel and Fackenheim of Kant’s argument for this will then ultimately only serve to highlight the points in Kant’s theory where it is best supplemented by his practical anthropology.
2:1 End of Nature & Moral Teleology, Crit J §82 - Systematicity
“For the human being, […] he is the ultimate end of the creation here on earth, because he is the only being on earth who forms a concept of ends for himself and who by means of his reason can make a system of ends out of an aggregate of purposively formed things.”
This passage demonstrates a primary goal of Kant’s philosophy of history which is the ability to demonstrate that there is the possibility of a concrete synthesis ‘here on earth’ between our own ends and those we perceive of other ‘purposively formed things’. There is thus a rational ordering of final causes found in nature that develops towards a single end, an end which is ultimately subordinated to human reason or our own ‘concept’ of the highest good. Kant thereby makes reason the cornerstone of his architectonic, and as reason demands systematicity in its ordering of the world, an equal systematicity must be found in Kant’s system. It is the role of the philosophy of history to facilitate that systematicity in demonstrating our ability not only to theoretically cognize the highest good, but also practically will its material existence. As Kant maintains in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason the ‘final end of creation’ is the ‘kingdom of God on earth’ , thereby signifying that the transcendent ideal should be realised in empirical reality.
The synthesis referenced in this passage is thus a step Kant takes towards practical systematicity in drawing a crucial analogy between two conceptions of the supersensible which have been developed in the Crit J, but not yet interrelated. These two conceptions result as the resolutions of distinct antimonies, one developed in the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgement and the other in the Dialectic of Teleological Judgement. These can be roughly distinguished between referring to our ‘inner-life’ in the case of the former, where the supersensible is referenced as the ‘substrate of humanity’ . And the latter as referring to our ability to theorize about the ‘outer’ world, in effect representing the supersensible that coheres mechanistic and teleological accounts of nature. Kant does maintain the self-sufficiency and autonomous validity of theoretical and practical reason in their respective domains of nature and freedom here; having carefully developed their workings in the first and second Critique. However, in developing a distinctly moral teleology he unifies their domains (and thus their supersensible substratum ) under what he here terms an ‘ultimate end’, thereby demonstrating the moral law of freedom to subsume the causal laws of nature. Progress in history is thus simultaneously progress in our outer and inner freedom, each requiring different things, but reciprocals in building towards the same end; this end is the highest good, or otherwise the regulative ideal of history.
2.2 The Highest Good as Regulative Ideal & Moral Theology, Crit J, §83 – Universalisation
“Now if that which is to be promoted as an end through the human being’s connection to nature is to be found within the human being himself, […] The first end of nature would be the happiness, the second the culture of the human being.”
Kant here outlines the two composite elements that constitute the highest good, these are merited happiness and our predisposition to virtue that can be universalised when embodied in human culture. As demonstrated in the previous section, Kant demands that the highest good is practically possible and not directed towards ‘empty imaginary ends’ ; the inclusion of the highest good as the ‘content’ of the will seems to confirm this, but it equally raises a paradox that Kant treats in the Dialectic of the Crit PrR (5:115). The paradox, or as it arises for Kant, the antimony, relates to the inherently dual nature of the moral will; on one hand it’s a-priori formal structure serves as an absolute condition of autonomy and is sufficient for determining ‘the good’, and on the other it demands a ‘total object’ upon which it acts, and therefore must consider empirical conditions for the pursuit of happiness. The relevance of a coherent resolution to both demands is clear for the philosophy of history; if an agent’s action is only determined by a formal law he becomes a passive agent of history merely reacting to its tides in desperate attempt at purity in freedom, and if it is merely an a-posteriori empirical affair he remains unfree and equally subject to natural law. The claims of universal progress further complicate the picture, for the object of the will should not only satisfy the aspect of our inherent ‘radical evil’ that demands immediate and individual happiness, but also include the universal consideration for the human ‘species’ in the form of culture. This corroborates Loudens claim that a full understanding of Kant’s moral philosophy demands recognition of an ‘impure ethics’ that equally considers empirical matters.
The problem of establishing a universal domain of right in history from the limited position of the individual, as it is treated extensively in Kant’s political essays , thus finds its explanatory philosophical counterpart in Kant’s critical system through his explication of the structure of the will . This structure can be developed from the synthetic relation between the two components of the highest good, happiness and virtue, these develop its two stages, the ‘unconditioned’ and the ‘whole’ . As developed in the Analytic of the Crit PrR virtue or the ‘good will’ is the absolute principle of the will and governs the universal principle of its legislation for rational beings; due to its determination in an a-priori fashion, it constitutes the ‘unconditioned’ aspect of the will. It is however our condition as rational finite beings that demands ‘happiness’ as the necessary consequent of virtue, and this is problematic as the two concepts although heterogenous in their supposed end ‘greatly restrict and infringe upon each other’ . It is the antimony of practical reason that arises here that motivates Kant to transcendentally deduce that the two concepts are synthetically related, thereby allowing him to raise the highest good to an unconditioned end. This means that the determination of the will maintains its universal validity and commitment to autonomy, this because its efficient cause is not natural causality but instead a relation to the supersensible. In the terms of Kant’s philosophy of history this means the individual agent’s morality is not determined by his immediate empirical conditions, or otherwise the content of the will is not contingent but necessary, and functions not as the ground of action but instead as its regulative ideal.
This last aspect relates to the moral theology introduced in the dialectic of practical reason, this demands the practical postulation of both the existence of God and our immortality. The dictum of the ‘primacy of practical reason’ which motivates it gives a rationally necessary objective reality to the Ideas of freedom, God, and the soul when we cognize an object theoretically by means of the understanding. It thereby reconceives the highest good as an object of hope, a hope that in following the moral law when acting upon the object of our will the highest good as an end can be attained . It hereby fulfils a basic maxim of the Kantian system which is that ought (sollen) is meaningless without can (können), Kant hereby confirms the possibility of the attainment of an ethical community, albeit in the afterlife. However, the practical necessity of these Ideas does not yet qualify them as teleologically meaningful, in making a transcendent concept of God immanent to practical reason Kant has not yet proved its reality. The analogies thus drawn between our theoretical and practical faculties, or otherwise our separate cognition of freedom and nature, must share a systematic teleological interest embodied in reason itself.
2.3 Systematic Unity of Reason, Crit J, General Remark on the Teleology - Necessity
‘Theology also leads immediately to religion, i.e., to the recognition of our duties as divine commands, since the cognition of our duty and the final end which is therein imposed upon us by reason is what could first produce the determinate concept of God, […] by means of a soundproof rather than an arbitrary interpolation’
It is the ‘soundproof’ rather than an ‘arbitrary interpolation’ of the systematic relation of the ends of reason in its respective domains of freedom and nature that is provided by the Crit J in the form of a theological proof that combines Kant’s moral theology and moral teleology outlined in sections 2.1 and 2.2. The challenge of a conflict between our desire for happiness and the dutiful fulfilment of acts in accordance with the highest good for Kant’s philosophy of history was resolved in the Crit PrR by the practical postulation of the existence of God. As Yovel accuses however, this limits Kant’s explication of the purposive development of the inner and outer domains of reason to a mere ‘subjective encouragement’ , reason therefore lacks a systematic unity remaining opposed to itself through its dualism. With the principle of purposivity as it is introduced by the faculty of judgement in the Crit J Kant reconfigures the idea of duties as motivated by ‘divine possibility’ to duties as ‘divine commands’. Reason itself should be conceived here as making this ‘command’, not merely playing a regulative role but instead manifesting its purposivity in nature according to its own ends.
