Critique of Judgment (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Immanuel Kant and Marc Lucht

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.

Kant, the most revolutionary and important figure in Western philosophy since Aristotle, wrote the Critique of Judgment as the capstone of his trilogy of Critiques. Through its investigation of the beautiful and the sublime, it set the terms for modern aesthetics and art criticism. Its discussion of the significance of nature is important for theology and science alike. Most important, the third Critique's exploration of the contributions that scientific thinking and aesthetic sensitivity each make to our sense of humanity remains of the most profound significance to anyone interested in morality and the development of culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781411467675

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and is known as one of the foremost thinkers of Enlightenment. He is widely recognized for his contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.

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CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT

IMMANUEL KANT

TRANSLATED BY J. H. BERNARD

INTRODUCTION BY MARC LUCHT

Introduction and Suggested Reading © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

This 2012 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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INTRODUCTION

IMMANUEL KANT IS THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY AND IMPORTANT figure in Western philosophy since Aristotle. When people think of Kant’s achievement, they typically think of the momentous implications of his transcendental turn as elaborated in the Critique of Pure Reason, or the majesty of his conception of the moral law presented in the Critique of Practical Reason. The doctrine of the Critique of Judgment, the last of the three Critiques forming the backbone of Kant’s mature philosophy, is less well known. Yet it is this work that Kant himself intended to serve as the capstone of his system, both completing it and holding it together by integrating its other parts into a coherent, systematic whole. The Critique of Judgment’s investigations of the beautiful and the sublime set the terms for modern aesthetics and art criticism, and its discussion of the ways in which scientific investigation can facilitate metaphysical reflections about the significance of nature is important for theology and science alike. Most important, the third Critique’s exploration of the contributions that scientific thinking and aesthetic sensitivity each make to our sense of humanity remains of the most profound significance to anyone interested in morality and the development of culture.

It is a frequently noted irony that a thinker of such cosmopolitan sensibility and ideals as Kant never left the remote province in which he lived. Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724, in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), a multicultural city sometimes called the Venice of the north. His parents were strictly religious members of the pietist movement. Kant’s father was a master harness maker, so his family was socially respectable but of fairly modest means. The family’s church helped pay for Kant’s education, and he attended the University of Königsberg from 1740 to 1746. He spent the next eleven years working as a private tutor to the children of various wealthy families in his home province. From 1755 to 1770, Kant worked as an instructor at his alma mater, lecturing on a variety of subjects, including mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, anthropology, geology, geography, and other natural sciences. He published several works during this time. His Universal Natural History and Theories of the Heavens (1755), for instance, made a major contribution to astrophysics by proposing the nebular hypothesis for the formation of planets; much of what came to be called the Kant-Laplace hypothesis is still thought accurate today. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764) constituted an early investigation of many of the issues that would receive a more mature treatment in the Critique of Judgment. In part because he was a very popular teacher, Kant was promoted to professor at the university in 1770, and he worked there until shortly before his death on February 12, 1804. Although the popular imagination has been captivated by old stories about Kant’s habitual afternoon walks, allegedly so regular that local housewives would set their clocks according to the time of his passing by, his personality might be characterized more accurately by someone who knew him, the poet, historian, and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder:

In the prime of life [Kant] had the happy cheerfulness of a youth, which, so I believe, accompanied him even in grey old age. His forehead, formed for thinking, was the seat of indestructible serenity and peace, the most thought-filled speech flowed from his lips, merriment and wit and humor were at his command, and his lecturing was discourse at its most entertaining. . . . [He] took up those works of Rousseau which were then appearing, Émile and Héloïse, just as he did every natural discovery known to him, evaluated them and always came back

to unprejudiced knowledge of Nature and the moral worth of mankind. The history of nations and peoples, natural science, mathematics, and experience, were the sources from which he enlivened his lecture and converse; nothing worth knowing was indifferent to him; no cabal, no sect, no prejudice, no ambition for fame had the least seductiveness for him in comparison with furthering and elucidating truth. He encouraged and engagingly fostered thinking for oneself; despotism was foreign to his mind.

