Critique of Judgment

Contents

1. Preface 9 min 7

   Kant places the new Critique within his system. The Critique of Pure Reason showed that only the understanding gives constitutive a priori laws, to nature, and the Critique of Practical Reason that reason gives them to desire. The question now is whether judgement, the mediating faculty, has a priori principles of its own, and whether they govern the feeling of pleasure and pain. The puzzle shows itself chiefly in aesthetic judgements of the beautiful and sublime. Kant disclaims any aim of cultivating taste, asks indulgence for some obscurity, and announces that his critical undertaking is complete and the doctrinal metaphysics of nature and morals will follow.

2. Introduction 1 h 5 min 13

   Kant divides philosophy into theoretical and practical, governed by the concepts of nature and of freedom, and finds an immense gulf between the two realms. Judgement, lying between understanding and reason as pleasure lies between cognition and desire, may bridge it. Distinguishing determinant judgement, which applies given rules, from reflective judgement, which must find them, he argues that reflection needs a transcendental principle of its own: the purposiveness of nature for our cognitive faculties, assumed so that nature’s particular laws form a system. This principle is bound up with pleasure, grounds the aesthetic judgement of beauty and the sublime, and in its objective form the teleological judging of organisms.

3. I.1.1 Analytic of the Beautiful 1 h 41 min 55

   The first Book analyses the judgement of taste under four Moments. In quality it is disinterested, unlike satisfaction in the pleasant or the good. In quantity it claims universal validity without a concept, resting on the free play of imagination and understanding, whose harmony is felt as pleasure. In relation it judges only the form of purposiveness without purpose, independent of charm, emotion or perfection; Kant distinguishes free from adherent beauty and treats the normal Idea and the Ideal of beauty, possible only in the human figure. In modality it claims exemplary necessity, presupposing a common sense. A General Remark contrasts stiff regularity with free beauty.

4. I.1.2 Analytic of the Sublime 1 h 33 min 36

   The second Book treats the sublime, which, unlike the beautiful, is found in formlessness and pleases only through a check to the vital powers. The mathematically sublime arises when the imagination fails to comprehend a vast magnitude in one intuition, awakening reason’s Idea of totality; the dynamically sublime when nature’s might, seen from safety, reveals our superiority as moral beings. Strictly, sublimity lies in the mind, not in nature; it is akin to respect and needs culture, yet rests on moral feeling. A General Remark discusses enthusiasm, fanaticism, the ban on images and solitude, and contrasts Kant’s transcendental exposition with Burke’s physiological one.

5. I.1.2 Deduction of Pure Aesthetical Judgements; Of Art and Genius 2 h 25 min 65

   Sections 30–54 justify the claim of a judgement of taste to everyone’s agreement. Such a judgement is singular yet universal, and necessary yet unprovable; it rests on the free harmony of imagination and understanding that all knowers share, so taste can be called a sensus communis. Kant then separates the empirical, social interest in beauty from the intellectual interest in natural beauty, a sign of moral disposition. He defines art, distinguishes it from science and handicraft, and makes fine art the work of genius, the gift through which nature gives the rule to art by producing aesthetic ideas. He divides and ranks the arts, and ends with laughter.

6. I.2 Dialectic of the Aesthetical Judgement 51 min 15

   Sections 55–60 set out and resolve the antinomy of taste: the judgement of taste is not based on concepts, else it could be proved, yet it must be based on concepts, else we could not even quarrel about it. The answer is that it rests on an indeterminate concept, the supersensible substrate of nature and of humanity. Kant defends the “idealism” of purposiveness against the view that nature made beautiful things for us, explains symbolic presentation, and calls beauty the symbol of morality. A short appendix on method makes moral culture the true preparation for taste.

7. II.1 Analytic of the Teleological Judgement 1 h 2 min 22

   Part II opens with objective purposiveness in nature. Sections 61–68 distinguish the formal purposiveness of geometrical figures, the merely relative purposiveness of usefulness to men or animals, and the inner purposiveness of organisms. A natural purpose is a thing that is cause and effect of itself: an organised and self-organising being whose parts produce one another and exist for the whole, unlike a watch. Judging organisms requires the maxim that nothing in them is in vain, which extends to nature as a system of purposes, but only as a regulative principle of reflective judgement. Natural science must keep God out of its explanations.

8. II.2 Dialectic of the Teleological Judgement 1 h 20 min 24

   Kant states an antinomy. One maxim says to judge all material things as possible by mechanical laws alone. The other says some things, organisms, can only be judged by final causes. As claims about nature the two contradict each other, but as maxims of reflective judgement they can coexist. Kant rejects four dogmatic systems: Epicurean chance, Spinozist fatalism, hylozoism and theism. He argues that design is a necessary way for us to think about organisms, not knowledge. Discussing an intuitive understanding (§§ 76–77), he traces this necessity to our discursive intellect, doubts that a “Newton of a blade of grass” will ever arise, and subordinates mechanism to teleology.

9. II.App Methodology of the Teleological Judgement 48 min 29

   Teleology belongs to criticism, not to natural science or theology. Naturalists should push mechanical explanation as far as possible, but must presuppose an original organisation. Kant entertains common descent through comparative anatomy, weighs preformation against epigenesis, and praises Blumenbach’s formative drive. He then asks what nature as a whole is for. Usefulness among species proves little, and geology shows blind mechanism. Happiness cannot be nature’s purpose for humanity, but culture can: skill developed through inequality and war, and discipline through the arts and sciences. The final purpose of creation is the human being as a free, moral being.

10. II.App Physico-theology and Ethico-theology 2 h 3 min 44

    Physico-theology, the argument from nature’s design, can at most suggest an intelligent artist and never a single, wise, moral God. Ethico-theology starts from morality instead. The moral law commands the highest good, happiness proportioned to virtue, and since nature does not guarantee it we must assume a moral author of the world. Kant limits this proof to practical use. He classifies things of opinion, fact and faith: freedom is a fact, while God and immortality are objects of moral faith. A general remark explains why the design argument persuades and defines religion as recognising duties as divine commands.