Kant’s philosophy of history is hereby supplied with a supportive ground that is a logical consequence of what he developed in the Analytic of Teleological Judgement; it is now however applied to reason itself. If theoretical reason must necessarily cognize the parts of its objects as having an internal purposivity, then when reflecting on itself as an object whilst setting its own ends, the respective parts of the faculty of reason, namely practical and theoretical, must also necessarily be unified in their ends.
November 24, 2015
This is a brilliant work, although it is somewhat mis-titled. Kant spends more time with teleology than with judgement, although the two are related. Here he clears the ground for teleological thinking as a whole. In a direct way, Kant is speaking of ideology through teleology as a point of caption for a logical system. He clearly separates this from the suprasensible point of caption and yet with the sublime Kant locates the Other as being the source of this teleological purpose. He closes the immanent phenomenological 'world' through the pragmatic teleological point to denote purpose from a certain view. And then he reproduces this structure with the suprasensible through the 'single design' of the Other.
It is of course, a Lacanian (Zizek) notice that the Other is always defined as a reflective projection of the subject, so that the subject can be absorbed into a greater magnitude of purposefulness.
One wonders what Kant would have been able to do had he been able to think outside the parameters of God. God is necessary to his time, and he had to include God somehow. Kant's insistence that the deployment of individual morality is a sign of a larger design (God) is interesting. We can find concordance with this concept through Hegel, Heidigger and others who would speak of an absolute meaningfulness (knowledge and purpose) founded on the position of an Other.
While I agree heartily with Kant's denotation of the limitations of reason without desire, without pragmatic organization, it seems that he can't help but invert that structure for its own use in order to violate the terms by which he notes as being transcendental illusions. I would speculate that this is a necessary affect of trying to find meaning, in that he has to provide a singular domain for us all to collectively interact otherwise he would risk losing the very thing he seeks to capture, that of a role of reason and thought as the highest forms of concordance and social stability.
Nietzsche would suggest that this is part of the problem of philosophers, that they seek to be teachers and thus are left with a latent content that enables stability of identity, forcing incoherencies to occur in what is otherwise unthinkably incoherent/inconsistent. I agree. Kant's attempt is valiant here but ultimately centered around human subjectivity, undeniably so, because it must be so presented for him to advance as he did.
With this last critique, Kant presents in many ways, the seed for all modern inconsistency and reason with Godel, Turing and Russell. He presents the archetype of ideological state appratuses that Althusser and Foucault would present as logically singular points of consideration founded on nothing but its own purposefulness and in this manner, we still live in Kants shadow as he outlined the very structures and their limitations so that others later on could verify the same problems in countless different ways.
We shall not leave Kant's shadow if we do not avoid the distinctions of method first presented by Descartes as being the nature of rational consistency -- Kant does extend this rationality by demonstrating how sublime marks can organize what would seem like an unorganizable system of consistency. For this reason, Kant's Critiques are very well worth the read.
It is of course, a Lacanian (Zizek) notice that the Other is always defined as a reflective projection of the subject, so that the subject can be absorbed into a greater magnitude of purposefulness.
One wonders what Kant would have been able to do had he been able to think outside the parameters of God. God is necessary to his time, and he had to include God somehow. Kant's insistence that the deployment of individual morality is a sign of a larger design (God) is interesting. We can find concordance with this concept through Hegel, Heidigger and others who would speak of an absolute meaningfulness (knowledge and purpose) founded on the position of an Other.
While I agree heartily with Kant's denotation of the limitations of reason without desire, without pragmatic organization, it seems that he can't help but invert that structure for its own use in order to violate the terms by which he notes as being transcendental illusions. I would speculate that this is a necessary affect of trying to find meaning, in that he has to provide a singular domain for us all to collectively interact otherwise he would risk losing the very thing he seeks to capture, that of a role of reason and thought as the highest forms of concordance and social stability.
Nietzsche would suggest that this is part of the problem of philosophers, that they seek to be teachers and thus are left with a latent content that enables stability of identity, forcing incoherencies to occur in what is otherwise unthinkably incoherent/inconsistent. I agree. Kant's attempt is valiant here but ultimately centered around human subjectivity, undeniably so, because it must be so presented for him to advance as he did.
With this last critique, Kant presents in many ways, the seed for all modern inconsistency and reason with Godel, Turing and Russell. He presents the archetype of ideological state appratuses that Althusser and Foucault would present as logically singular points of consideration founded on nothing but its own purposefulness and in this manner, we still live in Kants shadow as he outlined the very structures and their limitations so that others later on could verify the same problems in countless different ways.
We shall not leave Kant's shadow if we do not avoid the distinctions of method first presented by Descartes as being the nature of rational consistency -- Kant does extend this rationality by demonstrating how sublime marks can organize what would seem like an unorganizable system of consistency. For this reason, Kant's Critiques are very well worth the read.
June 5, 2021
Even for Kant, this book stays in the shadow of the other two critiques – as the aesthetic judgments are less important when compared with the rational or practical/moral judgments. However, I found quite interesting his discussions of beautiful vs. sublime and especially that of teleological vs. mechanical determinism. I happened to read this book at the same time as Nagel's “Mind and Cosmos” and I was surprised to realize how relevant Kant and his teleological insights are to the contemporary sciences - especially to biology.
February 17, 2016
I don't have the time to read ALL of this. Got through half (study related). Fucking awesome, even though the process initially was like hitting your head repeatedly with a brick. The bloke has neither poetry nor humour. He does, however, have very rich ideas, and it's worth reading because of that
October 11, 2017
In Kritik der Reinen Vernunft (1781), Immanuel Kant set out to reconcile rationalism and empiricism in a grand system which we call Transcendental Idealism: there exist two worlds - the phenomenal and the noumenal - and we can only have true knowledge of the noumenal world; the phenomenal world is just an imperfect representation, as constituted by our mental categories, of the world as it is in itself. We should employ Pure Reason to gather synthetic knowledge a priori about the noumenal world.
In the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft (1788), Kant applied this method of Pure Reason to gather synthetic knowledge a priori about the Moral Law. This led him to the discovery of the Categorical Imperative, which it is our duty to follow - even if it doesn't lead to happiness in the phenomenal world, we will be rewarded by God in the noumenal world. In finding all this, Kant was able to positively prove the existence of our immortal soul, our freedom and God as noumena.
So Kant has dealt with epistemology and ethics and offered us a new world model. In the one world - the phenomenal - we are fully determined by natural causes, in the other world - the noumenal - we are fully free to will that which leads to the highest good (by doing our duty with regards to the categorical imperative). So it seems that we, as thinking intelligences, are both a phenomenon and noumenon and that in us the noumenal world has a causal mechanism by which to enact effects in the phenomenal world. We seem to be portals to both world.
In the third Kritik, the Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), Kant tries to create a bridge between both worlds. This last part of the trilogy consists of two parts, dealing respectively with Aesthetical Judgements and the Purposiviness of Nature.