In 1781, Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason. In this text, he tries to defend the emerging Newtonian physics from skeptical attacks by proving that nature is known to be regulated by a thoroughgoing determinist causality: There is no randomness in nature, and all events are determined by a strict causal necessity. But it turns out that the project of achieving such certainty could succeed only at the price of limiting the scope of our knowledge. How so? Prior to Kant, the human perceptual and cognitive apparatus was assumed to mirror a separate, independent, and external world. The revolutionary idea driving the transcendental turn is that our perceptual and intellectual capacities do not just reflect or conform to the experienced world, but actively contribute to its structure. We project causality onto any conceptualization of events; it is as if, to use one of Kant’s own analogies, human beings all wear space, time, and causality tinted glasses that can never be taken off. Thus Kant thinks that phenomenal nature is known to be saturated with causality simply because human beings are constituted in such a way that they can experience events in no other way but as effects of prior causes. Yet since all experience is tied inextricably to the conditions determined by our all too human capacities, we may no longer hope to know anything about things as they are in themselves, independent of any human contribution. (Kant sometimes refers to the hidden thing in itself as the supersensible substrate of experience). In other words, space, time, and causality actually may be functions merely of human forms of experience; for angels, or aliens, the world may appear quite differently, although we human beings in our finitude have no conception of what those differences could be. Kant thinks of a critique of pure reason as an analysis delineating reason’s nature and limits. The Critique’s focus on the limits of reason thus has the result of depriving traditional metaphysics, which had focused on non-phenomenal or transcendent beings such as God and the soul, of any scientific legitimacy.

In 1783, Kant published the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, a condensed and simplified statement of the doctrine of the Critique of Pure Reason, and, in 1785, the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. The Critique of Practical Reason appeared in 1788. In the Foundations and this second Critique, Kant elaborates a conception of an absolutely authoritative and universally binding moral law that originates in the legislation of autonomous human reason, and a vision of humanity possessing a non-negotiable dignity in virtue of that autonomy. Our highest duty, an absolute obligation imposed upon us by our own reason, is to respect the inviolable moral worth of every rational being, to never regard the value of others as merely instrumental. The Critique of Judgment was published in 1790, and Kant meant for it to provide a transition between the theoretical and moral parts of the system as elaborated in the previous two Critiques. In 1793, Kant published Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, a text that led to a dispute with the Prussian government, which forbade him to teach about religious matters. (Kant took himself to be free from this prohibition upon the death of King Frederick William II in 1797). In 1795, he published a work of political theory, Perpetual Peace, which argues for the importance of guiding international affairs by cosmopolitan principles and for a global federal system of free states. His last major work, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, appeared in 1798. Kant also published numerous important essays, including What is Enlightenment? (1784), the quintessential expression of the Enlightenment call for intellectual liberty, and Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), which advances the idea that history can be seen in terms of a rational progress toward a more just political situation.

Kant’s transcendental philosophy has had wide influence. It made possible a genuinely new (if not uncontroversial) way of understanding the relation between humanity and the world. Different parts of his work have been of enormous interest to scholars and scientists in a broad array of fields and have had an impact on metaphysics and epistemology, legal theory, ethics, physics, the philosophy of science, theology, cultural anthropology, gestalt and cognitive psychology, literary theory, and linguistics. However, except for scholarship investigating its position at the basis of the discipline of aesthetics and its decisive influence on German idealism, the Critique of Judgment until recently has been comparatively neglected. Contemporary scholars have begun mining the text as part of an ongoing project of developing a more adequate understanding of the relation between human being and world than that bequeathed to us by the dominant philosophical tradition.

