7362 lines
560 KiB
Plaintext
7362 lines
560 KiB
Plaintext
LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE (R) First Edition Ver. 4.02
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Critique of Judgement Kant Immanuel
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1790
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THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT
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by Immanuel Kant
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translated by James Creed Meredith
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Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1991, World Library, Inc.
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PREFACE
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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 1790.
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The faculty of knowledge from a priori principles may be called pure
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reason, and the general investigation into its possibility and
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bounds the Critique of Pure Reason. This is permissible although "pure
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reason," as was the case with the same use of terms in our first work,
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is only intended to denote reason in its theoretical employment, and
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although there is no desire to bring under review its faculty as
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practical reason and its special principles as such. That Critique is,
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then, an investigation addressed simply to our faculty of knowing
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things a priori. Hence it makes our cognitive faculties its sole
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concern, to the exclusion of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure
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and the faculty of desire; and among the cognitive faculties it
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confines its attention to understanding and its a priori principles,
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to the exclusion of judgement and reason, (faculties that also
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belong to theoretical cognition,) because it turns out in the sequel
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that there is no cognitive faculty other than understanding capable of
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affording constitutive a priori principles of knowledge. Accordingly
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the critique which sifts these faculties one and all, so as to try the
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possible claims of each of the other faculties to a share in the clear
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possession of knowledge from roots of its own, retains nothing but
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what understanding prescribes a priori as a law for nature as the
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complex of phenomena-the form of these being similarly furnished a
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priori. All other pure concepts it relegates to the rank of ideas,*
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which for our faculty of theoretical cognition are transcendent;
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though they are not without their use nor redundant, but discharge
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certain functions as regulative principles.** For these concepts serve
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partly to restrain the officious pretentions of understanding,
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which, presuming on its ability to supply a priori the conditions of
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the possibility of all things which it is capable of knowing,
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behaves as if it had thus determined these bounds as those of the
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possibility of all things generally, and partly also to lead
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understanding, in its study of nature, according to a principle of
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completeness, unattainable as this remains for it, and so to promote
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the ultimate aim of all knowledge.
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*[The word is defined in SS 17 & SS 57 Remark I. See Critique of
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Pure Reason, "Of the Conceptions of Pure Reason" - Section 1 & 2:
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"I understand by idea a necessary conception of reason, to which no
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corresponding object can be discovered in the world of sense."
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(Ibid., Section 2.) "They contain a certain perfection, attainable
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by no possible empirical cognition; and they give to reason a
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systematic unity, to which the unity of experience attempts to
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approximate, but can never completely attain." (Ibid., "Ideal of
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Pure Reason").
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**[Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Appendix.]
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{PREFACE ^paragraph 5}
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Properly, therefore, it was understanding which, so far as it
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contains constitutive a priori cognitive principles, has its special
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realm, and one, moreover, in our faculty of knowledge that the
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Critique, called in a general way that of pure reason was intended
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to establish in secure but particular possession against all other
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competitors. In the same way reason, which contains constitutive a
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priori principles solely in respect of the faculty of desire, gets its
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holding assigned to it by The Critique of Practical Reason.
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But now comes judgement, which in the order of our cognitive
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faculties forms a middle term between understanding and reason. Has it
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also got independent a priori principles? If so, are they
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constitutive, or are they merely regulative, thus indicating no
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special realm? And do they give a rule a priori to the feeling of
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pleasure and displeasure, as the middle term between the faculties
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of cognition and desire, just as understanding prescribes laws a
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priori for the former and reason for the latter? This is the topic
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to which the present Critique is devoted.
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A critique of pure reason, i.e., of our faculty of judging on a
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priori principles, would be incomplete if the critical examination
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of judgement, which is a faculty of knowledge, and as such lays
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claim to independent principles, were not dealt with separately.
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Still, however, its principles cannot, in a system of pure philosophy,
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form a separate constituent part intermediate between the
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theoretical and practical divisions, but may when needful be annexed
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to one or other as occasion requires. For if such a system is some day
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worked out under the general name of metaphysic-and its full and
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complete execution is both possible and of the utmost importance for
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the employment of reason in all departments of its activity-the
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critical examination of the ground for this edifice must have been
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previously carried down to the very depths of the foundations of the
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faculty of principles independent of experience, lest in some
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quarter it might give way, and sinking, inevitably bring with it the
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ruin of all.
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We may readily gather, however, from the nature of the faculty of
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judgement (whose correct employment is so necessary and universally
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requisite that it is just this faculty that is intended when we
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speak of sound understanding) that the discovery of a peculiar
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principle belonging to it-and some such it must contain in itself a
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priori, for otherwise it would not be a cognitive faculty the
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distinctive character of which is obvious to the most commonplace
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criticism-must be a task involving considerable difficulties. For this
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principle is one which must not be derived from a priori concepts,
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seeing that these are the property of understanding, and judgement
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is only directed to their application. It has, therefore, itself to
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furnish a concept, and one from which, properly, we get no cognition
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of a thing, but which it can itself employ as a rule only-but not as
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an objective rule to which it can adapt its judgement, because, for
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that, another faculty of judgement would again be required to enable
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us to decide whether the case was one for the application of the
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rule or not.
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It is chiefly in those estimates that are called aesthetic, and
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which relate to the beautiful and sublime, whether of nature or of
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art, that one meets with the above difficulty about a principle (be it
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subjective or objective). And yet the critical search for a
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principle of judgement in their case is the most important item in a
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critique of this faculty. For, although they do not of themselves
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contribute a whit to the knowledge of things, they still belong wholly
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to the faculty of knowledge, and evidence an immediate bearing of this
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faculty upon the feeling of pleasure or displeasure according to
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some a priori principle, and do so without confusing this principle
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with what is capable of being a determining ground of the faculty of
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desire, for the latter has its principles a priori in concepts of
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reason. Logical estimates of nature, however, stand on a different
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footing. They deal with cases in which experience presents a
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conformity to law in things, which the understanding's general concept
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of the sensible is no longer adequate to render intelligible or
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explicable, and in which judgement may have recourse to itself for a
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principle of the reference of the natural thing to the unknowable
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supersensible and, indeed, must employ some such principle, though
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with a regard only to itself and the knowledge of nature. For in these
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cases the application of such an a priori principle for the
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cognition of what is in the world is both possible and necessary,
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and withal opens out prospects which are profitable for practical
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reason. But here there is no immediate reference to the feeling of
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pleasure or displeasure. But this is precisely the riddle in the
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principle of judgement that necessitates a separate division for
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this faculty in the critique-for there was nothing to prevent the
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formation of logical estimates according to concepts (from which no
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immediate conclusion can ever be drawn to the feeling of pleasure or
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displeasure) having been treated, with a critical statement of its
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limitations, in an appendage to the theoretical part of philosophy.
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{PREFACE ^paragraph 10}
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The present investigation of taste, as a faculty of aesthetic
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judgement, not being undertaken with a view to the formation or
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culture of taste (which will pursue its course in the future, as in
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the past, independently of such inquiries), but being merely
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directed to its transcendental aspects, I feel assured of its
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indulgent criticism in respect of any shortcomings on that score.
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But in all that is relevant to the transcendental aspect it must be
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prepared to stand the test of the most rigorous examination. Yet
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even here I venture to hope that the difficulty of unravelling a
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problem so involved in its nature may serve as an excuse for a certain
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amount of hardly avoidable obscurity in its solution, provided that
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the accuracy of our statement of the principle is proved with all
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requisite clearness. I admit that the mode of deriving the phenomena
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of judgement from that principle has not all the lucidity that is
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rightly demanded elsewhere, where the subject is cognition by
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concepts, and that I believe I have in fact attained in the second
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part of this work.
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With this, then, I bring my entire critical undertaking to a
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close. I shall hasten to the doctrinal part, in order, as far as
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possible, to snatch from my advancing years what time may yet be
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favourable to the task. It is obvious that no separate division of
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doctrine is reserved for the faculty of judgement, seeing that, with
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judgement, critique takes the place of theory; but, following the
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division of philosophy into theoretical and practical, and of pure
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philosophy in the same way, the whole ground will be covered by the
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metaphysics of nature and of morals.
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INTRO
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INTRODUCTION.
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I. Division of Philosophy.
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Philosophy may be said to contain the principles of the rational
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cognition that concepts afford us of things (not merely, as with
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logic, the principles of the form of thought in general irrespective
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of the objects), and, thus interpreted, the course, usually adopted,
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of dividing it into theoretical and practical is perfectly sound.
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But this makes imperative a specific distinction on the part of the
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concepts by which the principles of this rational cognition get
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their object assigned to them, for if the concepts are not distinct
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they fail to justify a division, which always presupposes that the
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principles belonging to the rational cognition of the several parts of
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the science in question are themselves mutually exclusive.
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Now there are but two kinds of concepts, and these yield a
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corresponding number of distinct principles of the possibility of
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their objects. The concepts referred to are those of nature and that
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of freedom. By the first of these, a theoretical cognition from a
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priori principles becomes possible. In respect of such cognition,
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however, the second, by its very concept, imports no more than a
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negative principle (that of simple antithesis), while for the
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determination of the will, on the other hand, it establishes
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fundamental principles which enlarge the scope of its activity, and
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which on that account are called practical. Hence the division of
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philosophy falls properly into two parts, quite distinct in their
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principles-a theoretical, as philosophy of nature, and a practical, as
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philosophy of morals (for this is what the practical legislation of
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reason by the concept of freedom is called). Hitherto, however, in the
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application of these expressions to the division of the different
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principles, and with them to the division of philosophy, a gross
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misuse of the terms has prevailed; for what is practical according
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to concepts of nature bas been taken as identical with what is
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practical according to the concept of freedom, with the result that
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a division has been made under these heads of theoretical and
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practical, by which, in effect, there has been no division at all
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(seeing that both parts might have similar principles).
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The will-for this is what is said-is the faculty of desire and, as
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such, is just one of the many natural causes in the world, the one,
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namely, which acts by concepts; and whatever is represented as
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possible (or necessary) through the efficacy of will is called
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practically possible (or necessary): the intention being to
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distinguish its possibility (or necessity) from the physical
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possibility or necessity of an effect the causality of whose cause
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is not determined to its production by concepts (but rather, as with
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lifeless matter, by mechanism, and, as with the lower animals, by
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instinct). Now, the question in respect of the practical faculty:
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whether, that is to say, the concept, by which the causality of the
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will gets its rule, is a concept of nature or of freedom, is here left
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quite open.
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The latter distinction, however, is essential. For, let the
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concept determining the causality be a concept of nature, and then the
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principles are technically-practical; but, let it be a concept of
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freedom, and they are morally-practical. Now, in the division of a
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rational science the difference between objects that require different
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principles for their cognition is the difference on which everything
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turns. Hence technically-practical principles belong to theoretical
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philosophy (natural science), whereas those morally-practical alone
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form the second part, that is, practical philosophy (ethical science).
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{INTRO ^paragraph 5}
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All technically-practical rules (i.e., those of art and skill
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generally, or even of prudence, as a skill in exercising an
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influence over men and their wills) must, so far as their principles
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rest upon concepts, be reckoned only as corollaries to theoretical
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philosophy. For they only touch the possibility of things according to
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concepts of nature, and this embraces, not alone the means
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discoverable in nature for the purpose, but even the will itself (as a
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faculty of desire, and consequently a natural faculty), so far as it
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is determinable on these rules by natural motives. Still these
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practical rules are not called laws (like physical laws), but only
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precepts. This is due to the fact that the will does not stand
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simply under the natural concept, but also under the concept of
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freedom. In the latter connection its principles are called laws,
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and these principles, with the addition of what follows them, alone
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constitute the second at practical part of philosophy.
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The solution of the problems of pure geometry is not allocated to
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a special part of that science, nor does the art of land-surveying
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merit the name of practical, in contradistinction to pure, as a second
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part of the general science of geometry, and with equally little, or
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perhaps less, right can the mechanical or chemical art of experiment
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or of observation be ranked as a practical part of the science of
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nature, or, in fine, domestic, agricultural, or political economy, the
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art of social intercourse, the principles of dietetics, or even
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general instruction as to the attainment of happiness, or as much as
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the control of the inclinations or the restraining of the affections
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with a view thereto, be denominated practical philosophy-not to
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mention forming these latter in a second part of philosophy in
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general. For, between them all, the above contain nothing more than
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rules of skill, which are thus only technically practical-the skill
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being directed to producing an effect which is possible according to
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natural concepts of causes and effects. As these concepts belong to
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theoretical philosophy, they are subject to those precepts as mere
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corollaries of theoretical philosophy (i.e., as corollaries of natural
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science), and so cannot claim any place in any special philosophy
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called practical. On the other hand, the morally practical precepts,
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which are founded entirely on the concept of freedom, to the
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complete exclusion of grounds taken from nature for the
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determination of the will, form quite a special kind of precepts.
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These, too, like the rules obeyed by nature, are, without
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qualification, called laws-though they do not, like the latter, rest
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on sensible conditions, but upon a supersensible principle-and they
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must needs have a separate part of philosophy allotted to them as
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their own, corresponding to the theoretical part, and termed practical
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philosophy capable
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Hence it is evident that a complex of practical precepts furnished
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by philosophy does not form a special part of philosophy,
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co-ordinate with the theoretical, by reason of its precepts being
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practical-for that they might be, notwithstanding that their
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principles were derived wholly from the theoretical knowledge of
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nature (as technically-practical rules). But an adequate reason only
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exists where their principle, being in no way borrowed from the
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concept of nature, which is always sensibly conditioned, rests
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consequently on the supersensible, which the concept of freedom
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alone makes cognizable by means of its formal laws, and where,
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therefore, they are morally-practical, i. e., not merely precepts
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and its and rules in this or that interest, but laws independent of
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all antecedent reference to ends or aims.
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II. The Realm of Philosophy in General.
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{INTRO ^paragraph 10}
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The employment of our faculty of cognition from principles, and with
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it philosophy, is coextensive with the applicability of a priori
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concepts.
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Now a division of the complex of all the objects to which those
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concepts are referred for the purpose, where possible, of compassing
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their knowledge, may be made according to the varied competence or
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incompetence of our faculty in that connection.