In the first part, Kant argues that Aesthetical Judgments - which deal with our sensual perception of the phenomenal world, according to our notions of time and space and the 12 categories - are reflective. With reflective, he means that we observe particular instances and try to generalize from these to universal statements. (A person with the right background knowledge sees in this the scientific method of induction by which we abstract mathematical equations as explanations from a collection of particular instances; this is the problem that led David Hume to radical scepticism and Immanuel Kant to his Transcendental Idealism). This is the only knowledge we can have about our world, gained a posteriori, and therefore an imperfect representation of the world as it is in itself.
For Kant, there are only four types of reflective (aesthetical) judgments: (1) the agreeable, (2) the good, (3) the beautiful, and (4) the sublime. He is able to trace these four types of reflective judgments to his original table of judgments (as published in the first Kritik) of quantity, quality, relation and modality. In essence, Kant tries to explain how we judge on agreeableness, goodness, beauty and sublime - these are all phenomena and in that sense aesthetical and subjective.
Now, what does Kant tell us about these four types of judgments?
(1) Judgments on the agreeable are subjective and sensual. I like the smell of this flower, I like the tast of this wine, I like the view of this landscape. These are 'just' personal remarks.
(2) Judgments on the good are objective and ethical. I fulfil my duty towards the Moral Law or not (as outlined in the second Kritik), and I observe that others do this too or not.
(3) Judgments on the beautiful are related to the purposiveness of objects. Kant claims that we look for beauty in objects that seem to have a certain functionality or purpose, but are in reality fuctionless or purposeless. In others words: the form of the object pleases our mind and triggers our faculties of imagination and cognition.
(4) The last type of judgments deal with the sublime. According to Kant, these judgments have their origin in objects that (seem) to lay beyond our mental capacity. We cannot comprehend these objects and this triggers some sort of fear in us, which leaves us in awe of the object.
So much for the types of aesthetical judgments that we make about the phenomenal world around us. In the second part of this book, Kant proceeds to another - though at some points slightly relating - subject: teleology.
According to Kant, we perceive a purposiveness in nature. We look at bees, flowers and horses and see functionality. It looks as if these objects are designed for a specific purpose. This is called teleology (from the greek word 'telos' meaning goal): when looking at nature, we abstract the appearant design of these objects and form teleological judgments.
Kant explains that we see nature as having an objective purposiveness (compared to the subjective purposiveness in objects that we perceive as beauty), but this objective purposiveness is and remains our reflective aesthetical judgment. This, in other words, means that we judge as if (!) nature is teleoligcally constituted - our aesthetic judgments constitute a purposive nature around us, but this is and remains our ouw subjective judgment. We cannot know if nature has an objective purpose as a thing in itself, since this is not attainable for us, as Kant explained in the first Kritik.
Kant even claims that man is justified to see nature as a grand teleological system, in the sense that nothing exists without a purpose and everything has to be expected to be the most suitable design for that particular purpose. But even though this seems to sound a lot like William Paley (who would later use the appearant teleology of nature as a proof for the existence of God, as a master watchmaker), Kant has to add the caveat that this is not real objective teleology. He has to do this, because in the first Kritik he explained that ALL of our aesthetical judgments are imperfect representations of the world as it is in itself. Therefore, it is logically impossible for us to know if nature truly is teleological. So this is a sort of bridge between the first and the third Kritik.
A second sort of bridge, this time between the second and third Kritik, involves Kant's claim that there is - besides natural purposiviness - also ethical purposiveness. In the second Kritik, Kant told us to see man as an object in itself (as a noumena) and that we, as man, have freedom (also a noumena). But this freedom deals with us acting accordingly in the phenomenal world, in nature. So we apply causality and teleology in the natural world by using our freedom.
To summarize all of the above, Kant explains in the third Kritik, that we continually aesthetically judge about the world around us. We use our imperfect apparatus of categories, space and time, to constitute the phenomenal world around us. We judge as if nature is teleological, has a purpose, but this is and remains a subjective judgment (i.e. we will never know if nature has a purpose). We also judge ourselves to be teleological, in the sense that - in morality - we apply our own will to nature and to our fellow human beings. Kant seems to say that man is the object, the purpose of nature.
While I could appreciate the first two Kritiks, this third one confuses me. Not only that, I get the impression that Kant himself was highly confused about it all. I can see all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, with the closing of this last book - I agree in this. I can even see the necessity Kant had to have felt in writing his third Kritik, since he needs our aesthetical judgments as a bridge between our Understanding (imperfect knowledge of the phenomenal world, constituted according to the categories) and our Reason (perfect knowledge of the categories and the moral law). Kant needs to explain how it is possible that we - as noumenon AND phenomenon - are fully free in a deterministic world. The purposiviness of nature, including all the causality (and with this the seemingly inescapable determinism), is only appearant. We are ourselves purposiveness - we are objects in themselves - we are ourselves able to apply purposiveness to nature.
Yet, I'm glad that my crash course of Kant is finished. I really enjoyed his original ideas in the first Kritik, I appreciated his humanity in the second Kritik, but I am flatly at a loss for words with this third Kritik. It all seems to fall into place, but I cannot help but notice the artificality and fragility of it all. Kant seems to overstretch himself a lot, and just when he is about to snap, he retreats safely into his two worlds-solution. We seem to see purpose in nature, but that would need an explanation (such as a designer, or at least a process of causality), so let's just fall back on the 'we constitute this purposiveness ourselves, with our incomplete apparatus for cognition." How convenient!
Throughout his three Kritiks, Kant seems to build up the tension every time: letting the reader think he will make a daring and impressive jump, and at the supreme moment he seems to shy away again and offer us some lame excuse. I do acknowledge the genius of Kant, I do appreciate his originality and creativity, but at the same time I lament his conservational approach to it all. Positing two worlds is original, but he then sets out to use these two-world-hypothesis as an easy way out when he encounters problems. Proving God exists because we need him for our morals; following a flawed imperative is the definition of freed; this is all undeserving for a birhgt mind like Immanuel Kant. It is in this last Kritik that it really started to bother me, so I will not rate this book very highly - even though it was interesting to read.
In the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft (1788), Kant applied this method of Pure Reason to gather synthetic knowledge a priori about the Moral Law. This led him to the discovery of the Categorical Imperative, which it is our duty to follow - even if it doesn't lead to happiness in the phenomenal world, we will be rewarded by God in the noumenal world. In finding all this, Kant was able to positively prove the existence of our immortal soul, our freedom and God as noumena.
So Kant has dealt with epistemology and ethics and offered us a new world model. In the one world - the phenomenal - we are fully determined by natural causes, in the other world - the noumenal - we are fully free to will that which leads to the highest good (by doing our duty with regards to the categorical imperative). So it seems that we, as thinking intelligences, are both a phenomenon and noumenon and that in us the noumenal world has a causal mechanism by which to enact effects in the phenomenal world. We seem to be portals to both world.
In the third Kritik, the Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), Kant tries to create a bridge between both worlds. This last part of the trilogy consists of two parts, dealing respectively with Aesthetical Judgements and the Purposiviness of Nature.