Many recent critics have argued that the Enlightenment’s privileging of rationality has led to philosophical and scientific views that distort our humanity. Too often the human subject has been conceived primarily as a rational being, and the emotions and bodily drives have been misrepresented as disreputable sources of moral temptation and cognitive interference. Indeed, some critics argue that views minimizing the important contributions that emotional and spiritual responsiveness can make to moral and intellectual life have the result of cutting us off from the natural world. Thus we have inherited a set of alienating dualisms: subject/world, freedom/ nature, culture/nature, mind/body, and reason/feeling.

The Critique of Judgment makes an immense contribution to contemporary efforts to overcome these divisions. The work takes as its subject matter two related fields of investigation. The first half of the book deals with the aesthetic experience of natural and artistic beauty and sublimity. The second part explores the manner in which scientists, especially in biology, employ teleological explanations in terms of purposes, as when one says that a stomach is for digesting, or speaks of nature’s foresight or parsimony. The two halves of the book are linked by Kant’s notion of reflective judgment, of which aesthetic and teleological thinking are each instances. Reflective judgment is our ability to search for general concepts or principles to help make sense of particular objects or representations, and its exercise often is imaginative, playful, and pleasurable. Determinative judgment, on the other hand, is the ability to subsume particular instances under general rules, and is a less free, more logical way of thinking. In the course of the text’s analysis, Kant begins to rehabilitate the less rational parts of the human psyche by showing how feeling and sensation can help orient us within the social domain and play important roles supporting moral reflection and driving moral commitment: Thus, feeling is central to ethical life and need not be pitted against the dictates of reason. The Critique of Judgment also uses an analysis of aesthetic pleasure to explore our connections with the world—the extent to which we may consider ourselves belonging to, involved in, and favored by a familiar nature, but also the extent to which we must regard ourselves as elevated above and independent of nature’s power.

Most tantalizingly, perhaps, Kant suggests that feeling is actually able to provide hints about metaphysical mysteries that reason cannot solve. In the first two Critiques, Kant had argued for a radical gulf dividing phenomenal nature, which is structured in terms of a determinist causality, and freedom, which is ordered according to the legislation of autonomous reason. As he puts it, natural laws are laws according to which everything happens, whereas the laws of freedom are those according to which everything ought to happen. Kant argues that in the aesthetic consciousness, however, there are hints presented to feeling that nature and reason are rooted in the same supersensible substrate; on the level of thing in itself, underneath phenomenal experience and inaccessible to intellect, rational subject and world may originate in a common source. What this entails is that the moral order and the cosmos may in the end be harmonious and mutually supportive parts of a single continuum. This proto-mediation of the distinction between nature and humanity enables Kant to begin to integrate the diverse elements of his system, and bears great relevance to debates in environmental philosophy, phenomenology, and other fields concerned with the ways in which modern thought and science promote a mechanistic worldview predicated on what Max Weber famously called the disenchantment of the world.

Quite apart from questions regarding Kant’s system in its entirety and contemporary debates about the relation between subject and object, the text contains a great deal that is of interest to those readers looking for new insights in aesthetics, science, and culture more generally. The sections entitled Analytic of the Beautiful and Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgment carve off aesthetic reflection from our mundane, pragmatic concerns, and show why it is that a judgment of taste seems unable to be true or false. They include discussions of aesthetic genius, imagination, and the nature of fine art that remain influential to this day. They perform an analysis of the sensation that prompts the aesthetic attitude, a sensation so rich in significance that it perpetually overflows or exceeds any attempt to capture it in words or concepts. And they explore the way in which the reflective judgment seeking to make sense of such a sensation contributes both to intellectual development and to the cultivation of sociability and urbanity. The Analytic of the Sublime tackles the problem of why we sometimes feel pleasure and exaltation while contemplating phenomena of enormous size and destructive force (such as tornadoes and volcanoes), phenomena which more typically would provoke in us feelings of inadequacy, fear, or dread. Kant is not known for the grace of his prose, but his evocation of the consciousness of sublimity is his most haunting and vivid writing. The Analytic of Teleological Judgment and the concluding Appendix show how teleological ideas can guide and supplement scientific investigation that employs the more explanatory mechanistic principles, and Kant suggests that teleological thinking can help relate science to theology and to hypothetical reflection about nature as a coherent and beautiful whole.