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Concepts, so far as they are referred to objects apart from the
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question of whether knowledge of them is possible or not, have their
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field, which is determined simply by the relation in which their
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object stands to our faculty of cognition in general. The part of this
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field in which knowledge is possible for us is a territory
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(territorium) for these concepts and the requisite cognitive
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faculty. The part of the territory over which they exercise
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legislative authority is the realm (ditio) of these concepts, and
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their appropriate cognitive faculty. Empirical concepts have,
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therefore, their territory, doubtless, in nature as the complex of all
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sensible objects, but they have no realm (only a dwelling-place,
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domicilium), for, although they are formed according to law, they
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are not themselves legislative, but the rules founded on them are
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empirical and, consequently, contingent.
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Our entire faculty of cognition has two realms, that of natural
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concepts and that of the concept of freedom, for through both it
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prescribes laws a priori. In accordance with this distinction, then,
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philosophy is divisible into theoretical and practical. But the
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territory upon which its realm is established, and over which it
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exercises its legislative authority, is still always confined to the
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complex of the objects of all possible experience, taken as no more
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than mere phenomena, for otherwise legislation by the understanding in
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respect of them is unthinkable.
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{INTRO ^paragraph 15}
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The function of prescribing laws by means of concepts of nature is
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discharged by understanding and is theoretical. That of prescribing
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laws by means of the concept of freedom is discharged by reason and is
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merely practical. It is only in the practical sphere that reason can
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prescribe laws; in respect of theoretical knowledge (of nature) it can
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only (as by the understanding advised in the law) deduce from given
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logical consequences, which still always remain restricted to
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nature. But we cannot reverse this and say that where rules are
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practical reason is then and there legislative, since the rules
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might be technically practical.
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Understanding and reason, therefore, have two distinct jurisdictions
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over one and the same territory of experience. But neither can
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interfere with the other. For the concept of freedom just as little
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disturbs the legislation of nature, as the concept of nature
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influences legislation through the concept of freedom. That it is
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possible for us at least to think without contradiction of both
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these jurisdictions, and their appropriate faculties, as co-existing
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in the same subject, was shown by the Critique of Pure Reason, since
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it disposed of the objections on the other side by detecting their
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dialectical illusion.
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Still, how does it happen that these two different realms do not
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form one realm, seeing that, while they do not limit each other in
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their legislation, they continually do so in their effects in the
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sensible world? The explanation lies in the fact that the concept of
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nature represents its objects in intuition doubtless, yet not as
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things in-themselves, but as mere phenomena, whereas the concept of
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freedom represents in its object what is no doubt a thing-in-itself,
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but it does not make it intuitable, and further that neither the one
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nor the other is capable, therefore, of furnishing a theoretical
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cognition of its object (or even of the thinking subject) as a
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thing-in-itself, or, as this would be, of the supersensible idea of
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which has certainly to be introduced as the basis of the possibility
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of all those objects of experience, although it cannot itself ever
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be elevated or extended into a cognition.
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Our entire cognitive faculty is, therefore, presented with an
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unbounded, but, also, inaccessible field-the field of the
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supersensible-in which we seek in vain for a territory, and on
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which, therefore, we can have no realm for theoretical cognition, be
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it for concepts of understanding or of reason. This field we must
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indeed occupy with ideas in the interest as well of the theoretical as
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the practical employment of reason, but, in connection with the laws
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arising from the concept of freedom, we cannot procure for these ideas
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any but practical reality, which, accordingly, fails to advance our
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theoretical cognition one step towards the supersensible.
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Albeit, then, between the realm of the natural concept, as the
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sensible, and the realm of the concept of freedom, as the
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supersensible, there is a great gulf fixed, so that it is not possible
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to pass from the to the latter (by means of the theoretical employment
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of reason), just as if they were so many separate worlds, the first of
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which is powerless to exercise influence on the second: still the
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latter is meant to influence the former-that is to say, the concept of
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freedom is meant to actualize in the sensible world the end proposed
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by its laws; and nature must consequently also be capable of being
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regarded in such a way that in the conformity to law of its form it at
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least harmonizes with the possibility of the ends to be effectuated in
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it according to the laws of freedom. There must, therefore, be a
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ground of the unity of the supersensible that lies at the basis of
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nature, with what the concept of freedom contains in a practical
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way, and although the concept of this ground neither theoretically nor
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practically attains to a knowledge of it, and so has no peculiar realm
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of its own, still it renders possible the transition from the mode
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of thought according to the principles of the one to that according to
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the principles of the other.
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{INTRO ^paragraph 20}
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III. The Critique of Judgement as a means of
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connecting the two Parts of Philosophy
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in a whole.
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{INTRO ^paragraph 25}
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The critique which deals with what our cognitive faculties are
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capable of yielding a priori has properly speaking no realm in respect
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of objects; for it is not a doctrine, its sole business being to
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investigate whether, having regard to the general bearings of our
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faculties, a doctrine is possible by their means, and if so, how.
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Its field extends to all their pretentions, with a view to confining
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||
them within their legitimate bounds. But what is shut out of the
|
||
division of philosophy may still be admitted as a principal part
|
||
into the general critique of our faculty of pure cognition, in the
|
||
event, namely, of its containing principles which are not in
|
||
themselves available either for theoretical or practical employment.
|
||
Concepts of nature contain the ground of all theoretical cognition a
|
||
priori and rest, as we saw, upon the legislative authority of
|
||
understanding. The concept of freedom contains the ground of all
|
||
sensuously unconditioned practical precepts a priori, and rests upon
|
||
that of reason. Both faculties, therefore, besides their application
|
||
in point of logical form to principles of whatever origin, have, in
|
||
addition, their own peculiar jurisdiction in the matter of their
|
||
content, and so, there being no further (a priori) jurisdiction
|
||
above them, the division of philosophy into theoretical and
|
||
practical is justified.
|
||
But there is still further in the family of our higher cognitive
|
||
faculties a middle term between understanding and reason. This is
|
||
judgement, of which we may reasonably presume by analogy that it may
|
||
likewise contain, if not a special authority to prescribe laws,
|
||
still a principle peculiar to itself upon which laws are sought,
|
||
although one merely subjective a priori. This principle, even if it
|
||
has no field of objects appropriate to it as its realm, may still have
|
||
some territory or other with a certain character, for which just
|
||
this very principle alone may be valid.
|
||
But in addition to the above considerations there is yet (to judge
|
||
by analogy) a further ground, upon which judgement may be brought into
|
||
line with another arrangement of our powers of representation, and one
|
||
that appears to be of even greater importance than that of its kinship
|
||
with the family of cognitive faculties. For all faculties of the soul,
|
||
or capacities, are reducible to three, which do not admit of any
|
||
further derivation from a common ground: the faculty of knowledge, the
|
||
feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and the faculty of desire.* For
|
||
the faculty of cognition understanding alone is legislative, if (as
|
||
must be the case where it is considered on its own account free of
|
||
confusion with the faculty of desire) this faculty, as that of
|
||
theoretical cognition, is referred to nature, in respect of which
|
||
alone (as phenomenon) it is possible for us to prescribe laws by means
|
||
of a priori concepts of nature, which are properly pure concepts of
|
||
understanding. For the faculty of desire, as a higher faculty
|
||
operating under the concept of freedom, only reason (in which alone
|
||
this concept has a place) prescribes laws a priori. Now between the
|
||
faculties of knowledge and desire stands the feeling of pleasure, just
|
||
as judgement is intermediate between understanding and reason. Hence
|
||
we may, provisionally at least, assume that judgement likewise
|
||
contains an a priori principle of its own, and that, since pleasure or
|
||
displeasure is necessarily combined with the faculty of desire (be
|
||
it antecedent to its principle, as with the lower desires, or, as with
|
||
the higher, only supervening upon its determination by the moral law),
|
||
it will effect a transition from the faculty of pure knowledge,
|
||
i.e., from the realm of concepts of nature, to that of the concept
|
||
of freedom, just as i its logical employment it makes possible the
|
||
transition from understanding to reason.
|
||
-
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 30}
|
||
*Where one has reason to suppose that a relation subsists between
|
||
concepts that are used as empirical principles and the faculty of pure
|
||
cognition a priori, it is worth while attempting, in consideration
|
||
of this connection, to give them a transcendental definition-a
|
||
definition, that is, by pure categories, so far as these by themselves
|
||
adequately indicate the distinction of the concept in question from
|
||
others. This course follows that of the mathematician, who leaves
|
||
the empirical data of his problem indeterminate, and only brings their
|
||
relation in pure synthesis under the concepts of pure arithmetic,
|
||
and thus generalizes his solution.-I have been taken to task for
|
||
adopting a similar procedure and fault had been found with my
|
||
definition of the faculty of desire as a faculty which by means of its
|
||
representations is the cause of the cause of the actuality of the
|
||
objects of those representations: for mere wishes would still be
|
||
desires, and yet in their case every one is ready to abandon all claim
|
||
to being able by means of them alone to call their object into
|
||
existence. -But this proves no more than the presence of desires in
|
||
man by which he is in contradiction with himself. For in such a case
|
||
he seeks the production of the object by means of his representation
|
||
alone, without any hope of its being effectual, since he is
|
||
conscious that his mechanical powers (if I may so call those which are
|
||
not psychological), which would have to be determined by that
|
||
representation, are either unequal to the task of realizing the object
|
||
(by the intervention of means, therefore) or else are addressed to
|
||
what is quite impossible, as, for example, to undo the past (O mihi
|
||
praeteritos, etc.) or, to be able to annihilate the interval that,
|
||
with intolerable delay, divides us from the wished for moment. -Now,
|
||
conscious as we are in such fantastic desires of the inefficiency of
|
||
our representations (or even of their futility), as causes of their
|
||
objects, there is still involved in every wish a reference of the same
|
||
as cause, and therefore the representation of its causality, and
|
||
this is especially discernible where the wish, as longing, is an
|
||
affection. For such affections, since they dilate the heart and render
|
||
it inert and thus exhaust its powers, show that a strain is kept on
|
||
being exerted and re-exerted on these powers by the representations,
|
||
but that the mind is allowed continually to relapse and get languid
|
||
upon recognition of the impossibility before it. Even prayers for
|
||
the aversion of great, and, so far as we can see, inevitable evils,
|
||
and many superstitious means for attaining ends impossible of
|
||
attainment by natural means, prove the causal reference of
|
||
representations to their objects-a causality which not even the
|
||
consciousness of inefficiency for producing the effect can deter
|
||
from straining towards it. But why our nature should be furnished with
|
||
a propensity to consciously vain desires is a teleological problem
|
||
of anthropology. It would seem that were we not to be determined to
|
||
the exertion of our power before we had assured ourselves of the
|
||
efficiency of our faculty for producing an object, our power would
|
||
remain to a large extent unused. For as a rule we only first learn
|
||
to know our powers by making trial of them. This deceit of vain
|
||
desires is therefore only the result of a beneficent disposition in
|
||
our nature.
|
||
-
|
||
Hence, despite the fact of philosophy being only divisible into
|
||
two principal parts, the theoretical and the practical, and despite
|
||
the fact of all that we may have to say of the special principles of
|
||
judgement having to be assigned to its theoretical part, i.e., to
|
||
rational cognition according to concepts of nature: still the Critique
|
||
of Pure Reason, which must settle this whole question before the above
|
||
system is taken in hand, so as to substantiate its possibility,
|
||
consists of three parts: the Critique of pure understanding, of pure
|
||
judgement, and of pure reason, which faculties are called pure on
|
||
the ground of their being legislative a priori.
|
||
-
|
||
IV. Judgement as a Faculty by which Laws are
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 35}
|
||
prescribed a priori.
|
||
-
|
||
Judgement in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as
|
||
contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule,
|
||
principle, or law) is given, then the judgement which subsumes the
|
||
particular under it is determinant. This is so even where such a
|
||
judgement is transcendental and, as such, provides the conditions a
|
||
priori in conformity with which alone subsumption under that universal
|
||
can be effected. If, however, only the particular is given and the
|
||
universal has to be found for it, then the judgement is simply
|
||
reflective.
|
||
The determinant judgement determines under universal
|
||
transcendental laws furnished by understanding and is subsumptive
|
||
only; the law is marked out for it a priori, and it has no need to
|
||
devise a law for its own guidance to enable it to subordinate the
|
||
particular in nature to the universal. But there are such manifold
|
||
forms of nature, so many modifications, as it were, of the universal
|
||
transcendental concepts of nature, left undetermined by the laws
|
||
furnished by pure understanding a priori as above mentioned, and for
|
||
the reason that these laws only touch the general possibility of a
|
||
nature (as an object of sense), that there must needs also be laws
|
||
in this behalf. These laws, being empirical, may be contingent as
|
||
far as the light of our understanding goes, but still, if they are
|
||
to be called laws (as the concept of a nature requires), they must
|
||
be regarded as necessary on a principle, unknown though it be to us,
|
||
of the unity of the manifold. The reflective judgement which is
|
||
compelled to ascend from the particular in nature to the universal
|
||
stands, therefore, in need of a principle. This principle it cannot
|
||
borrow from experience, because what it has to do is to establish just
|
||
the unity of all empirical principles under higher, though likewise
|
||
empirical, principles, and thence the possibility of the systematic
|
||
subordination of higher and lower. Such a transcendental principle,
|
||
therefore, the reflective judgement can only give as a law from and to
|
||
itself. It cannot derive it from any other quarter (as it would then
|
||
be a determinant judgement). Nor can it prescribe it to nature, for
|
||
reflection on the laws of nature adjusts itself to nature, and not
|
||
nature to the conditions according to which we strive to obtain a
|
||
concept of it-a concept that is quite contingent in respect of these
|
||
conditions.
|
||
Now the principle sought can only be this: as universal laws of
|
||
nature have their ground in our understanding, which prescribes them
|
||
to nature (though only according to the universal concept of it as
|
||
nature), particular empirical laws must be regarded, in respect of
|
||
that which is left undetermined in them by these universal laws,
|
||
according to a unity such as they would have if an understanding
|
||
(though it be not ours) had supplied them for the benefit of our
|
||
cognitive faculties, so as to render possible a system of experience
|
||
according to particular natural laws. This is not to be taken as
|
||
implying that such an understanding must be actually assumed (for it
|
||
is only the reflective judgement which avails itself of this idea as a
|
||
principle for the purpose of reflection and not for determining
|
||
anything); but this faculty rather gives by this means a law to itself
|
||
alone and not to nature.