In the first part, Kant argues that Aesthetical Judgments - which deal with our sensual perception of the phenomenal world, according to our notions of time and space and the 12 categories - are reflective. With reflective, he means that we observe particular instances and try to generalize from these to universal statements. (A person with the right background knowledge sees in this the scientific method of induction by which we abstract mathematical equations as explanations from a collection of particular instances; this is the problem that led David Hume to radical scepticism and Immanuel Kant to his Transcendental Idealism). This is the only knowledge we can have about our world, gained a posteriori, and therefore an imperfect representation of the world as it is in itself.
For Kant, there are only four types of reflective (aesthetical) judgments: (1) the agreeable, (2) the good, (3) the beautiful, and (4) the sublime. He is able to trace these four types of reflective judgments to his original table of judgments (as published in the first Kritik) of quantity, quality, relation and modality. In essence, Kant tries to explain how we judge on agreeableness, goodness, beauty and sublime - these are all phenomena and in that sense aesthetical and subjective.
Now, what does Kant tell us about these four types of judgments?
(1) Judgments on the agreeable are subjective and sensual. I like the smell of this flower, I like the tast of this wine, I like the view of this landscape. These are 'just' personal remarks.
(2) Judgments on the good are objective and ethical. I fulfil my duty towards the Moral Law or not (as outlined in the second Kritik), and I observe that others do this too or not.
(3) Judgments on the beautiful are related to the purposiveness of objects. Kant claims that we look for beauty in objects that seem to have a certain functionality or purpose, but are in reality fuctionless or purposeless. In others words: the form of the object pleases our mind and triggers our faculties of imagination and cognition.
(4) The last type of judgments deal with the sublime. According to Kant, these judgments have their origin in objects that (seem) to lay beyond our mental capacity. We cannot comprehend these objects and this triggers some sort of fear in us, which leaves us in awe of the object.
So much for the types of aesthetical judgments that we make about the phenomenal world around us. In the second part of this book, Kant proceeds to another - though at some points slightly relating - subject: teleology.
According to Kant, we perceive a purposiveness in nature. We look at bees, flowers and horses and see functionality. It looks as if these objects are designed for a specific purpose. This is called teleology (from the greek word 'telos' meaning goal): when looking at nature, we abstract the appearant design of these objects and form teleological judgments.
Kant explains that we see nature as having an objective purposiveness (compared to the subjective purposiveness in objects that we perceive as beauty), but this objective purposiveness is and remains our reflective aesthetical judgment. This, in other words, means that we judge as if (!) nature is teleoligcally constituted - our aesthetic judgments constitute a purposive nature around us, but this is and remains our ouw subjective judgment. We cannot know if nature has an objective purpose as a thing in itself, since this is not attainable for us, as Kant explained in the first Kritik.
Kant even claims that man is justified to see nature as a grand teleological system, in the sense that nothing exists without a purpose and everything has to be expected to be the most suitable design for that particular purpose. But even though this seems to sound a lot like William Paley (who would later use the appearant teleology of nature as a proof for the existence of God, as a master watchmaker), Kant has to add the caveat that this is not real objective teleology. He has to do this, because in the first Kritik he explained that ALL of our aesthetical judgments are imperfect representations of the world as it is in itself. Therefore, it is logically impossible for us to know if nature truly is teleological. So this is a sort of bridge between the first and the third Kritik.
A second sort of bridge, this time between the second and third Kritik, involves Kant's claim that there is - besides natural purposiviness - also ethical purposiveness. In the second Kritik, Kant told us to see man as an object in itself (as a noumena) and that we, as man, have freedom (also a noumena). But this freedom deals with us acting accordingly in the phenomenal world, in nature. So we apply causality and teleology in the natural world by using our freedom.
To summarize all of the above, Kant explains in the third Kritik, that we continually aesthetically judge about the world around us. We use our imperfect apparatus of categories, space and time, to constitute the phenomenal world around us. We judge as if nature is teleological, has a purpose, but this is and remains a subjective judgment (i.e. we will never know if nature has a purpose). We also judge ourselves to be teleological, in the sense that - in morality - we apply our own will to nature and to our fellow human beings. Kant seems to say that man is the object, the purpose of nature.
While I could appreciate the first two Kritiks, this third one confuses me. Not only that, I get the impression that Kant himself was highly confused about it all. I can see all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, with the closing of this last book - I agree in this. I can even see the necessity Kant had to have felt in writing his third Kritik, since he needs our aesthetical judgments as a bridge between our Understanding (imperfect knowledge of the phenomenal world, constituted according to the categories) and our Reason (perfect knowledge of the categories and the moral law). Kant needs to explain how it is possible that we - as noumenon AND phenomenon - are fully free in a deterministic world. The purposiviness of nature, including all the causality (and with this the seemingly inescapable determinism), is only appearant. We are ourselves purposiveness - we are objects in themselves - we are ourselves able to apply purposiveness to nature.
Yet, I'm glad that my crash course of Kant is finished. I really enjoyed his original ideas in the first Kritik, I appreciated his humanity in the second Kritik, but I am flatly at a loss for words with this third Kritik. It all seems to fall into place, but I cannot help but notice the artificality and fragility of it all. Kant seems to overstretch himself a lot, and just when he is about to snap, he retreats safely into his two worlds-solution. We seem to see purpose in nature, but that would need an explanation (such as a designer, or at least a process of causality), so let's just fall back on the 'we constitute this purposiveness ourselves, with our incomplete apparatus for cognition." How convenient!
Throughout his three Kritiks, Kant seems to build up the tension every time: letting the reader think he will make a daring and impressive jump, and at the supreme moment he seems to shy away again and offer us some lame excuse. I do acknowledge the genius of Kant, I do appreciate his originality and creativity, but at the same time I lament his conservational approach to it all. Positing two worlds is original, but he then sets out to use these two-world-hypothesis as an easy way out when he encounters problems. Proving God exists because we need him for our morals; following a flawed imperative is the definition of freed; this is all undeserving for a birhgt mind like Immanuel Kant. It is in this last Kritik that it really started to bother me, so I will not rate this book very highly - even though it was interesting to read.