Kant is one of those rare people whose ideas have stood the test of time so well that their work continues to be influential and controversial. The Critique of Judgment is a challenging book, and its language and ideas sometimes are technically complex. It stands, however, as the attempt by one of philosophy’s most brilliant thinkers to explore the ways in which scientific reflection and a sensitivity to beauty and sublimity in both nature and art can orient us in our pursuit of the highest personal and cultural aspirations.

Marc Lucht holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Emory University. He has taught philosophy at Kenyon College, the University of Maine, and Rocky Mountain College, and he writes frequently on the history of modern philosophy, continental philosophy, aesthetics, and environmental ethics.

CONTENTS

PART I

FIRST BOOK - ANALYTIC OF THE BEAUTIFUL

§ 1. THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE IS ÆSTHETICAL

§ 2. THE SATISFACTION WHICH DETERMINES THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE IS DISINTERESTED

§ 3. THE SATISFACTION IN THE PLEASANT IS BOUND UP WITH INTEREST

§ 4. THE SATISFACTION IN THE GOOD IS BOUND UP WITH INTEREST

§ 5. COMPARISON OF THE THREE SPECIFICALLY DIFFERENT KINDS OF SATISFACTION

§ 6. THE BEAUTIFUL IS THAT WHICH APART FROM CONCEPTS IS REPRESENTED AS THE ...

§ 7. COMPARISON OF THE BEAUTIFUL WITH THE PLEASANT AND THE GOOD BY MEANS OF THE ...

§ 8. THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE SATISFACTION IS REPRESENTED IN A JUDGMENT OF TASTE ...

§ 9. INVESTIGATION OF THE QUESTION WHETHER IN THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE THE FEELING ...

§ 10. OF PURPOSIVENESS IN GENERAL

§ 11. THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE HAS NOTHING AT ITS BASIS BUT THE FORM OF THE ...

§ 12. THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE RESTS ON A PRIORI GROUNDS

§ 13. THE PURE JUDGMENT OF TASTE IS INDEPENDENT OF CHARM AND EMOTION

§ 14. ELUCIDATION BY MEANS OF EXAMPLES

§ 15. THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE IS QUITE INDEPENDENT OF THE CONCEPT OF PERFECTION

§ 16. THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE, BY WHICH AN OBJECT IS DECLARED TO BE BEAUTIFUL ...

§ 17. OF THE IDEAL OF BEAUTY

§ 18. WHAT THE MODALITY IN A JUDGMENT OF TASTE IS

§ 19. THE SUBJECTIVE NECESSITY, WHICH WE ASCRIBE TO THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE, IS CONDITIONED

§ 20. THE CONDITION OF NECESSITY WHICH A JUDGMENT OF TASTE ASSERTS IS THE IDEA ...

§ 21. HAVE WE GROUND FOR PRESUPPOSING A COMMON SENSE?

§ 22. THE NECESSITY OF THE UNIVERSAL AGREEMENT THAT IS THOUGHT IN A JUDGMENT OF ...

SECOND BOOK - ANALYTIC OF THE SUBLIME

§ 23. TRANSITION FROM THE FACULTY WHICH JUDGES OF THE BEAUTIFUL TO THAT WHICH ...

§ 24. OF THE DIVISIONS OF AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE FEELING OF THE SUBLIME

§ 25. EXPLANATION OF THE TERM SUBLIME

§ 26. OF THAT ESTIMATION OF THE MAGNITUDE OF NATURAL THINGS WHICH IS REQUISITE ...