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 40}
|
||
Now the concept of an object, so far as it contains at the same time
|
||
the ground of the actuality of this object, is called its end, and the
|
||
agreement of a thing with that constitution of things which is only
|
||
possible according to ends, is called the finality of its form.
|
||
Accordingly the principle of judgement, in respect of the form of
|
||
the things of nature under empirical laws generally, is the finality
|
||
of nature in its multiplicity. In other words, by this concept
|
||
nature is represented as if an understanding contained the ground of
|
||
the unity of the manifold of its empirical laws.
|
||
The finality of nature is, therefore, a particular a priori concept,
|
||
which bas its origin solely in the reflective judgement. For we cannot
|
||
ascribe to the products of nature anything like a reference of
|
||
nature in them to ends, but we can only make use of this concept to
|
||
reflect upon them in respect of the nexus of phenomena in nature-a
|
||
nexus given according to empirical laws. Furthermore, this concept
|
||
is entirely different from practical finality (in human art or even
|
||
morals), though it is doubtless thought after this analogy.
|
||
-
|
||
V. The Principle of the formal finality of Nature is a
|
||
transcendental Principle of Judgement.
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 45}
|
||
-
|
||
A transcendental principle is one through which we represent a
|
||
priori the universal condition under which alone things can become
|
||
objects of our cognition generally. A principle, on the other band, is
|
||
called metaphysical where it represents a priori the condition under
|
||
which alone objects whose concept has to be given empirically may
|
||
become further determined a priori. Thus the principle of the
|
||
cognition of bodies as substances, and as changeable substances, is
|
||
transcendental where the statement is that their change must have a
|
||
cause: but it is metaphysical where it asserts that their change
|
||
must have an external cause. For, in the first case, bodies need
|
||
only be thought through ontological predicates (pure concepts of
|
||
understanding) e.g., as substance, to enable the proposition to be
|
||
cognized a priori; whereas, in the second case, the empirical
|
||
concept of a body (as a movable thing in space) must be introduced
|
||
to support the proposition, although, once this is done, it may be
|
||
seen quite a priori that the latter predicate (movement only by
|
||
means of an external cause) applies to body. In this way, as I shall
|
||
show presently, the principle of the finality of nature (in the
|
||
multiplicity of its empirical laws) is a transcendental principle. For
|
||
the concept of objects, regarded as standing under this principle,
|
||
is only the pure concept of objects of possible empirical cognition
|
||
generally, and involves nothing empirical. On the other band, the
|
||
principle of practical finality, implied in the idea of the
|
||
determination of a free will, would be a metaphysical principle,
|
||
because the concept of a faculty of desire, as will, has to be given
|
||
empirically, i.e., is not included among transcendental predicates.
|
||
But both these principles are, none the less, not empirical, but a
|
||
priori principles; because no further experience is required for the
|
||
synthesis of the predicate with the empirical concept of the subject
|
||
of their judgements, but it may be apprehended quite a priori.
|
||
That the concept of a finality of nature belongs to transcendental
|
||
principles is abundantly evident from the maxims of judgement upon
|
||
which we rely a priori in the investigation of nature, and which yet
|
||
have to do with no more than the possibility of experience, and
|
||
consequently of the knowledge of nature-but of nature not merely in
|
||
a general way, but as determined by a manifold of particular laws.
|
||
These maxims crop up frequently enough in the course of this
|
||
science, though only in a scattered way. They are aphorisms of
|
||
metaphysical wisdom, making their appearance in a number of rules
|
||
the necessity of which cannot be demonstrated from concepts. "Nature
|
||
takes the shortest way (lex parsimoniae); yet it makes no leap, either
|
||
in the sequence of its changes, or in the juxtaposition of
|
||
specifically different forms (lex continui in natura); its vast
|
||
variety in empirical laws is for all that, unity under a few
|
||
principles (principia praeter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda)";
|
||
and so forth.
|
||
If we propose to assign the origin of these elementary rules, and
|
||
attempt to do so on psychological lines, we go straight in the teeth
|
||
of their sense. For they tell us, not what happens, i.e., according to
|
||
what rule our powers of judgement actually discharge their
|
||
functions, and how we judge, but how we ought to judge; and we
|
||
cannot get this logical objective necessity where the principles are
|
||
merely empirical. Hence the finality of nature for our cognitive
|
||
faculties and their employment, which manifestly radiates from them,
|
||
is a transcendental principle of judgements, and so needs also a
|
||
transcendental deduction, by means of which the ground for this mode
|
||
of judging must be traced to the a priori sources of knowledge.
|
||
Now, looking at the grounds of the possibility of an experience, the
|
||
first thing, of course, that meets us is something necessary-namely,
|
||
the universal laws apart from which nature in general (as an object of
|
||
sense) cannot be thought. These rest on the categories, applied to the
|
||
formal conditions of all intuition possible for us, so far as it is
|
||
also given a priori. Under these laws, judgement is determinant; for
|
||
it bas nothing else to do than to subsume under given laws. For
|
||
instance, understanding says: all change has its cause (universal
|
||
law of nature); transcendental judgement has nothing further to do
|
||
than to furnish a priori the condition of subsumption under the
|
||
concept of understanding placed before it: this we get in the
|
||
succession of the determinations of one and the same thing. Now for
|
||
nature in general, as an object of possible experience, that law is
|
||
cognized as absolutely necessary. But besides this formal
|
||
time-condition, the objects of empirical cognition are determined, or,
|
||
so far as we can judge a priori, are determinable, in divers ways,
|
||
so that specifically differentiated natures, over and above what
|
||
they have in common as things of nature in general, are further
|
||
capable of being causes in an infinite variety of ways; and each of
|
||
these modes must, on the concept of a cause in general, have its rule,
|
||
which is a law, and, consequently, imports necessity: although owing
|
||
to the constitution and limitations of our faculties of cognition we
|
||
may entirely fail to see this necessity. Accordingly, in respect of
|
||
nature's merely empirical laws, we must think in nature a
|
||
possibility of an endless multiplicity of empirical laws, which yet
|
||
are contingent so far as our insight goes, i.e., cannot be cognized
|
||
a priori. In respect of these we estimate the unity of nature
|
||
according to empirical laws, and the possibility of the unity of
|
||
experience, as a system according to empirical laws, to be contingent.
|
||
But, now, such a unity is one which must be necessarily presupposed
|
||
and assumed, as otherwise we should not have a thoroughgoing
|
||
connection of empirical cognition in a whole of experience. For the
|
||
universal laws of nature, while providing, certainly, for such a
|
||
connection among things generically, as things of nature in general,
|
||
do not do so for them specifically as such particular things of
|
||
nature. Hence judgement is compelled, for its own guidance, to adopt
|
||
it as an a priori principle, that what is for human insight contingent
|
||
in the particular (empirical) laws of nature contains nevertheless
|
||
unity of law in the synthesis of its manifold in an intrinsically
|
||
possible experience-unfathomable, though still thinkable, as such
|
||
unity may, no doubt, be for us. Consequently, as the unity of law in a
|
||
synthesis, which is cognized by us in obedience to a necessary aim
|
||
(a need of understanding), though recognized at the same time as
|
||
contingent, is represented as a finality of objects (here of
|
||
nature), so judgement, which, in respect of things under possible (yet
|
||
to be discovered) empirical laws, is merely reflective, must regard
|
||
nature in respect of the latter according to a principle of finality
|
||
for our cognitive faculty, which then finds expression in the above
|
||
maxims of judgement. Now this transcendental concept of a finality
|
||
of nature is neither a concept of nature nor of freedom, since it
|
||
attributes nothing at all to the object, i.e., to nature, but only
|
||
represents the unique mode in which we must proceed in our
|
||
reflection upon the objects of nature with a view to getting a
|
||
thoroughly interconnected whole of experience, and so is a
|
||
subjective principle, i.e., maxim, of judgement. For this reason, too,
|
||
just as if it were a lucky chance that favoured us, we are rejoiced
|
||
(properly speaking, relieved of a want) where we meet with such
|
||
systematic unity under merely empirical laws: although we must
|
||
necessarily assume the presence of such a unity, apart from any
|
||
ability on our part to apprehend or prove its existence.
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 50}
|
||
In order to convince ourselves of the correctness of this
|
||
deduction of the concept before us, and the necessity of assuming it
|
||
as a transcendental principle of cognition, let us just bethink
|
||
ourselves of the magnitude of the task. We have to form a connected
|
||
experience from given perceptions of a nature containing a maybe
|
||
endless multiplicity of empirical laws, and this problem has its
|
||
seat a priori in our understanding. This understanding is no doubt a
|
||
priori in possession of universal laws of nature, apart from which
|
||
nature would be incapable of being an object of experience at all. But
|
||
over and above this it needs a certain order of nature in its
|
||
particular rules which are only capable of being brought to its
|
||
knowledge empirically, and which, so far as it is concerned are
|
||
contingent. These rules, without which we would have no means of
|
||
advance from the universal analogy of a possible experience in general
|
||
to a particular, must be regarded by understanding as laws, i.e., as
|
||
necessary-for otherwise they would not form an order of
|
||
nature-though it be unable to cognize or ever get an insight into
|
||
their necessity. Albeit, then, it can determine nothing a priori in
|
||
respect of these (objects), it must, in pursuit of such empirical
|
||
so-called laws, lay at the basis of all reflection upon them an a
|
||
priori principle, to the effect, namely, that a cognizable order of
|
||
nature is possible according to them. A principle of this kind is
|
||
expressed in the following propositions. There is in nature a
|
||
subordination of genera and species comprehensible by us: Each of
|
||
these genera again approximates to the others on a common principle,
|
||
so that a transition may be possible from one to the other, and
|
||
thereby to a higher genus: While it seems at outset unavoidable for
|
||
our understanding to assume for the specific variety of natural
|
||
operations a like number of various kinds of causality, yet these
|
||
may all be reduced to a small number of principles, the quest for
|
||
which is our business; and so forth. This adaptation of nature to
|
||
our cognitive faculties is presupposed a priori by judgement on behalf
|
||
of its reflection upon it according to empirical laws. But
|
||
understanding all the while recognizes it objectively as contingent,
|
||
and it is merely judgement that attributes it to nature as
|
||
transcendental finality, i.e., a finality in respect of the
|
||
subject's faculty of cognition. For, were it not for this
|
||
presupposition, we should have no order of nature in accordance with
|
||
empirical laws, and, consequently, no guiding-thread for an experience
|
||
that has to be brought to bear upon these in all their variety, or for
|
||
an investigation of them.
|
||
For it is quite conceivable that, despite all the uniformity of
|
||
the things of nature according to universal laws, without which we
|
||
would not have the form of general empirical knowledge at all, the
|
||
specific variety of the empirical laws of nature, with their
|
||
effects, might still be so great as to make it impossible for our
|
||
understanding to discover in nature an intelligible order, to divide
|
||
its products into genera and species so as to avail ourselves of the
|
||
principles of explanation and comprehension of one for explaining
|
||
and interpreting another, and out of material coming to hand in such
|
||
confusion (properly speaking only infinitely multiform and ill-adapted
|
||
to our power-of apprehension) to make a consistent context of
|
||
experience.
|
||
Thus judgement, also, is equipped with an a priori principle for the
|
||
possibility of nature, but only in a subjective respect. By means of
|
||
this it prescribes a law, not to nature (as autonomy), but to itself
|
||
(as heautonomy), to guide its reflection upon nature. This law may
|
||
be called the law of the specification of nature in respect of its
|
||
empirical laws. It is not one cognized a priori in nature, but
|
||
judgement adopts it in the interests of a natural order, cognizable by
|
||
our understanding, in the division which it makes of nature's
|
||
universal laws when it seeks to subordinate to them a variety of
|
||
particular laws. So when it is said that nature specifies its
|
||
universal laws on a principle of finality for our cognitive faculties,
|
||
i.e., of suitability for the human understanding and its necessary
|
||
function of finding the universal for the particular presented to it
|
||
by perception, and again for varieties (which are, of course, common
|
||
for each species) connection in the unity of principle, we do not
|
||
thereby either prescribe a law to nature, or learn one from it by
|
||
observation-although the principle in question may be confirmed by
|
||
this means. For it is not a principle of the determinant but merely of
|
||
the reflective judgement. All that is intended is that, no matter what
|
||
is the order and disposition of nature in respect of its universal
|
||
laws, we must investigate its empirical laws throughout on that
|
||
principle and the maxims founded thereon, because only so far as
|
||
that principle applies can we make any headway in the employment of
|
||
our understanding in experience, or gain knowledge.
|
||
-
|
||
VI. The Association of the Feeling of Pleasure
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 55}
|
||
with the Concept of the Finality of Nature.
|
||
-
|
||
The conceived harmony of nature in the manifold of its particular
|
||
laws with our need of finding universality of principles for it
|
||
must, so far as our insight goes, be deemed contingent, but withal
|
||
indispensable for the requirements of our understanding, and,
|
||
consequently, a finality by which nature is in accord with our aim,
|
||
but only so far as this is directed to knowledge. The universal laws
|
||
of understanding, which are equally laws of nature, are, although
|
||
arising from spontaneity, just as necessary for nature as the laws
|
||
of motion applicable to matter. Their origin does not presuppose any
|
||
regard to our cognitive faculties, seeing that it is only by their
|
||
means that we first come by any conception of the meaning of a
|
||
knowledge of things (of nature), and they of necessity apply to nature
|
||
as object of our cognition in general. But it is contingent, so far as
|
||
we can see, that the order of nature in its particular laws, with
|
||
their wealth of at least possible variety and heterogeneity
|
||
transcending all our powers of comprehension, should still in actual
|
||
fact be commensurate with these powers. To find out this order is an
|
||
undertaking on the part of our understanding, which pursues it with
|
||
a regard to a necessary end of its own, that, namely, of introducing
|
||
into nature unity of principle. This end must, then, be attributed
|
||
to nature by judgement, since no law can be here prescribed to it by
|
||
understanding.
|
||
The attainment of every aim is coupled with a feeling of pleasure.
|
||
Now where such attainment has for its condition a representation a
|
||
priori-as here a principle for the reflective judgement in general-the
|
||
feeling of pleasure also is determined by a ground which is a priori
|
||
and valid for all men: and that, too, merely by virtue of the
|
||
reference of the object to our faculty of cognition. As the concept of
|
||
finality here takes no cognizance whatever of the faculty of desire,
|
||
it differs entirely from all practical finality of nature.
|
||
As a matter of fact, we do not, and cannot, find in ourselves the
|
||
slightest effect on the feeling of pleasure from the coincidence of
|
||
perceptions with the laws in accordance with the universal concepts of
|
||
nature (the categories), since in their case understanding necessarily
|
||
follows the bent of its own nature without ulterior aim. But, while
|
||
this is so, the discovery, on the other hand, that two or more
|
||
empirical heterogeneous laws of nature are allied under one
|
||
principle that embraces them both, is the ground of a very appreciable
|
||
pleasure, often even of admiration, and such, too, as does not wear
|
||
off even though we are already familiar enough with its object. It
|
||
is true that we no longer notice any decided pleasure in the
|
||
comprehensibility of nature, or in the unity of its divisions into
|
||
genera and species, without which the empirical concepts, that
|
||
afford us our knowledge of nature in its particular laws, would not be
|
||
possible. Still it is certain that the pleasure appeared in due
|
||
course, and only by reason of the most ordinary experience being
|
||
impossible without it, bas it become gradually fused with simple
|
||
cognition, and no longer arrests particular attention. Something,
|
||
then, that makes us attentive in our estimate of nature to its
|
||
finality for our understanding-an endeavour to bring, where
|
||
possible, its heterogeneous laws under higher, though still always
|
||
empirical, laws-is required, in order that, on meeting with success,
|
||
pleasure may be felt in this their accord with our cognitive
|
||
faculty, which accord is regarded by us as purely contingent. As
|
||
against this, a representation of nature would be altogether
|
||
displeasing to us, were we to be forewarned by it that, on the least
|
||
investigation carried beyond the commonest experience, we should
|
||
come in contact with such a heterogeneity of its laws as would make
|
||
the union of its particular laws under universal empirical laws
|
||
impossible for our understanding. For this would conflict with the
|
||
principle of the subjectively final specification of nature in its
|
||
genera, and with our own reflective judgement in respect thereof.