October 16, 2023
نقد ملكة الحكم هو تقريبا حسيت نفسي قدرت افهم كانط بشكل واضح
الكتاب ليس فقط في المفاهيم الجمالية هو يدخل في ملكة الحكم بشكل عام , و يدخل الحكم الجمالي بالحواس و تلك الحواس تستمتع
عن طريق الخيال و هل الخيال او اللعب على تسميته يكون فقط هناء متعة حتى تتحول المتعة الي سامي يجب ان ترجع الي اساس فلسفة كانط
من وجهة و هي ملكة العقل العملي او الاخلاق بشكل عام و ان يتأمل العقل اخلاقه القبلية اعتقد تمنيت لو كانط انه وضح
ما هي الاخلاق القبلية و كم عدده , و هو ايضا يثبت تواجد الله ليس عن طريق العلية و اتفق معه في استحالة اثبات وجود الله عن طريق قانون العلية هو فقط بحث عن الغايات الموجودة في الطبيعية من ثمة بلغة شاعرية نخلق الله و كنه حقيقة اكتشفت كيف ينتج العقل الخيالي و الفكر كيان حسي مادي و هو بنفس الوقت لم يتواصل معه و يفترض ان لديه عقل فوق عقل الانسان معنه الانسان هو عقله , و عنده نظرية مميزة و هي اكتشاف القوانين القبلية توضح تواجد الله
فالكل متفق على القوانين الاخلاقية انه موجودة و نترقى من الفن و التفاعل الطبيعي بتواصل مع الله او السامي
معني بصراحة لم اجد ضرورة في وضع الله دام الخلق هو موجود , يقول نقطة مهمة جدا
ان لو اتى الله كتشاف قبل الاخلاق سوف تتحول الاخلاق الي منفعية و تصبح اخلاق فاسدة و يصبح من يتخلى عن الايمان
بالقوة المطلقة راح يتخلى عن الاخلاق و هذي مشكلة اصابه كانط موجودة في الدول العربية بكثرة
و اكون صريح الجانب الفني عجبني اكثر شيء ممكن شرحه كانط للفن و ربطه بالخلق هي اكثر نظرية مقنة فسرت الفن عندي
كتاب عظيم مثل عادة كانط
الكتاب ليس فقط في المفاهيم الجمالية هو يدخل في ملكة الحكم بشكل عام , و يدخل الحكم الجمالي بالحواس و تلك الحواس تستمتع
عن طريق الخيال و هل الخيال او اللعب على تسميته يكون فقط هناء متعة حتى تتحول المتعة الي سامي يجب ان ترجع الي اساس فلسفة كانط
من وجهة و هي ملكة العقل العملي او الاخلاق بشكل عام و ان يتأمل العقل اخلاقه القبلية اعتقد تمنيت لو كانط انه وضح
ما هي الاخلاق القبلية و كم عدده , و هو ايضا يثبت تواجد الله ليس عن طريق العلية و اتفق معه في استحالة اثبات وجود الله عن طريق قانون العلية هو فقط بحث عن الغايات الموجودة في الطبيعية من ثمة بلغة شاعرية نخلق الله و كنه حقيقة اكتشفت كيف ينتج العقل الخيالي و الفكر كيان حسي مادي و هو بنفس الوقت لم يتواصل معه و يفترض ان لديه عقل فوق عقل الانسان معنه الانسان هو عقله , و عنده نظرية مميزة و هي اكتشاف القوانين القبلية توضح تواجد الله
فالكل متفق على القوانين الاخلاقية انه موجودة و نترقى من الفن و التفاعل الطبيعي بتواصل مع الله او السامي
معني بصراحة لم اجد ضرورة في وضع الله دام الخلق هو موجود , يقول نقطة مهمة جدا
ان لو اتى الله كتشاف قبل الاخلاق سوف تتحول الاخلاق الي منفعية و تصبح اخلاق فاسدة و يصبح من يتخلى عن الايمان
بالقوة المطلقة راح يتخلى عن الاخلاق و هذي مشكلة اصابه كانط موجودة في الدول العربية بكثرة
و اكون صريح الجانب الفني عجبني اكثر شيء ممكن شرحه كانط للفن و ربطه بالخلق هي اكثر نظرية مقنة فسرت الفن عندي
كتاب عظيم مثل عادة كانط
February 10, 2023
Non ho letto il 100% ma l'esame l'ho passato e quindi vale come se lo avessi letto dall'inizio alla fine.
January 22, 2021
Many moons ago I studied Kant at a superficial level in freshman philosophy and I found that of all philosophers, Kant's ideas most strongly resonated with me. In my introductory studies, we never touched upon his original works, so I was excited to see the writing that caused such a revolution in the philosophical community.
Kant's writing style here is almost impenetrable to the casual reader. His language is dense and intelligible only with careful study and thought. The surest way to obfuscate ideas is to cloak them in indecipherable verbiage and vague generalizations. I think Dan Dennett summarized this type of writing best:
Some philosophers think that using examples in their work is, if not quite cheating, at least uncalled for—rather the way novelists shun illustrations in their novels. The novelists take pride in doing it all with words, and the philosophers take pride in doing it all with carefully crafted abstract generalizations presented in rigorous order, as close to mathematical proofs as they can muster. Good for them, but they can’t expect me to recommend their work to any but a few remarkable students. It’s just more difficult than it has to be.
I did enjoy a few moments of Kant's eloquent writing. For example, his rigorous analysis of humor:
Whatever is to arouse lively, convulsive laughter must contain something absurd (hence something that the understanding cannot like for its own sake). Laughter is an affect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into nothing. This same transformation certainly does not gladden the understanding, but indirectly it still gladdens us in a very lively way for a moment. So the cause of this must consist both in the influence that the presentation has on the body and in the body's reciprocal effect on the mind-but not because the presentation is objectively an object of our gratification (for how could an expectation that turned out to be false gratify us?), but solely because it is a mere play of presentations which produces in the body an equilibrium of the vital forces.
He proceeds to explain how the end result of a joke is, "a corresponding alternating tension and relaxation of the elastic parts of our intestines that is communicated to the diaphragm. The lungs, meanwhile, rapidly and intermittently expel air, and so give rise to an agitation that is conducive to our health."
This ironically humorous passage reminds me of the saying, "A joke is like a frog - it is ruined if you dissect it." And Kant just dissected the very foundation of humor. Everything is ruined.
Critique of Judgement is a deeply academic read that I can only recommend to those with a profound interest in philosophy.
Kant's writing style here is almost impenetrable to the casual reader. His language is dense and intelligible only with careful study and thought. The surest way to obfuscate ideas is to cloak them in indecipherable verbiage and vague generalizations. I think Dan Dennett summarized this type of writing best:
Some philosophers think that using examples in their work is, if not quite cheating, at least uncalled for—rather the way novelists shun illustrations in their novels. The novelists take pride in doing it all with words, and the philosophers take pride in doing it all with carefully crafted abstract generalizations presented in rigorous order, as close to mathematical proofs as they can muster. Good for them, but they can’t expect me to recommend their work to any but a few remarkable students. It’s just more difficult than it has to be.
I did enjoy a few moments of Kant's eloquent writing. For example, his rigorous analysis of humor:
Whatever is to arouse lively, convulsive laughter must contain something absurd (hence something that the understanding cannot like for its own sake). Laughter is an affect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into nothing. This same transformation certainly does not gladden the understanding, but indirectly it still gladdens us in a very lively way for a moment. So the cause of this must consist both in the influence that the presentation has on the body and in the body's reciprocal effect on the mind-but not because the presentation is objectively an object of our gratification (for how could an expectation that turned out to be false gratify us?), but solely because it is a mere play of presentations which produces in the body an equilibrium of the vital forces.
He proceeds to explain how the end result of a joke is, "a corresponding alternating tension and relaxation of the elastic parts of our intestines that is communicated to the diaphragm. The lungs, meanwhile, rapidly and intermittently expel air, and so give rise to an agitation that is conducive to our health."
This ironically humorous passage reminds me of the saying, "A joke is like a frog - it is ruined if you dissect it." And Kant just dissected the very foundation of humor. Everything is ruined.
Critique of Judgement is a deeply academic read that I can only recommend to those with a profound interest in philosophy.
August 2, 2008
Kant is hella difficult to read.
read PART of this for a class. a class taught by the same guy who edited and was lead translator for this edition of the book. basically, the class was only *SLIGHTLY* more intelligible than the book.
read PART of this for a class. a class taught by the same guy who edited and was lead translator for this edition of the book. basically, the class was only *SLIGHTLY* more intelligible than the book.