§ 27. OF THE QUALITY OF THE SATISFACTION IN OUR JUDGMENTS UPON THE SUBLIME

§ 28. OF NATURE REGARDED AS MIGHT

§ 29. OF THE MODALITY OF THE JUDGMENT UPON THE SUBLIME IN NATURE

§ 30. THE DEDUCTION OF ÆSTHETICAL JUDGMENTS ON THE OBJECTS OF NATURE MUST NOT ...

§ 31. OF THE METHOD OF DEDUCTION OF JUDGMENTS OF TASTE

§ 32. FIRST PECULIARITY OF THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE

§ 33. SECOND PECULIARITY OF THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE

§ 34. THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE PRINCIPLE OF TASTE POSSIBLE

§ 35. THE PRINCIPLE OF TASTE IS THE SUBJECTIVE PRINCIPLE OF JUDGMENT IN GENERAL

§ 36. OF THE PROBLEM OF A DEDUCTION OF JUDGMENTS OF TASTE

§ 37. WHAT IS PROPERLY ASSERTED A PRIORI OF AN OBJECT IN A JUDGMENT OF TASTE

§ 38. DEDUCTION OF JUDGMENTS OF TASTE

§ 39. OF THE COMMUNICABILITY OF A SENSATION

§ 40. OF TASTE AS A KIND OF SENSUS COMMUNIS

§ 41. OF THE EMPIRICAL INTEREST IN THE BEAUTIFUL

§ 42. OF THE INTELLECTUAL INTEREST IN THE BEAUTIFUL

§ 43. OF ART IN GENERAL

§ 44. OF BEAUTIFUL ART

§ 45. BEAUTIFUL ART IS AN ART, IN SO FAR AS IT SEEMS LIKE NATURE

§ 46. BEAUTIFUL ART IS THE ART OF GENIUS

§ 47. ELUCIDATION AND CONFIRMATION OF THE ABOVE EXPLANATION OF GENIUS

§ 48. OF THE RELATION OF GENIUS TO TASTE

§ 49. OF THE FACULTIES OF THE MIND THAT CONSTITUTE GENIUS

§ 50. OF THE COMBINATION OF TASTE WITH GENIUS IN THE PRODUCTS OF BEAUTIFUL ART

§ 51. OF THE DIVISION OF THE BEAUTIFUL ARTS

§ 52. OF THE COMBINATION OF BEAUTIFUL ARTS IN ONE AND THE SAME PRODUCT

§ 53. COMPARISON OF THE RESPECTIVE ÆSTHETICAL WORTH OF THE BEAUTIFUL ARTS

§ 54. REMARK

SECOND DIVISION - DIALECTIC OF THE ÆSTHETICAL JUDGMENT

§ 55

§ 56. REPRESENTATION OF THE ANTINOMY OF TASTE

§ 57. SOLUTION OF THE ANTINOMY OF TASTE

APPENDIX

PART II - CRITIQUE OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT

§ 61. OF THE OBJECTIVE PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE

FIRST DIVISION - ANALYTIC OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT

§ 62. OF THE OBJECTIVE PURPOSIVENESS WHICH IS MERELY FORMAL AS DISTINGUISHED ...

§ 63. OF THE RELATIVE AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE INNER PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE

§ 64. OF THE PECULIAR CHARACTER OF THINGS AS NATURAL PURPOSES

§ 65. THINGS REGARDED AS NATURAL PURPOSES ARE ORGANIZED BEINGS

§ 66. OF THE PRINCIPLE OF JUDGING OF INTERNAL PURPOSIVENESS IN ORGANIZED BEINGS

§ 67. OF THE PRINCIPLE OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGING OF NATURE IN GENERAL AS A ...

§ 68. OF THE PRINCIPLE OF TELEOLOGY AS INTERNAL PRINCIPLE OF NATURAL SCIENCE

SECOND DIVISION - DIALECTIC OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT

§ 69. WHAT IS AN ANTINOMY OF THE JUDGMENT?