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 60}
|
||
Yet this presupposition of judgement is so indeterminate on the
|
||
question of the extent of the prevalence of that ideal finality of
|
||
nature for our cognitive faculties, that if we are told that a more
|
||
searching or enlarged knowledge of nature, derived from observation,
|
||
must eventually bring us into contact with a multiplicity of laws that
|
||
no human understanding could reduce to a principle, we can reconcile
|
||
ourselves to the thought. But still we listen more gladly to others
|
||
who hold out to us the hope that the more intimately we come to know
|
||
the secrets of nature, or the better we are able to compare it with
|
||
external members as yet unknown to us, the more simple shall we find
|
||
it in its principles, and the further our experience advances the more
|
||
harmonious shall we find it in the apparent heterogeneity of its
|
||
empirical laws. For our judgement makes it imperative upon us to
|
||
proceed on the principle of the conformity of nature to our faculty of
|
||
cognition, so far as that principle extends, without deciding-for
|
||
the rule is not given to us by a determinant judgement-whether
|
||
bounds are anywhere set to it or not. For, while in respect of the
|
||
rational employment of our cognitive faculty, bounds may be definitely
|
||
determined, in the empirical field no such determination of bounds
|
||
is possible.
|
||
-
|
||
VII. The Aesthetic Representation of the
|
||
Finality of Nature.
|
||
-
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 65}
|
||
That which is purely subjective in the representation of an
|
||
object, i.e., what constitutes its reference to the subject, not to
|
||
the object, is its aesthetic quality. On the other hand, that which in
|
||
such a representation serves, or is available, for the determination
|
||
of the object (for or purpose of knowledge), is its logical
|
||
validity. In the cognition of an object of sense, both sides are
|
||
presented conjointly. In the sense-representation of external
|
||
things, the quality of space in which we intuite them is the merely
|
||
subjective side of my representation of them (by which what the things
|
||
are in themselves as objects is left quite open), and it is on account
|
||
of that reference that the object in being intuited in space is also
|
||
thought merely as phenomenon. But despite its purely subjective
|
||
quality, space is still a constituent of the knowledge of things as
|
||
phenomena. Sensation (here external) also agrees in expressing a
|
||
merely subjective side of our representations of external things,
|
||
but one which is properly their matter (through which we are given
|
||
something with real existence), just as space is the mere a priori
|
||
form of the possibility of their intuition; and so sensation is,
|
||
none the less, also employed in the cognition of external objects.
|
||
But that subjective side of a representation which is incapable of
|
||
becoming an element of cognition, is the pleasure or displeasure
|
||
connected with it; for through it I cognize nothing in the object of
|
||
the representation, although it may easily be the result of the
|
||
operation of some cognition or other. Now the finality of a thing,
|
||
so far as represented in our perception of it, is in no way a
|
||
quality of the object itself (for a quality of this kind is not one
|
||
that can be perceived), although it may be inferred from a cognition
|
||
of things. In the finality, therefore, which is prior to the cognition
|
||
of an object, and which, even apart from any desire to make use of the
|
||
representation of it for the purpose of a cognition, is yet
|
||
immediately connected with it, we have the subjective quality
|
||
belonging to it that is incapable of becoming a constituent of
|
||
knowledge. Hence we only apply the term final to the object on account
|
||
of its representation being immediately coupled with the feeling of
|
||
pleasure: and this representation itself is an aesthetic
|
||
representation of the finality. The only question is whether such a
|
||
representation of finality exists at all.
|
||
If pleasure is connected with the mere apprehension (apprehensio) of
|
||
the form of an object of intuition, apart from any reference it may
|
||
have to a concept for the purpose of a definite cognition, this does
|
||
not make the representation referable to the object, but solely to the
|
||
subject. In such a case, the pleasure can express nothing but the
|
||
conformity of the object to the cognitive faculties brought into
|
||
play in the reflective judgement, and so far as they are in play,
|
||
and hence merely a subjective formal finality of the object. For
|
||
that apprehension of forms in the imagination can never take place
|
||
without the reflective judgement, even when it has no intention of
|
||
so doing, comparing them at least with its faculty of referring
|
||
intuitions to concepts. If, now, in this comparison, imagination (as
|
||
the faculty of intuitions a priori) is undesignedly brought into
|
||
accord with understanding (as the faculty of concepts), by means of
|
||
a given representation, and a feeling of pleasure is thereby
|
||
aroused, then the object must be regarded as final for the
|
||
reflective judgement. A judgement of this kind is an aesthetic
|
||
judgement upon the finality of the object, which does not depend
|
||
upon any present concept of the object, and does not provide one. When
|
||
the form of an object (as opposed to the matter of its representation,
|
||
as sensation) is, in the mere act of reflecting upon it, without
|
||
regard to any concept to be obtained from it, estimated as the
|
||
ground of a pleasure in the representation of such an object, then
|
||
this pleasure is also judged to be combined necessarily with the
|
||
representation of it, and so not merely for the subject apprehending
|
||
this form, but for all in general who pass judgement. The object is
|
||
then called beautiful; and the faculty of judging by means of such a
|
||
pleasure (and so also with universal validity) is called taste. For
|
||
since the ground of the pleasure is made to reside merely in the
|
||
form of the object for reflection generally, consequently not in any
|
||
sensation of the object, and without any reference, either, to any
|
||
concept that might have something or other in view, it is with the
|
||
conformity to law in the empirical employment of judgement generally
|
||
(unity of imagination and understanding) in the subject, and with this
|
||
alone, that the representation of the object in reflection, the
|
||
conditions of which are universally valid a priori, accords. And, as
|
||
this accordance of the object with the faculties of the subject is
|
||
contingent, it gives rise to a representation of a finality on the
|
||
part of the object in respect of the cognitive faculties of the
|
||
subject.
|
||
Here, now, is a pleasure which-as is the case with all pleasure or
|
||
displeasure that is not brought about through the agency of the
|
||
concept of freedom (i.e., through the antecedent determination of
|
||
the higher faculty of desire by means of pure reason)-no concepts
|
||
could ever enable us to regard as necessarily connected with the
|
||
representation of an object. It must always be only through reflective
|
||
perception that it is cognized as conjoined with this
|
||
representation. As with all empirical judgements, it is, consequently,
|
||
unable to announce objective necessity or lay claim to a priori
|
||
validity. But, then, the judgement of taste in fact only lays claim,
|
||
like every other empirical judgement, to be valid for every one,
|
||
and, despite its inner contingency this is always possible. The only
|
||
point that is strange or out of the way about it is that it is not
|
||
an empirical concept, but a feeling of pleasure (and so not a
|
||
concept at all), that is yet exacted from every one by the judgement
|
||
of taste, just as if it were a predicate united to the cognition of
|
||
the object, and that is meant to be conjoined with its representation.
|
||
A singular empirical judgement, as for example, the judgement of one
|
||
who perceives a movable drop of water in a rock-crystal, rightly looks
|
||
to every one finding the fact as stated, since the judgement has
|
||
been formed according to the universal conditions of the determinant
|
||
judgement under the laws of a possible experience generally. In the
|
||
same way, one who feels pleasure in simple reflection on the form of
|
||
an object, without having any concept in mind, rightly lays claim to
|
||
the agreement of every one, although this judgement is empirical and a
|
||
singular judgement. For the ground of this pleasure is found in the
|
||
universal, though subjective, condition of reflective judgements,
|
||
namely the final harmony of an object (be it a product of nature or of
|
||
art) with the mutual relation of the faculties of cognition
|
||
(imagination and understanding), which are requisite for every
|
||
empirical cognition. The pleasure in judgements of taste is,
|
||
therefore, dependent doubtless on an empirical representation, and
|
||
cannot be united a priori to any concept (one cannot determine a
|
||
priori what object will be in accordance with taste or not-one must
|
||
find out the object that is so); but then it is only made the
|
||
determining ground of this judgement by virtue of our consciousness of
|
||
its resting simply upon reflection and the universal, though only
|
||
subjective, conditions of the harmony of that reflection with the
|
||
knowledge of objects generally, for which the form of the object is
|
||
final.
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 70}
|
||
This is why judgements of taste are subjected to a critique in
|
||
respect of their possibility. For their possibility presupposes an a
|
||
priori principle, although that principle is neither a cognitive
|
||
principle for understanding nor a practical principle for the will,
|
||
and is thus in no way determinant a priori.
|
||
Susceptibility to pleasure arising from reflection on the forms of
|
||
things (whether of nature or of art) betokens, however, not only a
|
||
finality on the part of objects in their relation to the reflective
|
||
judgement in the subject, in accordance with the concept of nature,
|
||
but also, conversely, a finality on the part of the subject, answering
|
||
to the concept of freedom, in respect of the form, or even
|
||
formlessness of objects. The result is that the aesthetic judgement
|
||
refers not merely, as a judgement of taste, to the beautiful, but
|
||
also, as springing from a higher intellectual feeling, to the sublime.
|
||
Hence the above-mentioned Critique of Aesthetic judgement must be
|
||
divided on these lines into two main parts.
|
||
-
|
||
VIII. The Logical Representation of the
|
||
Finality of Nature.
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 75}
|
||
-
|
||
There are two ways in which finality may be represented in an object
|
||
given in experience. It may be made to turn on what is purely
|
||
subjective. In this case the object is considered in respect of its
|
||
form as present in apprehension (apprehensio) prior to any concept;
|
||
and the harmony of this form with the cognitive faculties, promoting
|
||
the combination of the intuition with concepts for cognition
|
||
generally, is represented as a finality of the form of the object. Or,
|
||
on the other hand, the representation of finality may be made to
|
||
turn on what is objective, in which case it is represented as the
|
||
harmony of the form of the object with the possibility of the thing
|
||
itself according to an antecedent concept of it containing the
|
||
ground of this form. We have seen that the representation of the
|
||
former kind of finality rests on the pleasure immediately felt in mere
|
||
reflection on the form of the object. But that of the latter kind of
|
||
finality, as it refers the form of the object, not to the subject's
|
||
cognitive faculties engaged in its apprehension, but to a definite
|
||
cognition of the object under a given concept, bas nothing to do
|
||
with a feeling of pleasure in things, but only understanding and its
|
||
estimate of them. Where the concept of an object is given, the
|
||
function of judgement, in its employment of that concept for
|
||
cognition, consists in presentation (exhibitio), i. e., in placing
|
||
beside the concept an intuition corresponding to it. Here it may be
|
||
that our own imagination is the agent employed, as in the case of art,
|
||
where we realize a preconceived concept of an object which we set
|
||
before ourselves as an end. Or the agent may be nature in its
|
||
technic (as in the case of organic bodies), when we read into it our
|
||
own concept of an end to assist our estimate of its product. In this
|
||
case what is represented is not a mere finality of nature in the
|
||
form of the thing, but this very product as a natural end. Although
|
||
our concept that nature, in its empirical laws, is subjectively
|
||
final in its forms is in no way a concept of the object, but only a
|
||
principle of judgement for providing itself with concepts in the
|
||
vast multiplicity of nature, so that it may be able to take its
|
||
bearings, yet, on the analogy of an end, as it were a regard to our
|
||
cognitive faculties is here attributed to nature. Natural beauty
|
||
may, therefore, be looked on as the presentation of the concept of
|
||
formal, i. e., merely subjective, finality and natural ends as the
|
||
presentation of the concept of a real, i.e., objective, finality.
|
||
The former of these we estimate by taste (aesthetically by means of
|
||
the feeling of pleasure), the latter by understanding and reason
|
||
(logically according to concepts).
|
||
On these considerations is based the division of the Critique of
|
||
judgement into that of the aesthetic and the teleological judgement.
|
||
By the first is meant the faculty of estimating formal finality
|
||
(otherwise called subjective) by the feeling of pleasure or
|
||
displeasure, by the second, the faculty of estimating the real
|
||
finality (objective) of nature by understanding and, reason.
|
||
In a Critique of judgement the part dealing with aesthetic judgement
|
||
is essentially relevant, as it alone contains a principle introduced
|
||
by judgement completely a priori as the basis of its reflection upon
|
||
nature. This is the principle of nature's formal finality for our
|
||
cognitive faculties in its particular (empirical) laws-a principle
|
||
without which understanding could not feel itself at home in nature:
|
||
whereas no reason is assignable a priori, nor is so much as the
|
||
possibility of one apparent from the concept of nature as an object of
|
||
experience, whether in its universal or in its particular aspects, why
|
||
there should be objective ends of nature, i. e., things only
|
||
possible as natural ends. But it is only judgement that, without being
|
||
itself possessed a priori of a principle in that behalf, in actually
|
||
occurring cases (of certain products) contains the rule for making use
|
||
of the concept of ends in the interest of reason, after that the above
|
||
transcendental principle has already prepared understanding to apply
|
||
to nature the concept of an end (at least in respect of its form).