January 24, 2018
I only read Part One — Critique of Aesthetic Judgement
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November 2, 2022
Of all Kant critiques, this is the most important.
Curiously is the most misunderstood, you can check the comments of other readers and could see a colorful map of total misunderstandings.
This is a history of discovery. Reflection was previously defined by Wolff as "attention to those things perceived in a thing"(Psychologica Empirica, Methodo Scientifica, Pertractata, 257) Kant was aware of this definition, but he made some changes, the best definition could be found in the first introduction:
Comparison in Wolff was after reflection, Kant includes comparison in the definition of reflecting. What is missed is "attention". But here we need a Martin Heidegger, a really "attentive" lector, to see where is buried the body (I'm not even close to Heidegger sandals, but I'm going to sketch something). And is not easy, but is still there, even an expert of the level of Allison says nothing about this omission.
Attention is present in the freedom that is a requisite to perceive beauty. Beauty is what we attend with our freedom, we use attention because we are free to choose where to attend. This description of attention is present in the anthropology of Kant.
And this is important because reflection implies freedom. And this also implies, subtly, that real thinking must be free.
So, reflective judgment has ground on attention. To be called by something, to attend this something in my freedom to choose. And this ground makes it possible to Kant to include reflective judgments also in the animals. What he intuited in his discovery is that to be called, to attend, is something inherent in a living being. Even teleology presupposes this attention.
What Kant discovers is that we can subsume, assume rules, of something that we don't have any concept of. I'm going to do a bad example, a dog perceives a bad odor in his food, and he compares it with previous odors, without having the concept of odor, or good odor, or good food, or any concept at all, but he judges as if there is a concept, comparing, and choosing at the end no to eat. The end of this decision is to save his life, but he also didn't have this concept of "life" in him. He didn't need the concept, but he can use this comparison for the sake of saving his life.
The point is that the animal must "attend" the world to reflect on it, to be able to compare. And this is not conceptual, we can deal with a lot of things, with randomness and complexity (the infinite multiplicity of empirical datum), without a concept.
And this attention is grounded in our being, is something that "came with us", and let us reflect. Attention is the care of ourselves, and the ground of our faculty of judgment. And that is what Kant discovered almost 130 years before Heidegger.
An excellent book.
Curiously is the most misunderstood, you can check the comments of other readers and could see a colorful map of total misunderstandings.
This is a history of discovery. Reflection was previously defined by Wolff as "attention to those things perceived in a thing"(Psychologica Empirica, Methodo Scientifica, Pertractata, 257) Kant was aware of this definition, but he made some changes, the best definition could be found in the first introduction:
To reflect (or consider [Überlegung]) is to hold given representations up to, and compare them with, either other representations or one’s cognitive faculty, in reference to a concept that this [comparison] makes possible. The reflective faculty of judgment [Urteilskraft] is the one we also call the power of judging [Beurteilungsvermögen] (facultas dijudicandi).
Comparison in Wolff was after reflection, Kant includes comparison in the definition of reflecting. What is missed is "attention". But here we need a Martin Heidegger, a really "attentive" lector, to see where is buried the body (I'm not even close to Heidegger sandals, but I'm going to sketch something). And is not easy, but is still there, even an expert of the level of Allison says nothing about this omission.
Attention is present in the freedom that is a requisite to perceive beauty. Beauty is what we attend with our freedom, we use attention because we are free to choose where to attend. This description of attention is present in the anthropology of Kant.
And this is important because reflection implies freedom. And this also implies, subtly, that real thinking must be free.
So, reflective judgment has ground on attention. To be called by something, to attend this something in my freedom to choose. And this ground makes it possible to Kant to include reflective judgments also in the animals. What he intuited in his discovery is that to be called, to attend, is something inherent in a living being. Even teleology presupposes this attention.
What Kant discovers is that we can subsume, assume rules, of something that we don't have any concept of. I'm going to do a bad example, a dog perceives a bad odor in his food, and he compares it with previous odors, without having the concept of odor, or good odor, or good food, or any concept at all, but he judges as if there is a concept, comparing, and choosing at the end no to eat. The end of this decision is to save his life, but he also didn't have this concept of "life" in him. He didn't need the concept, but he can use this comparison for the sake of saving his life.
The point is that the animal must "attend" the world to reflect on it, to be able to compare. And this is not conceptual, we can deal with a lot of things, with randomness and complexity (the infinite multiplicity of empirical datum), without a concept.
And this attention is grounded in our being, is something that "came with us", and let us reflect. Attention is the care of ourselves, and the ground of our faculty of judgment. And that is what Kant discovered almost 130 years before Heidegger.
An excellent book.
September 16, 2022
Some very interesting ideas here, but Kant's infamous style of writing really takes the wind out of any potential interest that one could derive from his discussions.
April 29, 2024
This book sent my faculties into harmonious free play and I felt a disinterested pleasure from its formal purposiveness. 5 stars, Kant’s done it again!
February 21, 2018
تشکر میکنم از کانت عزیز و دکتر رشیدیان بزرگوار
در مجموع خوب بود، هم تالیف هم ترجمه
فعلا به تشکر بسنده میکنم
در مجموع خوب بود، هم تالیف هم ترجمه
فعلا به تشکر بسنده میکنم
March 7, 2016
Not even beauty is safe from Kant’s demand for universal truth. Eye of the beholder be damned. In a consistent continuation of his first two critiques, Kant seeks an objective standard in artistic taste. He carefully draws distinctions between aesthetic judgments and focuses the first half of the Critique of Judgement on distinguishing the “beautiful and the sublime.” He defines them as:
Having set the standards for his aesthetic, Kant seems to despair that judgment of one’s tastes is not clearly definable against an objective standard. However, since he assumes there must be an objective standard, he seeks “in the supersensible the point of union of all our faculties a priori; for we are left with no other course to bring reason into harmony with itself.” Pg. 169, §57.
At which point, Kant kills art. Or, at least tries to kill my joy in it,
What follows is desire to purge subjective delight from appreciation of beauty and the sublime. For Kant, art can only be purely judged through an intellectual screen which filters corrupting pleasures and purpose. He then outlines his effort to deduce good taste in a manner not influenced by delight or purpose.
Strangely, this morphs into the second half of the book which focuses on teleological judgment. Ultimately, his goal is to solve the problems of “God, freedom, and the immortality of the soul” Pg. 301, §91. He moves away from aesthetic judgment and focuses on natural form and purpose. Here, he speaks of the dangers in assuming purpose to form simply because a correlation can exist (though such correlations could mean the difference between beauty and the sublime in the first half of the book). In broad strokes, he dismisses any inherent purpose to the things in the world around us. Except for one. Humanity. He concludes that God can be sensed only by acting morally and only man can reflect on morality. The natural world yields nothing to Kant:
The beautiful in nature is a question of the form of the object, and this consists in limitation, whereas the sublime is to be found in an object devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by its presence provokes, a representation of limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality. Pg. 75, §23.Beauty is an “indeterminate concept of the understanding”; the sublime an “indeterminate concept of reason.” Beauty may charm, accompany a playful imagination and connote a purpose; the sublime touches on our indefinable core and through it we sense transcendence.