§ 70. REPRESENTATION OF THIS ANTINOMY

§ 71. PRELIMINARY TO THE SOLUTION OF THE ABOVE ANTINOMY

§ 72. OF THE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS WHICH DEAL WITH THE PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE

§ 73. NONE OF THE ABOVE SYSTEMS GIVE WHAT THEY PRETEND

§ 74. THE REASON THAT WE CANNOT TREAT THE CONCEPT OF A TECHNIC OF NATURE ...

§ 75. THE CONCEPT OF AN OBJECTIVE PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE IS A CRITICAL ...

§ 76. REMARK

§ 77. OF THE PECULIARITY OF THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, BY MEANS OF WHICH THE ...

§ 78. OF THE UNION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF THE UNIVERSAL MECHANISM OF MATTER WITH ...

METHODOLOGY OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT

§ 79. WHETHER TELEOLOGY MUST BE TREATED AS IF IT BELONGED TO THE DOCTRINE OF NATURE

§ 80. OF THE NECESSARY SUBORDINATION OF THE MECHANICAL TO THE TELEOLOGICAL ...

§ 81. OF THE ASSOCIATION OF MECHANISM WITH THE TELEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE IN THE ...

§ 82. OF THE TELEOLOGICAL SYSTEM IN THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF ORGANIZED BEINGS

§ 83. OF THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF NATURE AS A TELEOLOGICAL SYSTEM

§ 85. OF PHYSICO-THEOLOGY

§ 86. OF ETHICO-THEOLOGY

§ 87. OF THE MORAL PROOF OF THE BEING OF GOD

§ 88. LIMITATION OF THE VALIDITY OF THE MORAL PROOF

§ 89. OF THE USE OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT

§ 90. OF THE KIND OF BELIEF IN A TELEOLOGICAL PROOF OF THE BEING OF GOD

§ 91. OF THE KIND OF BELIEF PRODUCED BY A PRACTICAL FAITH

ENDNOTES

SUGGESTED READING

003 PART I 004

CRITIQUE OF THE

ÆSTHETICAL JUDGMENT

FIRST DIVISION ANALYTIC OF

THE ÆSTHETICAL JUDGMENT

005 FIRST BOOK 006

ANALYTIC OF THE BEAUTIFUL

FIRST MOMENT OF THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE¹ ACCORDING TO QUALITY

§ 1. THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE IS ÆSTHETICAL

In order to distinguish whether anything is beautiful or not, we refer the representation not by the Understanding to the Object for cognition, but by the Imagination (perhaps in conjunction with the Understanding) to the subject, and its feeling of pleasure or pain. The judgment of taste is therefore not a judgment of cognition, and is consequently not logical but æsthetical, by which we understand that whose determining ground can be no other than subjective. Every reference of representations, even that of sensations, may be objective (and then it signifies the real [element] of an empirical representation); save only the reference to the feeling of pleasure and pain, by which nothing in the Object is signified, but through which there is a feeling in the subject, as it is affected by the representation.

To apprehend a regular, purposive building by means of one’s cognitive faculty (whether in a clear or a confused way of representation) is something quite different from being conscious of this representation as connected with the sensation of satisfaction. Here the representation is altogether referred to the subject and to its feeling of life, under the name of the feeling of pleasure or pain. This establishes a quite separate faculty of distinction and of judgment, adding nothing to cognition, but only comparing the given representation in the subject with the whole faculty of representations, of which the mind is conscious in the feeling of its state. Given representations in a judgment can be empirical (consequently, æsthetical); but the judgment which is formed by means of them is logical, provided they are referred in the judgment to the Object. Conversely, if the given representations are rational, but are referred in a judgment simply to the subject (to its feeling), the judgment is so far always æsthetical.