|
||
But the transcendental principle by which a finality of nature in
|
||
its subjective reference to our cognitive faculties, is represented in
|
||
the form of a thing as a principle of its estimation, leaves quite
|
||
undetermined the question of where and in what cases we have to make
|
||
our estimate of the object as a product according to a principle of
|
||
finality, instead of simply according to universal laws of nature.
|
||
It resigns to the aesthetic judgement the task of deciding the
|
||
conformity of this product (in its form) to our cognitive faculties as
|
||
a question of taste (a matter which the aesthetic judgement decides,
|
||
not by any harmony with concepts, but by feeling). On the other
|
||
hand, judgement as teleologically employed assigns the determinate
|
||
conditions under which something (e. g., an organized body) is to be
|
||
estimated after the idea of an end of nature. But it can adduce no
|
||
principle from the concept of nature, as an object of experience, to
|
||
give it its authority to ascribe a priori to nature a reference to
|
||
ends, or even only indeterminately to assume them from actual
|
||
experience in the case of such products. The reason of this is that,
|
||
in order to be able merely empirically to cognize objective finality
|
||
in a certain object, many particular experiences must be collected and
|
||
reviewed under the unity of their principle. Aesthetic judgement is,
|
||
therefore, a special faculty of estimating according to a rule, but
|
||
not according to concepts. The teleological is not a special
|
||
faculty, but only general reflective judgement proceeding, as it
|
||
always does in theoretical cognition, according to concepts, but in
|
||
respect of certain objects of nature, following special
|
||
principles-those, namely, of a judgement that is merely reflective and
|
||
does not determine objects. Hence, as regards its application, it
|
||
belongs to the theoretical part of philosophy, and on account of its
|
||
special principles, which are not determinant, as principles belonging
|
||
to doctrine have to be, it must also form a special part of the
|
||
Critique. On the other hand, the aesthetic judgement contributes
|
||
nothing to the cognition of its objects. Hence it must only be
|
||
allocated to the Critique of the judging subject and of its
|
||
faculties of knowledge so far as these are capable of possessing a
|
||
priori principles, be their use (theoretical or practical) otherwise
|
||
what it may-a Critique which is the propaedeutic of all philosophy.
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 80}
|
||
-
|
||
IX. Joinder of the Legislations of Understanding and
|
||
Reason by means of Judgement.
|
||
-
|
||
Understanding prescribes laws a priori for nature as an object of
|
||
sense, so that we may have a theoretical knowledge of it in a possible
|
||
experience. Reason prescribes laws a priori for freedom and its
|
||
peculiar causality as the supersensible in the subject, so that we may
|
||
have a purely practical knowledge. The realm of the concept of
|
||
nature under the one legislation, and that of the concept of freedom
|
||
under the other, are completely cut off from all reciprocal influence,
|
||
that they might severally (each according to its own principles) exert
|
||
upon the other, by the broad gulf that divides the supersensible
|
||
from phenomena. The concept of freedom determines nothing in respect
|
||
of the theoretical cognition of nature; and the concept of nature
|
||
likewise nothing in respect of the practical laws of freedom. To
|
||
that extent, then, it is not possible to throw a bridge from the one
|
||
realm to the other. Yet although the determining grounds of
|
||
causality according to the concept of freedom (and the practical
|
||
rule that this contains) have no place in nature, and the sensible
|
||
cannot determine the supersensible in the subject; still the
|
||
converse is possible (not, it is true, in respect of the knowledge
|
||
of nature, but of the consequences arising from the supersensible
|
||
and bearing on the sensible). So much indeed is implied in the concept
|
||
of a causality by freedom, the operation of which, in conformity
|
||
with the formal laws of freedom, is to take effect in the word. The
|
||
word cause, however, in its application to the supersensible only
|
||
signifies the ground that determines the causality of things of nature
|
||
to an effect in conformity with their appropriate natural laws, but at
|
||
the same time also in unison with the formal principle of the laws
|
||
of reason-a ground which, while its possibility is impenetrable, may
|
||
still be completely cleared of the charge of contradiction that it
|
||
is alleged to involve.* The effect in accordance with the concept of
|
||
freedom is the final end which (or the manifestation of which in the
|
||
sensible world) is to exist, and this presupposes the condition of the
|
||
possibility of that end in nature (i. e., in the nature of the subject
|
||
as a being of the sensible world, namely, as man). It is so
|
||
presupposed a priori, and without regard to the practical, by
|
||
judgement. This faculty, with its concept of a finality of nature,
|
||
provides us with the mediating concept between concepts of nature
|
||
and the concept of freedom-a concept that makes possible the
|
||
transition from the pure theoretical [legislation of understanding] to
|
||
the pure practical [legislation of reason] and from conformity to
|
||
law in accordance with the former to final ends according to the
|
||
latter. For through that concept we cognize the possibility of the
|
||
final end that can only be actualized in nature and in harmony with
|
||
its laws.
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 85}
|
||
-
|
||
*One of the various supposed contradictions in this complete
|
||
distinction of the causality of nature from that through freedom is
|
||
expressed in the objection that when I speak of hindrances opposed
|
||
by nature to causality according to laws of freedom (moral laws) or of
|
||
assistance lent to it by nature, I am all the time admitting an
|
||
influence of the former upon the latter. But the misinterpretation
|
||
is easily avoided, if attention is only paid to the meaning of the
|
||
statement. The resistance or furtherance is not between nature and
|
||
freedom, but between the former as phenomenon and the effects of the
|
||
latter as phenomena in the world of sense. Even the causality of
|
||
freedom (of pure and practical reason) is the causality of a natural
|
||
cause subordinated to freedom (a causality of the subject regarded
|
||
as man, and consequently as a phenomenon), and one, the ground of
|
||
whose determination is contained in the intelligible, that is
|
||
thought under freedom, in a manner that is not further or otherwise
|
||
explicable (just as in the case of that intelligible that forms the
|
||
supersensible substrate of nature.)
|
||
-
|
||
Understanding, by the possibility of its supplying a priori laws for
|
||
nature, furnishes a proof of the fact that nature is cognized by us
|
||
only as phenomenon, and in so doing points to its having a
|
||
supersensible substrate; but this substrate it leaves quite
|
||
undetermined. judgement by the a priori principle of its estimation of
|
||
nature according to its possible particular laws provides this
|
||
supersensible substrate (within as well as without us) with
|
||
determinability through the intellectual faculty. But reason gives
|
||
determination to the same a priori by its practical law. Thus
|
||
judgement makes possible the transition from the realm of the
|
||
concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom.
|
||
In respect of the faculties of the soul generally, regarded as
|
||
higher faculties, i.e., as faculties containing an autonomy,
|
||
understanding is the one that contains the constitutive a priori
|
||
principles for the faculty of cognition (the theoretical knowledge
|
||
of nature). The feeling pleasure and displeasure is provided for by
|
||
the judgement in its independence from concepts and from sensations
|
||
that refer to the determination of the faculty of desire and would
|
||
thus be capable of being immediately practical. For the faculty of
|
||
desire there is reason, which is practical without mediation of any
|
||
pleasure of whatsoever origin, and which determines for it, as a
|
||
higher faculty, the final end that is attended at the same time with
|
||
pure intellectual delight in the object. judgement's concept of a
|
||
finality of nature falls, besides, under the head of natural concepts,
|
||
but only as a regulative principle of the cognitive faculties-although
|
||
the aesthetic judgement on certain objects (of nature or of art) which
|
||
occasions that concept, is a constitutive principle in respect of
|
||
the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The spontaneity in the play of
|
||
the cognitive faculties whose harmonious accord contains the ground of
|
||
this pleasure, makes the concept in question, in its consequences, a
|
||
suitable mediating link connecting the realm of the concept of
|
||
nature with that of the concept of freedom, as this accord at the same
|
||
time promotes the sensibility of the mind for or moral feeling. The
|
||
following table may facilitate the review of all the above faculties
|
||
in their systematic unity.*
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 90}
|
||
-
|
||
*It has been thought somewhat suspicious that my divisions in pure
|
||
philosophy should almost always come out threefold. But it is due to
|
||
the nature of the case. If a division is to be a priori it must be
|
||
either analytic, according to the law of contradiction-and then it
|
||
is always twofold (quodlibet ens est aut A aut non A)-Or else it is
|
||
synthetic. If it is to be derived in the latter case from a priori
|
||
concepts (not, as in mathematics, from the a priori intuition
|
||
corresponding to the concept), then, to meet the requirements of
|
||
synthetic unity in general, namely (1) a condition, (2) a conditioned,
|
||
(3) the concept arising from the union of the conditioned with its
|
||
condition, the division must of necessity be trichotomous.
|
||
-
|
||
List of Mental Faculties Cognitive Faculties
|
||
Cognitive faculties Understanding
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 95}
|
||
Feeling of pleasure Judgement
|
||
and displeasure Reason
|
||
Faculty of desire
|
||
-
|
||
A priori Principles Application
|
||
{INTRO ^paragraph 100}
|
||
Conformity to law Nature
|
||
Finality Art
|
||
Final End Freedom
|
||
-
|
||
|
||
SEC1|BK1
|
||
FIRST PART CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT
|
||
SECTION I. ANALYTIC OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT.
|
||
BOOK I. Analytic of the Beautiful.
|
||
-
|
||
FIRST MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste*:
|
||
Moment of Quality.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 5}
|
||
*The definition of taste here relied upon is that it is the
|
||
faculty of estimating the beautiful. But the discovery of what is
|
||
required for calling an object beautiful must be reserved for the
|
||
analysis of judgements of taste. In my search for the moments to which
|
||
attention is paid by this judgement in its reflection, I have followed
|
||
the guidance of the logical functions of judging (for a judgement of
|
||
taste always involves a reference to understanding). I have brought
|
||
the moment of quality first under review, because this is what the
|
||
aesthetic judgement on the beautiful looks to in the first instance.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 1. The judgement of taste is aesthetic.
|
||
-
|
||
If we wish to discern whether anything is beautiful or not, we do
|
||
not refer the representation of it to the object by means of
|
||
understanding with a view to cognition, but by means of the
|
||
imagination (acting perhaps in conjunction with understanding) we
|
||
refer the representation to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or
|
||
displeasure. The judgement of taste, therefore, is not a cognitive
|
||
judgement, and so not logical, but is aesthetic-which means that it is
|
||
one whose determining ground cannot be other than subjective. Every
|
||
reference of representations is capable of being objective, even
|
||
that of sensations (in which case it signifies the real in an
|
||
empirical representation). The one exception to this is the feeling of
|
||
pleasure or displeasure. This denotes nothing in the object, but is
|
||
a feeling which the subject has of itself and of the manner in which
|
||
it is affected by the representation.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 10}
|
||
To apprehend a regular and appropriate building with one's cognitive
|
||
faculties, be the mode of representation clear or confused, is quite a
|
||
different thing from being conscious of this representation with an
|
||
accompanying sensation of delight. Here the representation is referred
|
||
wholly to the subject, and what is more to its feeling of life-under
|
||
the name of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure-and this forms
|
||
the basis of a quite separate faculty of discriminating and
|
||
estimating, that contributes nothing to knowledge. All it does is to
|
||
compare the given representation in the subject with the entire
|
||
faculty of representations of which the mind is conscious in the
|
||
feeling of its state. Given representations in a judgement may be
|
||
empirical, and so aesthetic; but the judgement which is pronounced
|
||
by their means is logical, provided it refers them to the object.
|
||
Conversely, be the given representations even rational, but referred
|
||
in a judgement solely to the subject (to its feeling), they are always
|
||
to that extent aesthetic.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 2. The delight which determines the judgement of
|
||
taste is independent of all interest.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 15}
|
||
The delight which we connect with the representation of the real
|
||
existence of an object is called interest. Such a delight,
|
||
therefore, always involves a reference to the faculty of desire,
|
||
either as its determining ground, or else as necessarily implicated
|
||
with its determining ground. Now, where the question is whether
|
||
something is beautiful, we do not want to know, whether we, or any one
|
||
else, are, or even could be, concerned in the real existence of the
|
||
thing, but rather what estimate we form of it on mere contemplation
|
||
(intuition or reflection). If any one asks me whether I consider
|
||
that the palace I see before me is beautiful, I may, perhaps, reply
|
||
that I do not care for things of that sort that are merely made to
|
||
be gaped at. Or I may reply in the same strain as that Iroquois sachem
|
||
who said that nothing in Paris pleased him better than the
|
||
eating-houses. I may even go a step further and inveigh with the
|
||
vigour of a Rousseau against the vigour of a great against the
|
||
vanity of the of the people on such superfluous things. Or, in fine, I
|
||
may quite easily persuade myself that if I found myself on an
|
||
uninhabited island, without hope of ever again coming among men, and
|
||
could conjure such a palace into existence by a mere wish, I should
|
||
still not trouble to do so, so long as I had a hut there that was
|
||
comfortable enough for me. All this may be admitted and approved; only
|
||
it is not the point now at issue. All one wants to know is whether the
|
||
mere representation of the object is to my liking, no matter how
|
||
indifferent I may be to the real existence of the object of this
|
||
representation. It is quite plain that in order to say that the object
|
||
is beautiful, and to show that I have taste, everything turns on the
|
||
meaning which I can give to this representation, and not on any factor
|
||
which makes me dependent on the real existence of the object. Every
|
||
one must allow that a judgement on the beautiful which is tinged
|
||
with the slightest interest, is very partial and not a pure
|
||
judgement of taste. One must not be in the least prepossessed in
|
||
favour of the real existence of the thing, but must preserve
|
||
complete indifference in this respect, in order to play the part of
|
||
judge in matters of taste.
|
||
This proposition, which is of the utmost importance, cannot be
|
||
better explained than by contrasting the pure disinterested* delight
|
||
which appears in the judgement of taste with that allied to an
|
||
interest-especially if we can also assure ourselves that there are
|
||
no other kinds of interest beyond those presently to be mentioned.
|
||
-
|
||
*A judgement upon an object of our delight may be wholly
|
||
disinterested but withal very interesting, i.e., it relies on no
|
||
interest, but it produces one. Of this kind are all pure moral
|
||
judgements. But, of themselves judgements of taste do not even set
|
||
up any interest whatsoever. Only in society is it interesting to
|
||
have taste-a point which will be explained in the sequel.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 20}
|
||
SS 3. Delight in the agreeable is coupled with interest.