Having set the standards for his aesthetic, Kant seems to despair that judgment of one’s tastes is not clearly definable against an objective standard. However, since he assumes there must be an objective standard, he seeks “in the supersensible the point of union of all our faculties a priori; for we are left with no other course to bring reason into harmony with itself.” Pg. 169, §57.
At which point, Kant kills art. Or, at least tries to kill my joy in it,
What follows is desire to purge subjective delight from appreciation of beauty and the sublime. For Kant, art can only be purely judged through an intellectual screen which filters corrupting pleasures and purpose. He then outlines his effort to deduce good taste in a manner not influenced by delight or purpose.
Strangely, this morphs into the second half of the book which focuses on teleological judgment. Ultimately, his goal is to solve the problems of “God, freedom, and the immortality of the soul” Pg. 301, §91. He moves away from aesthetic judgment and focuses on natural form and purpose. Here, he speaks of the dangers in assuming purpose to form simply because a correlation can exist (though such correlations could mean the difference between beauty and the sublime in the first half of the book). In broad strokes, he dismisses any inherent purpose to the things in the world around us. Except for one. Humanity. He concludes that God can be sensed only by acting morally and only man can reflect on morality. The natural world yields nothing to Kant:
Hence, the source of the failure of the attempt to attain to a proof of God and immortality by the merely theoretical route lies in the fact that no knowledge of the supersensible is possible if the path of natural concepts is followed. The reason why the proof succeeds, on the other hand, when the path of morals, that is, of the concept of freedom, is followed, is because from the supersensible, which in morals is fundamental (I.e. as freedom), there arises a definite law of causality. By means of this law the supersensible here not only provides material for the knowledge of the other supersensible, that is of the moral final end and the conditions of its practicability, but it also reveals its own reality, as a matter of fact, in actions. Pg. 302-303, §91.In the end, like all of Kant’s works, he is incredibly sincere in his efforts. And, there is no denying the respect Kant deserves for attempting to address an issue (aesthetics) left largely untouched since Aristotle. However, I have a hard time believing anyone who actually produces art is moved by Kant’s sterile intellectual view of aesthetics. Notably, though it may be an unfair comparison- and an apples/oranges kind of thing- but I found the abstract painter Kandinsky’s short little book Concerning the Spiritual in Art to be a much more moving discussion of aesthetics and the transcendent qualities of artistic expression.
August 21, 2019
Hard to say much with regard to the content in this book considering I overall reject the premises of Kant's system. It is an important book nonetheless so I have to give credit where due at the very least.
December 25, 2018
I'm not entirely honest for giving it 4 full stars – since, believe me, the teleological ramblings were even quite irksome with their persistent repetitions – but since the first half of the book gave me a lot of material to ponder upon, I'm willing to wink at Kant's cant and give the Immaculate Immanuel the cachet he deserves.
As always, Kant may have some wacky and untenable ideas, but he manages to present them with due reserve and inspiration which makes it easier for anyone to absorb and contemplate them. He was so enamoured with his moral law that he saw its effect everywhere, including in the way we regard beauty – and this isn't a stupid thing to think at all, considering how well Kant could get his points across. However, what I found much more satisfying was the idea that beautiful, for Kant, was not merely something as mundane as a becoming dress but rather something which doesn't (and shouldn't) even be present for it to be considered beautiful. Here the beautiful is distinguished from the pleasant, which merely satisfies our immediate desires, but which doesn't grant us the universal bliss of witnessing our cognitive skills at play and enabling us to stretch out towards the (undefined) nature of human condition. In fine, Kant's beauty is the portal to higher things, traversed through the wonderful world of art and nature.
For Kant, art should provide as much leeway as possible for everyone concerned, but with enough rigour for us to realise that it is not, indeed, just something completely random. Here he separates more intellectual things from the realm of artistry, and pronounces that genius is the ability to transcend the rules and let the mind create freely – an effect which is then felt by the dilettantes, allowing them, too, to soar like eagles for a while.
Similarly, Kant argues that, in order for us to appreciate nature in the universal sense, in the sense of beauty (and, to some extent, sublime), we can't help but to view it as something that is full of meaning, wherein nothing (or almost nothing) is gratuitous or the product of chance. Now, thanks to the alternative provided by Darwin, such a viewpoint may appear as antiquated, or at the very least myopic, but I think the most important thing here to grasp is what a soul of an artist Kant had: he essentially describes the deep devotion a person can have towards a piece of art or a glorious scenery. But not only does he convey this thrilling emotion, he also tries to make sense of it!
What I omitted to tell earlier is that Kant's sense of beauty has to be all-encompassing for him. At first, this idea may appear as something altogether alien, but here the differences between Kant's "beautiful" and "pleasant" come to the fore. Indeed, if one simply accepts that people might not understand the kind of music one regards as beautiful, it could be argued that this music is not beautiful, at least in the sense Kant is defining the term. (Let me at once state that I'm not trying to find justification for anyone's sense of beauty here – I want to convey my enthusiasm towards the inspiration Kant gave me, and in no way would I want to misrepresent it. Kant was not an elitist.) The universal feeling here means, that there are no subjective grounds for the idea of beauty – because there doesn't have to be an intuition of the object of beauty – for here the person posits that our cognitive skills work in a similar fashion to each others', and so everyone simply have to regard beauty similarly. Once again, this doesn't mean that this person is objectively correct (since beauty has nothing to do with concepts) but it simply means that the nature of our judgment can't help but to posit this so-called "common sense". The funny thing is, that there is still an element of subjectivity at play, since beauty is not a concept, but then again, the intuition is also lacking – beauty can only be defined in judgment.
Summa summarum, Kant's beauty helps us to love things unselfishly. Also, his sublime helps us to respect things in spite of our desires. What I find so enthralling about this is that Kant didn't simply accept that "there's no accounting for taste" – when it comes to things pleasant, that is indeed the case, but such cannot be the case with things beautiful or sublime. In other words, he paved his way out of the ever-puzzling relativism, did so in a most inspiring manner, and thus pointed out that not every sense of pleasure is equal. I'm verily of the opinion that there are higher forms of pleasure (or beauty), and Kant's idea that these constitute the form of things, is not bad at all. I don't agree with most of Kant's examples of what is actually beautiful (indeed, some of them don't make any sense, like thinking flowers beautiful because we somehow ignore their function, but not considering Man beautiful because... I don't even know), nor do I necessarily agree with him that the art which reaches the senses through defined ideas (visual arts) is greater than the art which reaches undefined ideas through the senses (music) but it's the idea that counts.
Lastly, a few words about teleology. I quite understand where Kant is coming from, and I think he puts it across in a credible way, merely giving himself the benefit of the doubt, as he always does. He doesn't downright debunk the concept of blind evolution. But the problem with the whole teleological part of the book is that Kant keeps on repeating the same things over and over again, often mixing things in which were already "proven" in Critique of Practical Reason. When you add in some excruciatingly long (and rather extraneous) footnotes about this and that, the result is not pleasant to read. So, to repeat what I said at the very beginning: had I rated the book as I usually do, in terms of its impact and enjoyability, I would've have to strike off at least half a star. But since, artistically speaking, this was the grand culmination of Kant's theorems, I'm feeling rather lenient towards the ol' Kraut.