§ 2. THE SATISFACTION WHICH DETERMINES THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE IS DISINTERESTED

The satisfaction which we combine with the representation of the existence of an object is called interest. Such satisfaction always has reference to the faculty of desire, either as its determining ground or as necessarily connected with its determining ground. Now when the question is if a thing is beautiful, we do not want to know whether anything depends or can depend on the existence of the thing either for myself or for anyone else, but how we judge it by mere observation (intuition or reflection). If anyone asks me if I find that palace beautiful which I see before me, I may answer: I do not like things of that kind which are made merely to be stared at. Or I can answer like that Iroquois Sachem who was pleased in Paris by nothing more than by the cook-shops. Or again after the manner of Rousseau I may rebuke the vanity of the great who waste the sweat of the people on such superfluous things. In fine I could easily convince myself that if I found myself on an uninhabited island without the hope of ever again coming among men, and could conjure up just such a splendid building by my mere wish, I should not even give myself the trouble if I had a sufficiently comfortable hut. This may all be admitted and approved; but we are not now talking of this. We wish only to know if this mere representation of the object is accompanied in me with satisfaction, however indifferent I may be as regards the existence of the object of this representation. We easily see that in saying it is beautiful and in showing that I have taste, I am concerned, not with that in which I depend on the existence of the object, but with that which I make out of this representation in myself. Everyone must admit that a judgment about beauty, in which the least interest mingles, is very partial and is not a pure judgment of taste. We must not be in the least prejudiced in favor of the existence of the things, but be quite indifferent in this respect, in order to play the judge in things of taste.

We cannot, however, better elucidate this proposition, which is of capital importance, than by contrasting the pure disinterested² satisfaction in judgments of taste, with that which is bound up with an interest, especially if we can at the same time be certain that there are no other kinds of interest than those which are to be now specified.

§ 3. THE SATISFACTION IN THE PLEASANT IS BOUND UP WITH INTEREST

That which pleases the senses in sensation is PLEASANT. Here the opportunity presents itself of censuring a very common confusion of the double sense which the word sensation can have, and of calling attention to it. All satisfaction (it is said or thought) is itself sensation (of a pleasure). Consequently everything that pleases is pleasant because it pleases (and according to its different degrees or its relations to other pleasant sensations it is agreeable, lovely, delightful, enjoyable, etc.) But if this be admitted, then impressions of Sense which determine the inclination, fundamental propositions of Reason which determine the Will, mere reflective forms of intuition which determine the Judgment, are quite the same, as regards the effect upon the feeling of pleasure. For this would be pleasantness in the sensation of one’s state, and since in the end all the operations of our faculties must issue in the practical and unite in it as their goal, we could suppose no other way of estimating things and their worth than that which consists in the gratification that they promise. It is of no consequence at all how this is attained, and since then the choice of means alone could make a difference, men could indeed blame one another for stupidity and indiscretion, but never for baseness and wickedness. For thus they all, each according to his own way of seeing things, seek one goal, that is, gratification.

If a determination of the feeling of pleasure or pain is called sensation, this expression signifies something quite different from what I mean when I call the representation of a thing (by sense, as a receptivity belonging to the cognitive faculty) sensation. For in the latter case the representation is referred to the Object, in the former simply to the subject, and is available for no cognition whatever, not even for that by which the subject cognizes itself.

In the above elucidation we understand by the word sensation, an objective representation of sense; and in order to avoid misinterpretation, we shall call that, which must always remain merely subjective and can constitute absolutely no representation of an object, by the ordinary term feeling. The green color of the meadows belongs to objective sensation, as a perception of an object of sense; the pleasantness of this belongs to subjective sensation by which no object is represented, i.e., to feeling, by which the object is considered as an Object of satisfaction (which does not furnish a cognition of it).