|
||
-
|
||
That is agreeable which the senses find pleasing in sensation.
|
||
This at once affords a convenient opportunity for condemning and
|
||
directing particular attention to a prevalent confusion of the
|
||
double meaning of which the word sensation is capable. All delight (as
|
||
is said or thought) is itself sensation (of a pleasure).
|
||
Consequently everything that pleases, and for the very reason that
|
||
it pleases, is agreeable-and according to its different degrees, or
|
||
its relations to other agreeable sensations, is attractive,
|
||
charming, delicious, enjoyable, etc. But if this is conceded, then
|
||
impressions of sense, which determine inclination, or principles of
|
||
reason, which determine the will, or mere contemplated forms of
|
||
intuition, which determine judgement, are all on a par in everything
|
||
relevant to their effect upon the feeling of pleasure, for this
|
||
would be agreeableness in the sensation of one's state; and since,
|
||
in the last resort, all the elaborate work of our faculties must issue
|
||
in and unite in the practical as its goal, we could credit our
|
||
faculties with no other appreciation of things and the worth of
|
||
things, than that consisting in the gratification which they
|
||
promise. How this is attained is in the end immaterial; and, as the
|
||
choice of the means is here the only thing that can make a difference,
|
||
men might indeed blame one another for folly or imprudence, but
|
||
never for baseness or wickedness; for they are all, each according
|
||
to his own way of looking at things, pursuing one goal, which for each
|
||
is the gratification in question.
|
||
When a modification of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure is
|
||
termed sensation, this expression is given quite a different meaning
|
||
to that which it bears when I call the representation of a thing
|
||
(through sense as a receptivity pertaining to the faculty of
|
||
knowledge) sensation. For in the latter case the representation is
|
||
referred to the object, but in the former it is referred solely to the
|
||
subject and is not available for any cognition, not even for that by
|
||
which the subject cognizes itself.
|
||
Now in the above definition the word sensation is used to denote
|
||
an objective representation of sense; and, to avoid continually
|
||
running the risk of misinterpretation, we shall call that which must
|
||
always remain purely subjective, and is absolutely incapable of
|
||
forming a representation of an object, by the familiar name of
|
||
feeling. The green colour of the meadows belongs to objective
|
||
sensation, as the perception of an object of sense; but its
|
||
agreeableness to subjective sensation, by which no object is
|
||
represented; i.e., to feeling, through which the object is regarded as
|
||
an object of delight (which involves no cognition of the object).
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 25}
|
||
Now, that a judgement on an object by which its agreeableness is
|
||
affirmed, expresses an interest in it, is evident from the fact that
|
||
through sensation it provokes a desire for similar objects,
|
||
consequently the delight presupposes, not the simple judgement about
|
||
it, but the bearing its real existence has upon my state so far as
|
||
affected by such an object. Hence we do not merely say of the
|
||
agreeable that it pleases, but that it gratifies. I do not accord it a
|
||
simple approval, but inclination is aroused by it, and where
|
||
agreeableness is of the liveliest type a judgement on the character of
|
||
the object is so entirely out of place that those who are always
|
||
intent only on enjoyment (for that is the word used to denote
|
||
intensity of gratification) would fain dispense with all judgement.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 4. Delight in the good is coupled with interest.
|
||
-
|
||
That is good which by means of reason commends itself by its mere
|
||
concept. We call that good for something which only pleases as a
|
||
means; but that which pleases on its own account we call good in
|
||
itself. In both cases the concept of an end is implied, and
|
||
consequently the relation of reason to (at least possible) willing,
|
||
and thus a delight in the existence of an object or action, i.e., some
|
||
interest or other.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 30}
|
||
To deem something good, I must always know what sort of a thing
|
||
the object is intended to be, i. e., I must have a concept of it. That
|
||
is not necessary to enable me to see beauty in a thing. Flowers,
|
||
free patterns, lines aimlessly intertwining-technically termed
|
||
foliage-have no signification, depend upon no definite concept, and
|
||
yet please. Delight in the beautiful must depend upon the reflection
|
||
on an object precursory to some (not definitely determined) concept.
|
||
It is thus also differentiated from the agreeable, which rests
|
||
entirely upon sensation.
|
||
In many cases, no doubt, the agreeable and the good seem convertible
|
||
terms. Thus it is commonly said that all (especially lasting)
|
||
gratification is of itself good; which is almost equivalent to
|
||
saying that to be permanently agreeable and to be good are
|
||
identical. But it is readily apparent that this is merely a vicious
|
||
confusion of words, for the concepts appropriate to these
|
||
expressions are far from interchangeable. The agreeable, which, as
|
||
such, represents the object solely in relation to sense, must in the
|
||
first instance be brought under principles of reason through the
|
||
concept of an end, to be, as an object of will, called good. But
|
||
that the reference to delight is wholly different where what gratifies
|
||
is at the same time called good, is evident from the fact that with
|
||
the good the question always is whether it is mediately or immediately
|
||
good, i. e., useful or good in itself; whereas with the agreeable this
|
||
point can never arise, since the word always means what pleases
|
||
immediately-and it is just the same with what I call beautiful.
|
||
Even in everyday parlance, a distinction is drawn between the
|
||
agreeable and the good. We do not scruple to say of a dish that
|
||
stimulates the palate with spices and other condiments that it is
|
||
agreeable owning all the while that it is not good: because, while
|
||
it immediately satisfies the senses, it is mediately displeasing, i.
|
||
e., in the eye of reason that looks ahead to the consequences. Even in
|
||
our estimate of health, this same distinction may be traced. To all
|
||
that possess it, it is immediately agreeable-at least negatively, i.
|
||
e., as remoteness of all bodily pains. But, if we are to say that it
|
||
is good, we must further apply to reason to direct it to ends, that
|
||
is, we must regard it as a state that puts us in a congenial mood
|
||
for all we have to do. Finally, in respect of happiness every one
|
||
believes that the greatest aggregate of the pleasures of life,
|
||
taking duration as well as number into account, merits the name of a
|
||
true, nay even of the highest, good. But reason sets its face
|
||
against this too. Agreeableness is enjoyment. But if this is all
|
||
that we are bent on, it would be foolish to be scrupulous about the
|
||
means that procure it for us-whether it be obtained passively by the
|
||
bounty of nature or actively and by the work of our own hands. But
|
||
that there is any intrinsic worth in the real existence of a man who
|
||
merely lives for enjoyment, however busy he may be in this respect,
|
||
even when in so doing he serves others-all equally with himself intent
|
||
only on enjoyment-as an excellent means to that one end, and does
|
||
so, moreover, because through sympathy he shares all their
|
||
gratifications-this is a view to which reason will never let itself be
|
||
brought round. Only by what a man does heedless of enjoyment, in
|
||
complete freedom, and independently of what he can procure passively
|
||
from the hand of nature, does be give to his existence, as the real
|
||
existence of a person, an absolute worth. Happiness, with all its
|
||
plethora of pleasures, is far from being an unconditioned good.*
|
||
-
|
||
*An obligation to enjoyment is a patent absurdity. And the same,
|
||
then, must also be said of a supposed obligation to actions that
|
||
have merely enjoyment for their aim, no matter how spiritually this
|
||
enjoyment may be refined in thought (or embellished), and even if it
|
||
be a mystical, so-called heavenly, enjoyment.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 35}
|
||
-
|
||
But, despite all this difference between the agreeable and the good,
|
||
they both agree in being invariably coupled with an interest in
|
||
their object. This is true, not alone of the agreeable, SS 3, and of
|
||
the mediately good, i, e., the useful, which pleases as a means to
|
||
some pleasure, but also of that which is good absolutely and from
|
||
every point of view, namely the moral good which carries with it the
|
||
highest interest. For the good is the object of will, i. e., of a
|
||
rationally determined faculty of desire). But to will something, and
|
||
to take a delight in its existence, i.e., to take an interest in it,
|
||
are identical.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 5. Comparison of the three specifically different
|
||
kinds of delight.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 40}
|
||
-
|
||
Both the agreeable and the good involve a reference to the faculty
|
||
of desire, and are thus attended, the former with a delight
|
||
pathologically conditioned (by stimuli), the latter with a pure
|
||
practical delight. Such delight is determined not merely by the
|
||
representation of the object, but also by the represented bond of
|
||
connection between the subject and the real existence of the object.
|
||
It is not merely the object, but also its real existence, that
|
||
pleases. On the other hand, the judgement of taste is simply
|
||
contemplative, i. e., it is a judgement which is indifferent as to the
|
||
existence of an object, and only decides how its character stands with
|
||
the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. But not even is this
|
||
contemplation itself directed to concepts; for the judgement of
|
||
taste is not a cognitive judgement (neither a theoretical one nor a
|
||
practical), and hence, also, is not grounded on concepts, nor yet
|
||
intentionally directed to them.
|
||
The agreeable, the beautiful, and the good thus denote three
|
||
different relations of representations to the feeling of pleasure
|
||
and displeasure, as a feeling in respect of which we distinguish
|
||
different objects or modes of representation. Also, the
|
||
corresponding expressions which indicate our satisfaction in them
|
||
are different The agreeable is what GRATIFIES a man; the beautiful
|
||
what simply PLEASES him; the good what is ESTEEMED (approved), i.e.,
|
||
that on which he sets an objective worth. Agreeableness is a
|
||
significant factor even with irrational animals; beauty has purport
|
||
and significance only for human beings, i.e., for beings at once
|
||
animal and rational (but not merely for them as rational-intelligent
|
||
beings-but only for them as at once animal and rational); whereas
|
||
the good is good for every rational being in general-a proposition
|
||
which can only receive its complete justification and explanation in
|
||
the sequel. Of all these three kinds of delight, that of taste in
|
||
the beautiful may be said to be the one and only disinterested and
|
||
free delight; for, with it, no interest, whether of sense or reason,
|
||
extorts approval. And so we may say that delight, in the three cases
|
||
mentioned, is related to inclination, to favour, or to respect. For
|
||
FAVOUR is the only free liking. An object of inclination, and one
|
||
which a law of reason imposes upon our desire, leaves us no freedom to
|
||
turn anything into an object of pleasure. All interest presupposes a
|
||
want, or calls one forth; and, being a ground determining approval,
|
||
deprives the judgement on the object of its freedom.
|
||
So far as the interest of inclination in the case of the agreeable
|
||
goes, every one says "Hunger is the best sauce; and people with a
|
||
healthy appetite relish everything, so long as it is something they
|
||
can eat." Such delight, consequently, gives no indication of taste
|
||
having anything to say to the choice. Only when men have got all
|
||
they want can we tell who among the crowd has taste or not.
|
||
Similarly there may be correct habits (conduct) without virtue,
|
||
politeness without good-will, propriety without honour, etc. For where
|
||
the moral law dictates, there is, objectively, no room left for free
|
||
choice as to what one has to do; and to show taste in the way one
|
||
carries out these dictates, or in estimating the way others do so,
|
||
is a totally different matter from displaying the moral frame of one's
|
||
mind. For the latter involves a command and produces a need of
|
||
something, whereas moral taste only plays with the objects of
|
||
delight without devoting itself sincerely to any.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 45}
|
||
Definition of the Beautiful derived from the First Moment.
|
||
-
|
||
Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or a mode of
|
||
representation by means of a delight or aversion apart from any
|
||
interest. The object of such a delight is called beautiful.
|
||
-
|
||
SECOND MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste:
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 50}
|
||
Moment of Quantity.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 6. The beautiful is that which, apart from
|
||
concepts, is represented as the Object
|
||
of a universal delight.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 55}
|
||
-
|
||
This definition of the beautiful is deducible from the foregoing
|
||
definition of it as an object of delight apart from any interest.
|
||
For where any one is conscious that his delight in an object is with
|
||
him independent of interest, it is inevitable that he should look on
|
||
the object as one containing a ground of delight for all men. For,
|
||
since the delight is not based on any inclination of the subject (or
|
||
on any other deliberate interest), but the subject feels himself
|
||
completely free in respect of the liking which he accords to the
|
||
object, he can find as reason for his delight no personal conditions
|
||
to which his own subjective self might alone be party. Hence he must
|
||
regard it as resting on what he may also presuppose in every other
|
||
person; and therefore he must believe that he has reason for demanding
|
||
a similar delight from every one. Accordingly he will speak of the
|
||
beautiful as if beauty were a quality of the object and the
|
||
judgement logical (forming a cognition of the object by concepts of
|
||
it); although it is only aesthetic, and contains merely a reference of
|
||
the representation of the object to the subject; because it still
|
||
bears this resemblance to the logical judgement, that it may be
|
||
presupposed to be valid for all men. But this universality cannot
|
||
spring from concepts. For from concepts there is no transition to
|
||
the feeling of pleasure or displeasure (save in the case of pure
|
||
practical laws, which, however, carry an interest with them; and
|
||
such an interest does not attach to the pure judgement of taste).
|
||
The result is that the judgement of taste, with its attendant
|
||
consciousness of detachment from all interest, must involve a claim to
|
||
validity for all men, and must do so apart from universality
|
||
attached to objects, i.e., there must be coupled with it a claim to
|
||
subjective universality.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 7. Comparison of the beautiful with the agreeable
|
||
and the good by means of the above characteristic.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 60}
|
||
-
|
||
As regards the agreeable, every one concedes that his judgement,
|
||
which he bases on a private feeling, and in which he declares that
|
||
an object pleases him, is restricted merely to himself personally.
|
||
Thus he does not take it amiss if, when he says that Canary-wine is
|
||
agreeable, another corrects the expression and reminds him that he
|
||
ought to say: "It is agreeable to me." This applies not only to the
|
||
taste of the tongue, the palate, and the throat, but to what may
|
||
with any one be agreeable to eye or ear. A violet colour is to one
|
||
soft and lovely: to another dull and faded. One man likes the tone
|
||
of wind instruments, another prefers that of string instruments. To
|
||
quarrel over such points with the idea of condemning another's
|
||
judgement as incorrect when it differs from our own, as if the
|
||
opposition between the two judgements were logical, would be folly.
|
||
With the agreeable, therefore, the axiom holds good: Every one has his
|
||
own taste (that of sense).