This concludes the read-through of the great philosophical trilogy by the great German genius. It's been an extremely stimulating journey, almost over-taxing, too. It's unthinkable to presume that one might have understood everything properly, and it's very likely that my interpretations are riddled with misunderstandings and illogicalities (not to mention solecisms), but the most important thing is that Kant has inspired me to a vast degree both in terms of cogitation and aesthetics (using the modern definition). But now, I feel like it is time to counterpoise the intellectual twaddle with words from another great plug-ugly philosopher (who shall remain unnamed by virtue of the unequivocality of the allusion):
Arse. Feck. Gurls.
As always, Kant may have some wacky and untenable ideas, but he manages to present them with due reserve and inspiration which makes it easier for anyone to absorb and contemplate them. He was so enamoured with his moral law that he saw its effect everywhere, including in the way we regard beauty – and this isn't a stupid thing to think at all, considering how well Kant could get his points across. However, what I found much more satisfying was the idea that beautiful, for Kant, was not merely something as mundane as a becoming dress but rather something which doesn't (and shouldn't) even be present for it to be considered beautiful. Here the beautiful is distinguished from the pleasant, which merely satisfies our immediate desires, but which doesn't grant us the universal bliss of witnessing our cognitive skills at play and enabling us to stretch out towards the (undefined) nature of human condition. In fine, Kant's beauty is the portal to higher things, traversed through the wonderful world of art and nature.
For Kant, art should provide as much leeway as possible for everyone concerned, but with enough rigour for us to realise that it is not, indeed, just something completely random. Here he separates more intellectual things from the realm of artistry, and pronounces that genius is the ability to transcend the rules and let the mind create freely – an effect which is then felt by the dilettantes, allowing them, too, to soar like eagles for a while.
Similarly, Kant argues that, in order for us to appreciate nature in the universal sense, in the sense of beauty (and, to some extent, sublime), we can't help but to view it as something that is full of meaning, wherein nothing (or almost nothing) is gratuitous or the product of chance. Now, thanks to the alternative provided by Darwin, such a viewpoint may appear as antiquated, or at the very least myopic, but I think the most important thing here to grasp is what a soul of an artist Kant had: he essentially describes the deep devotion a person can have towards a piece of art or a glorious scenery. But not only does he convey this thrilling emotion, he also tries to make sense of it!
What I omitted to tell earlier is that Kant's sense of beauty has to be all-encompassing for him. At first, this idea may appear as something altogether alien, but here the differences between Kant's "beautiful" and "pleasant" come to the fore. Indeed, if one simply accepts that people might not understand the kind of music one regards as beautiful, it could be argued that this music is not beautiful, at least in the sense Kant is defining the term. (Let me at once state that I'm not trying to find justification for anyone's sense of beauty here – I want to convey my enthusiasm towards the inspiration Kant gave me, and in no way would I want to misrepresent it. Kant was not an elitist.) The universal feeling here means, that there are no subjective grounds for the idea of beauty – because there doesn't have to be an intuition of the object of beauty – for here the person posits that our cognitive skills work in a similar fashion to each others', and so everyone simply have to regard beauty similarly. Once again, this doesn't mean that this person is objectively correct (since beauty has nothing to do with concepts) but it simply means that the nature of our judgment can't help but to posit this so-called "common sense". The funny thing is, that there is still an element of subjectivity at play, since beauty is not a concept, but then again, the intuition is also lacking – beauty can only be defined in judgment.
Summa summarum, Kant's beauty helps us to love things unselfishly. Also, his sublime helps us to respect things in spite of our desires. What I find so enthralling about this is that Kant didn't simply accept that "there's no accounting for taste" – when it comes to things pleasant, that is indeed the case, but such cannot be the case with things beautiful or sublime. In other words, he paved his way out of the ever-puzzling relativism, did so in a most inspiring manner, and thus pointed out that not every sense of pleasure is equal. I'm verily of the opinion that there are higher forms of pleasure (or beauty), and Kant's idea that these constitute the form of things, is not bad at all. I don't agree with most of Kant's examples of what is actually beautiful (indeed, some of them don't make any sense, like thinking flowers beautiful because we somehow ignore their function, but not considering Man beautiful because... I don't even know), nor do I necessarily agree with him that the art which reaches the senses through defined ideas (visual arts) is greater than the art which reaches undefined ideas through the senses (music) but it's the idea that counts.
Lastly, a few words about teleology. I quite understand where Kant is coming from, and I think he puts it across in a credible way, merely giving himself the benefit of the doubt, as he always does. He doesn't downright debunk the concept of blind evolution. But the problem with the whole teleological part of the book is that Kant keeps on repeating the same things over and over again, often mixing things in which were already "proven" in Critique of Practical Reason. When you add in some excruciatingly long (and rather extraneous) footnotes about this and that, the result is not pleasant to read. So, to repeat what I said at the very beginning: had I rated the book as I usually do, in terms of its impact and enjoyability, I would've have to strike off at least half a star. But since, artistically speaking, this was the grand culmination of Kant's theorems, I'm feeling rather lenient towards the ol' Kraut.
This concludes the read-through of the great philosophical trilogy by the great German genius. It's been an extremely stimulating journey, almost over-taxing, too. It's unthinkable to presume that one might have understood everything properly, and it's very likely that my interpretations are riddled with misunderstandings and illogicalities (not to mention solecisms), but the most important thing is that Kant has inspired me to a vast degree both in terms of cogitation and aesthetics (using the modern definition). But now, I feel like it is time to counterpoise the intellectual twaddle with words from another great plug-ugly philosopher (who shall remain unnamed by virtue of the unequivocality of the allusion):
Arse. Feck. Gurls.
January 11, 2015
I haven't read the entire book (only selections for a class), but I had a lot of trouble with the translation, so I read it in parallel with the Guyer-Matthews translation from CUP. The Cambridge edition was significantly easier for me to understand, and I noticed that it was much truer to Kant's punctuation after I noticed some discrepancies and appealed to the German to break the tie. I don't know how important that is, or how close the translation is to the original in other respects (the only German that I can understand is the punctuation), but I found the other one to be much less work to get to the same conclusions. On the other hand, my instructor is a real, live, Kant scholar, and she assigned the Pluhar translation, so you may want to take my opinion with a grain of salt.
February 21, 2013
Immanuel Kant Done here a good job. This is a great book for me and also for law student or every people.
This is a great book to know about this matter. I really enjoy it, so I rate it 4 of 5. I think the discussion was interesting inside the book. Really easy to read, and i think this is a great book for book lovers.
For more please visit : boikart.com
This is a great book to know about this matter. I really enjoy it, so I rate it 4 of 5. I think the discussion was interesting inside the book. Really easy to read, and i think this is a great book for book lovers.
For more please visit : boikart.com
March 18, 2019
4.5 stars for this incredibly difficult read!
And thank goodness for all the academic guidance that I had on Kant's Aesthetic throughout my course, cause otherwise it would have been an almost impossible task to conquer.
It's a great critique, nevertheless! Just not for everyone, in my opinion.
*I read it because of my Aesthetics (Philosophy of Art) class.
And thank goodness for all the academic guidance that I had on Kant's Aesthetic throughout my course, cause otherwise it would have been an almost impossible task to conquer.
It's a great critique, nevertheless! Just not for everyone, in my opinion.
*I read it because of my Aesthetics (Philosophy of Art) class.
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