Now that a judgment about an object, by which I describe it as pleasant, expresses an interest in it, is plain from the fact that by sensation it excites a desire for objects of that kind; consequently the satisfaction presupposes not the mere judgment about it, but the relation of its existence to my state, so far as this is affected by such an Object. Hence we do not merely say of the pleasant, it pleases; but, it gratifies. I give to it no mere assent, but inclination is aroused by it; and in the case of what is pleasant in the most lively fashion, there is no judgment at all upon the character of the Object, for those [persons] who always lay themselves out for enjoyment (for that is the word describing intense gratification) would fain dispense with all judgment.

§ 4. THE SATISFACTION IN THE GOOD IS BOUND UP WITH INTEREST

Whatever by means of Reason pleases through the mere concept is GOOD. That which pleases only as a means we call good for something (the useful); but that which pleases for itself is good in itself. In both there is always involved the concept of a purpose, and consequently the relation of Reason to the (at least possible) volition, and thus a satisfaction in the presence of an Object or an action, i.e., some kind of interest.

In order to find anything good, I must always know what sort of a thing the object ought to be, i.e., I must have a concept of it. But there is no need of this, to find a thing beautiful. Flowers, free delineations, outlines intertwined with one another without design and called [conventional] foliage, have no meaning, depend on no definite concept, and yet they please. The satisfaction in the beautiful must depend on the reflection upon an object, leading to any concept (however indefinite); and it is thus distinguished from the pleasant which rests entirely upon sensation.

It is true, the Pleasant seems in many cases to be the same as the Good. Thus people are accustomed to say that all gratification (especially if it lasts) is good in itself; which is very much the same as to say that lasting pleasure and the good are the same. But we can soon see that this is merely a confusion of words; for the concepts which properly belong to these expressions can in no way be interchanged. The pleasant, which, as such, represents the object simply in relation to Sense, must first be brought by the concept of a purpose under principles of Reason, in order to call it good, as an object of the Will. But that there is [involved] a quite different relation to satisfaction in calling that which gratifies at the same time good, may be seen from the fact that in the case of the good the question always is, whether it is mediately or immediately good (useful or good in itself); but on the contrary in the case of the pleasant there can be no question about this at all, for the word always signifies something which pleases immediately. (The same is applicable to what I call beautiful).

Even in common speech men distinguish the Pleasant from the Good. Of a dish which stimulates the taste by spices and other condiments we say unhesitatingly that it is pleasant, though it is at the same time admitted not to be good; for though it immediately delights the senses, yet mediately, i.e., considered by Reason which looks to the after results, it displeases. Even in the judging of health we may notice this distinction. It is immediately pleasant to everyone possessing it (at least negatively, i.e., as the absence of all bodily pains). But in order to say that it is good, it must be considered by Reason with reference to purposes; viz., that it is a state which makes us fit for all our business. Finally in respect of happiness everyone believes himself entitled to describe the greatest sum of the pleasantness of life (as regards both their number and their duration) as a true, even as the highest, good. However Reason is opposed to this. Pleasantness is enjoyment. And if we were concerned with this alone, it would be foolish to be scrupulous as regards the means which procure it for us, or [to care] whether it is obtained passively by the bounty of nature or by our own activity and work. But Reason can never be persuaded that the existence of a man who merely lives for enjoyment (however busy he may be in this point of view), has a worth in itself; even if he at the same time is conducive as a means to the best enjoyment of others, and shares in all their gratifications by sympathy. Only what he does, without reference to enjoyment, in full freedom and independently of what nature can procure for him passively, gives an [absolute³] worth to his presence [in the world] as the existence of a person; and happiness, with the whole abundance of its pleasures, is far from being an unconditioned good.⁴

However, notwithstanding all this difference between the pleasant and the good, they both agree in this that they are always bound up with an interest in their object; so are not only the pleasant (§ 3), and the mediate good (the useful) which is pleasing as a means towards pleasantness somewhere, but also that which is good absolutely and in every aspect, viz., moral good, which brings with it the highest interest. For the good is the Object of will (i.e., of a faculty of desire determined