|
||
The beautiful stands on quite a different footing. It would, on
|
||
the contrary, be ridiculous if any one who plumed himself on his taste
|
||
were to think of justifying himself by saying: "This object (the
|
||
building we see, the dress that person has on, the concert we hear,
|
||
the poem submitted to our criticism) is beautiful for me." For if it
|
||
merely pleases him, be must not call it beautiful. Many things may for
|
||
him possess charm and agreeableness-no one cares about that; but
|
||
when he puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he
|
||
demands the same delight from others. He judges not merely for
|
||
himself, but for all men, and then speaks of beauty as if it were a
|
||
property of things. Thus he says the thing is beautiful; and it is not
|
||
as if he counted on others agreeing in his judgement of liking owing
|
||
to his having found them in such agreement on a number of occasions,
|
||
but he demands this agreement of them. He blames them if they judge
|
||
differently, and denies them taste, which he still requires of them as
|
||
something they ought to have; and to this extent it is not open to men
|
||
to say: "Every one has his own taste." This would be equivalent to
|
||
saying that there is no such thing at all as taste, i. e., no
|
||
aesthetic judgement capable of making a rightful claim upon the assent
|
||
of all men.
|
||
Yet even in the case of the agreeable, we find that the estimates
|
||
men form do betray a prevalent agreement among them, which leads to
|
||
our crediting some with taste and denying it to others, and that, too,
|
||
not as an organic sense but as a critical faculty in respect of the
|
||
agreeable generally. So of one who knows how to entertain his guests
|
||
with pleasures (of enjoyment through all the senses) in such a way
|
||
that one and all are pleased, we say that he has taste. But the
|
||
universality here is only understood in a comparative sense; and the
|
||
rules that apply are, like all empirical rules, general only, not
|
||
universal, the latter being what the judgement of taste upon the
|
||
beautiful deals or claims to deal in. It is a judgement in respect
|
||
of sociability so far as resting on empirical rules. In respect of the
|
||
good, it is true that judgements also rightly assert a claim to
|
||
validity for every one; but the good is only represented as an
|
||
object of universal delight by means of a concept, which is the case
|
||
neither with the agreeable nor the beautiful.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 65}
|
||
SS 8. In a judgement of taste the universality of
|
||
delight is only represented as subjective.
|
||
-
|
||
This particular form of the universality of an aesthetic
|
||
judgement, which is to be met in a judgement of taste, is a
|
||
significant feature, not for the logician certainly, but for the
|
||
transcendental philosopher. It calls for no small effort on his part
|
||
to discover its origin, but in return it brings to light a property of
|
||
our cognitive faculty which, without this analysis, would have
|
||
remained unknown.
|
||
First, one must get firmly into one's mind that by the judgement
|
||
of taste (upon the beautiful) the delight in an object is imputed to
|
||
every one, yet without being founded on a concept (for then it would
|
||
be the good), and that this claim to universality is such an essential
|
||
factor of a judgement by which we describe anything as beautiful, that
|
||
were it not for its being present to the mind it would never enter
|
||
into any one's head to use this expression, but everything that
|
||
pleased without a concept would be ranked as agreeable. For in respect
|
||
of the agreeable, every one is allowed to have his own opinion, and no
|
||
one insists upon others agreeing with his judgement of taste, which is
|
||
what is invariably done in the judgement of taste about beauty. The
|
||
first of these I may call the taste of sense, the second, the taste of
|
||
reflection: the first laying down judgements merely private, the
|
||
second, on the other hand, judgements ostensibly of general validity
|
||
(public), but both alike being aesthetic (not practical) judgements
|
||
about an object merely in respect of the bearings of its
|
||
representation on the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Now it
|
||
does seem strange that while with the taste of sense it is not alone
|
||
experience that shows that its judgement (of pleasure or displeasure
|
||
in something) is not universally valid, but every one willingly
|
||
refrains from imputing this agreement to others (despite the
|
||
frequent actual prevalence of a considerable consensus of general
|
||
opinion even in these judgements), the taste of reflection, which,
|
||
as experience teaches, has often enough to put up with a rude
|
||
dismissal of its claims to universal validity of its judgement (upon
|
||
the beautiful), can (as it actually does) find it possible for all
|
||
that to formulate judgements capable of demanding this agreement in
|
||
its universality. Such agreement it does in fact require from every
|
||
one for each of its judgements of taste the persons who pass these
|
||
judgements not quarreling over the possibility of such a claim, but
|
||
only failing in particular cases to come to terms as to the correct
|
||
application of this faculty.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 70}
|
||
First of all we have here to note that a universality which does not
|
||
rest upon concepts of the object (even though these are only
|
||
empirical) is in no way logical, but aesthetic, i. e., does not
|
||
involve any objective quantity of the judgement, but only one that
|
||
is subjective. For this universality I use the expression general
|
||
validity, which denotes the validity of the reference of a
|
||
representation, not to the cognitive faculties, but to the feeling
|
||
of pleasure or displeasure for every subject. (The same expression,
|
||
however, may also be employed for the logical quantity of the
|
||
judgement, provided we add objective universal validity, to
|
||
distinguish it from the merely subjective validity which is always
|
||
aesthetic.)
|
||
Now a judgement that has objective universal validity has always got
|
||
the subjective also, i.e., if the judgement is valid for everything
|
||
which is contained under a given concept, it is valid also for all who
|
||
represent an object by means of this concept. But from a subjective
|
||
universal validity, i. e., the aesthetic, that does not rest on any
|
||
concept, no conclusion can be drawn to the logical; because judgements
|
||
of that kind have no bearing upon the object. But for this very reason
|
||
the aesthetic universality attributed to a judgement must also be of a
|
||
special kind, seeing that it does not join the predicate of beauty
|
||
to the concept of the object taken in its entire logical sphere, and
|
||
yet does extend this predicate over the whole sphere of judging
|
||
subjects.
|
||
In their logical quantity, all judgements of taste are singular
|
||
judgements. For, since I must present the object immediately to my
|
||
feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and that, too, without the aid
|
||
of concepts, such judgements cannot have the quantity of judgements
|
||
with objective general validity. Yet by taking the singular
|
||
representation of the object of the judgement of taste, and by
|
||
comparison converting it into a concept according to the conditions
|
||
determining that judgement, we can arrive at a logically universal
|
||
judgement. For instance, by a judgement of the taste I describe the
|
||
rose at which I am looking as beautiful. The judgement, on the other
|
||
hand, resulting from the comparison of a number of singular
|
||
representations: "Roses in general are beautiful," is no longer
|
||
pronounced as a purely aesthetic judgement, but as a logical judgement
|
||
founded on one that is aesthetic. Now the judgement, "The rose is
|
||
agreeable" (to smell) is also, no doubt, an aesthetic and singular
|
||
judgement, but then it is not one of taste but of sense. For it has
|
||
this point of difference from a judgement of taste, that the latter
|
||
imports an aesthetic quantity of universality, i.e., of validity for
|
||
everyone which is not to be met with in a judgement upon the
|
||
agreeable. It is only judgements upon the good which, while also
|
||
determining the delight in an object, possess logical and not mere
|
||
aesthetic universality; for it is as involving a cognition of the
|
||
object that "they are valid of it, and on that account valid for
|
||
everyone.
|
||
In forming an estimate of objects merely from concepts, all
|
||
representation of beauty goes by the board. There can, therefore, be
|
||
no rule according to which any one is to be compelled to recognize
|
||
anything as beautiful. Whether a dress, a house, or a flower is
|
||
beautiful is a matter upon which one declines to allow one's judgement
|
||
to be swayed by any reasons or principles. We want to get a look at
|
||
the object with our own eyes, just as if our delight depended on
|
||
sensation. And yet, if upon so doing, we call the object beautiful, we
|
||
believe ourselves to be speaking with a universal voice, and lay claim
|
||
to the concurrence of everyone, whereas no private sensation would
|
||
be decisive except for the observer alone and his liking.
|
||
Here, now, we may perceive that nothing is postulated in the
|
||
judgement of taste but such a universal voice in respect of delight
|
||
that it is not mediated by concepts; consequently, only the
|
||
possibility of an aesthetic judgement capable of being at the same
|
||
time deemed valid for everyone. The judgement of taste itself does not
|
||
postulate the agreement of everyone (for it is only competent for a
|
||
logically universal judgement to do this, in that it is able to
|
||
bring forward reasons); it only imputes this agreement to everyone, as
|
||
an instance of the rule in respect of which it looks for confirmation,
|
||
not from concepts, but from the concurrence of others. The universal
|
||
voice is, therefore, only an idea -resting upon grounds the
|
||
investigation of which is here postponed. It may be a matter of
|
||
uncertainty whether a person who thinks he is laying down a
|
||
judgement of taste is, in fact, judging in conformity with that
|
||
idea; but that this idea is what is contemplated in his judgement, and
|
||
that, consequently, it is meant to be a judgement of taste, is
|
||
proclaimed by his use of the expression "beauty." For himself he can
|
||
be certain on the point from his mere consciousness of the
|
||
separation of everything belonging to the agreeable and the good
|
||
from the delight remaining to him; and this is all for which be
|
||
promises himself the agreement of everyone-a claim which, under
|
||
these conditions, he would also be warranted in making, were it not
|
||
that he frequently sinned against them, and thus passed an erroneous
|
||
judgement of taste.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 75}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 9. Investigation of the question of the relative
|
||
priority in a judgement of taste of the feeling
|
||
of pleasure and the estimating of the object.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 80}
|
||
The solution of this problem is the key to the Critique of taste,
|
||
and so is worthy of all attention.
|
||
Were the pleasure in a given object to be the antecedent, and were
|
||
the universal communicability of this pleasure to be all that the
|
||
judgement of taste is meant to allow to the representation of the
|
||
object, such a sequence would be self-contradictory. For a pleasure of
|
||
that kind would be nothing but the feeling of mere agreeableness to
|
||
the senses, and so, from its very nature, would possess no more than
|
||
private validity, seeing that it would be immediately dependent on the
|
||
representation through which the object is given.
|
||
Hence it is the universal capacity for being communicated incident
|
||
to the mental state in the given representation which, as the
|
||
subjective condition of the judgement of taste, must be,
|
||
fundamental, with the pleasure in the object as its consequent.
|
||
Nothing, however, is capable of being universally communicated but
|
||
cognition and representation so far as appurtenant to cognition. For
|
||
it is only as thus appurtenant that the representation is objective,
|
||
and it is this alone that gives it a universal point of reference with
|
||
which the power of representation of every one is obliged to
|
||
harmonize. If, then, the determining ground of the judgement as to
|
||
this universal communicability of the representation is to be merely
|
||
subjective, that is to say, to be conceived independently of any
|
||
concept of the object, it can be nothing else than the mental state
|
||
that presents itself in the mutual relation of the powers of
|
||
representation so far as they refer a given representation to
|
||
cognition in general.
|
||
The cognitive powers brought into play by this representation are
|
||
here engaged in a free play, since no definite concept restricts
|
||
them to a particular rule of cognition. Hence the mental state in this
|
||
representation must be one of a feeling of the free play of the powers
|
||
of representation in a given representation for a cognition in
|
||
general. Now a representation, whereby an object is given, involves,
|
||
in order that it may become a source of cognition at all,
|
||
imagination for bringing together the manifold of intuition, and
|
||
understanding for the unity of the concept uniting the
|
||
representations. This state of free play of the cognitive faculties
|
||
attending a representation by which an object is given must admit of
|
||
universal communication: because cognition, as a definition of the
|
||
object with which given representations (in any subject whatever)
|
||
are to accord, is the one and only representation which is valid for
|
||
everyone.
|
||
As the subjective universal communicability of the mode of
|
||
representation in a judgement of taste is to subsist apart from the
|
||
presupposition of any definite concept, it can be nothing else than
|
||
the mental state present in the free play of imagination and
|
||
understanding (so far as these are in mutual accord, as is requisite
|
||
for cognition in general); for we are conscious that this subjective
|
||
relation suitable for a cognition in general must be just as valid for
|
||
every one, and consequently as universally communicable, as is any
|
||
indeterminate cognition, which always rests upon that relation as
|
||
its subjective condition.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 85}
|
||
Now this purely subjective (aesthetic) estimating of the object,
|
||
or of the representation through which it is given, is antecedent to
|
||
the pleasure in it, and is the basis of this pleasure in the harmony
|
||
of the cognitive faculties. Again, the above-described universality of
|
||
the subjective conditions of estimating objects forms the sole
|
||
foundation of this universal subjective validity of the delight
|
||
which we connect with the representation of the object that we call
|
||
beautiful.
|
||
That an ability to communicate one's mental state, even though it be
|
||
only in respect of our cognitive faculties, is attended with a
|
||
pleasure, is a fact which might easily be demonstrated from the
|
||
natural propensity of mankind to social life, i.e., empirically and
|
||
psychologically. But what we have here in view calls for something
|
||
more than this. In a judgement of taste, the pleasure felt by us is
|
||
exacted from every one else as necessary, just as if, when we call
|
||
something beautiful, beauty was to be regarded as a quality of the
|
||
object forming part of its inherent determination according to
|
||
concepts; although beauty is for itself, apart from any reference to
|
||
the feeling of the subject, nothing. But the discussion of this
|
||
question must be reserved until we have answered the further one of
|
||
whether, and how, aesthetic judgements are possible a priori.
|
||
At present we are exercised with the lesser question of the way in
|
||
which we become conscious, in a judgement of taste, of a reciprocal
|
||
subjective common accord of the powers of cognition. Is it
|
||
aesthetically by sensation and our mere internal sense? Or is it
|
||
intellectually by consciousness of our intentional activity in
|
||
bringing these powers into play?
|
||
Now if the given representation occasioning the judgement of taste
|
||
were a concept which united understanding and imagination in the
|
||
estimate of the object so as to give a cognition of the object, the
|
||
consciousness of this relation would be intellectual (as in the
|
||
objective schematism of judgement dealt with in the Critique). But,
|
||
then, in that case the judgement would not be laid down with respect
|
||
to pleasure and displeasure, and so would not be a judgement of taste.
|
||
But, now, the judgement of taste determines the object,
|
||
independently of concepts, in respect of delight and of the
|
||
predicate of beauty. There is, therefore, no other way for the
|
||
subjective unity of the relation in question to make itself known than
|
||
by sensation. The quickening of both faculties (imagination and
|
||
understanding) to an indefinite, but yet, thanks to the given
|
||
representation, harmonious activity, such as belongs to cognition
|
||
generally, is the sensation whose universal communicability is
|
||
postulated by the judgement of taste. An objective relation can, of
|
||
course, only be thought, yet in so far as, in respect of its
|
||
conditions, it is subjective, it may be felt in its effect upon the
|
||
mind, and, in the case of a relation (like that of the powers of
|
||
representation to a faculty of cognition generally) which does not
|
||
rest on any concept, no other consciousness of it is possible beyond
|
||
that through sensation of its effect upon the mind -an effect
|
||
consisting in the more facile play of both mental powers
|
||
(imagination and understanding) as quickened by their mutual accord. A
|
||
representation which is singular and independent of comparison with
|
||
other representations, and, being such, yet accords with the
|
||
conditions of the universality that is the general concern of
|
||
understanding, is one that brings the cognitive faculties into that
|
||
proportionate accord which we require for all cognition and which we
|
||
therefore deem valid for every one who is so constituted as to judge
|
||
by means of understanding and sense conjointly (i.e., for every man).
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 90}
|
||
Definition of the Beautiful drawn from the Second Moment.
|
||
-
|
||
The beautiful is that which, apart from a concept, pleases
|
||
universally.
|
||
-
|
||
THIRD MOMENT. Of Judgements of Taste: Moment of
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 95}
|
||
the relation of the Ends brought under Review
|
||
in such Judgements.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 10. Finality in general.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 100}
|
||
Let us define the meaning of "an end" in transcendental terms (i.e.,
|
||
without presupposing anything empirical, such as the feeling of
|
||
pleasure). An end is the object of a concept so far as this concept is
|
||
regarded as the cause of the object (the real ground of its
|
||
possibility); and the causality of a concept in respect of its
|
||
object is finality (forma finalis). Where, then, not the cognition
|
||
of an object merely, but the object itself (its form or real
|
||
existence) as an effect, is thought to be possible only through a
|
||
concept of it, there we imagine an end. The representation of the
|
||
effect is here the determining ground of its cause and takes the
|
||
lead of it. The consciousness of the causality of a representation
|
||
in respect of the state of the subject as one tending to preserve a
|
||
continuance of that state, may here be said to denote in a general way
|
||
what is called pleasure; whereas displeasure is that representation
|
||
which contains the ground for converting the state of the
|
||
representations into their opposite (for hindering or removing them).
|
||
The faculty of desire, so far as determinable only through concepts,
|
||
i.e., so as to act in conformity with the representation of an end,
|
||
would be the Will. But an object, or state of mind, or even an
|
||
action may, although its possibility does not necessarily presuppose
|
||
the representation of an end, be called final simply on account of its
|
||
possibility being only explicable and intelligible for us by virtue of
|
||
an assumption on our part of fundamental causality according to
|
||
ends, i.e., a will that would have so ordained it according to a
|
||
certain represented rule. Finality, therefore, may exist apart from an
|
||
end, in so far as we do not locate the causes of this form in a
|
||
will, but yet are able to render the explanation of its possibility
|
||
intelligible to ourselves only by deriving it from a will. Now we
|
||
are not always obliged to look with the eye of reason into what we
|
||
observe (i.e., to consider it in its possibility). So we may at
|
||
least observe a finality of form, and trace it in objects-though by
|
||
reflection only-without resting it on an end (as the material of the
|
||
nexus finalis).
|
||
-
|
||
SS 11. The sole foundation of the judgement of taste
|
||
is the form of finality of an object (or mode of
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 105}
|
||
representing it).
|
||
-
|
||
Whenever an end is regarded as a source of delight, it always
|
||
imports an interest as determining ground of the judgement on the
|
||
object of pleasure. Hence the judgement of taste cannot rest on any
|
||
subjective end as its ground. But neither can any representation of an
|
||
objective end, i.e., of the possibility of the object itself on
|
||
principles of final connection, determine the judgement of taste, and,
|
||
consequently, neither can any concept of the good. For the judgement
|
||
of taste is an aesthetic and not a cognitive judgement, and so does
|
||
not deal with any concept of the nature or of the internal or external
|
||
possibility, by this or that cause, of the object, but simply with the
|
||
relative bearing of the representative powers so far as determined
|
||
by a representation.
|
||
Now this relation, present when an object is characterized as
|
||
beautiful, is coupled with the feeling of pleasure. This pleasure is
|
||
by the judgement of taste pronounced valid for every one; hence an
|
||
agreeableness attending the representation is just as incapable of
|
||
containing the determining ground of the judgement as the
|
||
representation of the perfection of the object or the concept of the
|
||
good. We are thus left with the subjective finality in the
|
||
representation of an object, exclusive of any end (objective or
|
||
subjective)-consequently the bare form of finality in the
|
||
representation whereby an object is given to us, so far as we are
|
||
conscious of it as that which is alone capable of constituting the
|
||
delight which, apart from any concept, we estimate as universally
|
||
communicable, and so of forming the determining ground of the
|
||
judgement of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 110}
|
||
SS 12. The judgement of taste rests upon a
|
||
priori grounds.
|
||
-
|
||
To determine a priori the connection of the feeling of pleasure or
|
||
displeasure as an effect, with some representation or other (sensation
|
||
or concept) as its cause, is utterly impossible; for that would be a
|
||
causal relation which (with objects of experience) is always one
|
||
that can only be cognized a posteriori and with the help of
|
||
experience. True, in the Critique of Practical Reason we did
|
||
actually derive a priori from universal moral concepts the feeling
|
||
of respect (as a particular and peculiar modification of this
|
||
feeling which does not strictly answer either to the pleasure or
|
||
displeasure which we receive from empirical objects). But there we
|
||
were further able to cross the border of experience and call in aid
|
||
a causality resting on a supersensible attribute of the subject,
|
||
namely that of freedom. But even there it was not this feeling exactly
|
||
that we deduced from the idea of the moral as cause, but from this was
|
||
derived simply the determination of the will. But the mental state
|
||
present in the determination of the will by any means is at once in
|
||
itself a feeling of pleasure and identical with it, and so does not
|
||
issue from it as an effect. Such an effect must only be assumed
|
||
where the concept of the moral as a good precedes the determination of
|
||
the will by the law; for in that case it would be futile to derive the
|
||
pleasure combined with the concept from this concept as a mere
|
||
cognition.
|
||
Now the pleasure in aesthetic judgements stands on a similar
|
||
footing: only that here it is merely contemplative and does not
|
||
bring about an interest in the object; whereas in the moral
|
||
judgement it is practical, The consciousness of mere formal finality
|
||
in the play of the cognitive faculties of the subject attending a
|
||
representation whereby an object is given, is the pleasure itself,
|
||
because it involves a determining ground of the subject's activity
|
||
in respect of the quickening of its cognitive powers, and thus an
|
||
internal causality (which is final) in respect of cognition generally,
|
||
but without being limited to a definite cognition, and consequently
|
||
a mere form of the subjective finality of a representation in an
|
||
aesthetic judgement. This pleasure is also in no way practical,
|
||
neither resembling that form the pathological ground of
|
||
agreeableness nor that from the intellectual ground of the represented
|
||
good. But still it involves an inherent causality, that, namely, of
|
||
preserving a continuance of the state of the representation itself and
|
||
the active engagement of the cognitive powers without ulterior aim. We
|
||
dwell on the contemplation of the beautiful because this contemplation
|
||
strengthens and reproduces itself. The case is analogous (but
|
||
analogous only) to the way we linger on a charm in the
|
||
representation of an object which keeps arresting the attention, the
|
||
mind all the while remaining passive.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 115}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 13. The pure judgement of taste is independent
|
||
of charm and emotion.
|
||
-
|
||
Every interest vitiates the judgement of taste and robs it of its
|
||
impartiality. This is especially so where, instead of, like the
|
||
interest of reason, making finality take the lead of the lead of the
|
||
feeling of pleasure, it grounds it upon this feeling-which is what
|
||
always happens in aesthetic judgements upon anything so far as it
|
||
gratifies or pains. Hence judgements so influenced can either lay no
|
||
claim at all to a universally valid delight, or else must abate
|
||
their claim in proportion as sensations of the kind in question
|
||
enter into the determining grounds of taste. Taste that requires an
|
||
added element of charm and emotion for its delight, not to speak of
|
||
adopting this as the measure of its approval, has not yet emerged from
|
||
barbarism.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 120}
|
||
And yet charms are frequently not alone ranked with beauty (which
|
||
ought properly to be a question merely of the form) as supplementary
|
||
to the aesthetic universal delight, but they have been accredited as
|
||
intrinsic beauties, and consequently the matter of delight passed
|
||
off for the form. This is a misconception which, like many others that
|
||
have still an underlying element of truth, may be removed by a careful
|
||
definition of these concepts.
|
||
A judgement of taste which is uninfluenced by charm or emotion
|
||
(though these may be associated with the delight in the beautiful),
|
||
and whose determining ground, therefore, is simply finality of form,
|
||
is a pure judgement of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 14 Exemplification.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 125}
|
||
Aesthetic, just like theoretical (logical) judgements, are divisible
|
||
into empirical and pure. The first are those by which agreeableness or
|
||
disagreeableness, the second those by which beauty is predicated of an
|
||
object or its mode of representation. The former are judgements of
|
||
sense (material aesthetic judgements), the latter (as formal) alone
|
||
judgements of taste proper.
|
||
A judgement of taste, therefore, is only pure so far as its
|
||
determining ground is tainted with no merely empirical delight. But
|
||
such a taint is always present where charm or emotion have a share
|
||
in the judgement by which something is to be described as beautiful.
|
||
Here now there is a recrudescence of a number of specious pleas that
|
||
go the length of putting forward the case that charm is not merely a
|
||
necessary ingredient of beauty, but is even of itself sufficient to
|
||
merit the name of beautiful. A mere colour, such as the green of a
|
||
plot of grass, or a mere tone (as distinguished from sound or
|
||
noise), like that of a violin, is described by most people as in
|
||
itself beautiful, notwithstanding the fact that both seem to depend
|
||
merely on the matter of the representations in other words, simply
|
||
on sensation-which only entitles them to be called agreeable. But it
|
||
will at the same time be observed that sensations of colour as well as
|
||
of tone are only entitled to be immediately regarded as beautiful
|
||
where, in either case, they are pure. This is a determination which at
|
||
once goes to their form, and it is the only one which these
|
||
representations possess that admits with certainty of being
|
||
universally communicated. For it is not to be assumed that even the
|
||
quality of the sensations agrees in all subjects, and we can hardly
|
||
take it for granted that the agreeableness of a colour, or of the tone
|
||
of a musical instrument, which we judge to be preferable to that of
|
||
another, is given a like preference in the estimate of every one.
|
||
Assuming vibrations vibration sound, and, what is most important,
|
||
that the mind not alone perceives by sense their effect in stimulating
|
||
the organs, but also, by reflection, the regular play of the
|
||
impressions (and consequently the form in which different
|
||
representations are united)-which I, still, in no way doubt-then
|
||
colour and tone would not be mere sensations. They would be nothing
|
||
short of formal determinations of the unity of a manifold of
|
||
sensations, and in that case could even be ranked as intrinsic
|
||
beauties.
|
||
But the purity of a simple mode of sensation means that its
|
||
uniformity is not disturbed or broken by any foreign sensation. It
|
||
belongs merely to the form; for abstraction may there be made from the
|
||
quality of the mode of such sensation (what colour or tone, if any, it
|
||
represents). For this reason, all simple colours are regarded as
|
||
beautiful so far as pure. Composite colours have not this advantage,
|
||
because, not being simple, there is no standard for estimating whether
|
||
they should be called pure or impure.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 130}
|
||
But as for the beauty ascribed to the object on account of its form,
|
||
and the supposition that it is capable of being enhanced by charm,
|
||
this is a common error and one very prejudicial to genuine,
|
||
uncorrupted, sincere taste. Nevertheless charms may be added to beauty
|
||
to lend to the mind, beyond a bare delight, an adventitious interest
|
||
in the representation of the object, and thus to advocate taste and
|
||
its cultivation. This applies especially where taste is as yet crude
|
||
and untrained. But they are positively subversive of the judgement
|
||
of taste, if allowed to obtrude themselves as grounds of estimating
|
||
beauty. For so far are they from contributing to beauty that it is
|
||
only where taste is still weak and untrained that, like aliens, they
|
||
are admitted as a favour, and only on terms that they do not violate
|
||
that beautiful form.
|
||
In painting, sculpture, and in fact in all the formative arts, in
|
||
architecture and horticulture, so far as fine arts, the design is what
|
||
is essential. Here it is not what gratifies in sensation but merely
|
||
what pleases by its form, that is the fundamental prerequisite for
|
||
taste. The colours which give brilliancy to the sketch are part of the
|
||
charm. They may no doubt, in their own way, enliven the object for
|
||
sensation, but make it really worth looking at and beautiful they
|
||
cannot. Indeed, more often than not the requirements of the
|
||
beautiful form restrict them to a very narrow compass, and, even where
|
||
charm is admitted, it is only this form that gives them a place of
|
||
honour.
|
||
All form of objects of sense (both of external and also,
|
||
mediately, of internal sense) is either figure or play. In the
|
||
latter case it is either play of figures (in space: mimic and
|
||
dance), or mere play of sensations (in time). The charm of colours, or
|
||
of the agreeable tones of instruments, may be added: but the design in
|
||
the former and the composition in the latter constitute the proper
|
||
object of the pure judgement of taste. To say that the purity alike of
|
||
colours and of tones, or their variety and contrast, seem to
|
||
contribute to beauty, is by no means to imply that, because in
|
||
themselves agreeable, they therefore yield an addition to the
|
||
delight in the form and one on a par with it. The real meaning
|
||
rather is that they make this form more clearly, definitely, and
|
||
completely intuitable, and besides stimulate the representation by
|
||
their charm, as they excite and sustain the attention directed to
|
||
the object itself.
|
||
Even what is called ornamentation (parerga), i.e., what is only an
|
||
adjunct and not an intrinsic constituent in the complete
|
||
representation of the object, in augmenting the delight of taste
|
||
does so only by means of its form. Thus it is with the frames of
|
||
pictures or the drapery on statues, or the colonnades of palaces.
|
||
But if the ornamentation does not itself enter into the composition of
|
||
the beautiful form-if it is introduced like a gold frame merely to win
|
||
approval for the picture by means of its charm-it is then called
|
||
finery and takes away from the genuine beauty.
|
||
Emotion-a sensation where an agreeable feeling is produced merely by
|
||
means of a momentary check followed by a more powerful outpouring of
|
||
the vital force-is quite foreign to beauty. Sublimity (with which
|
||
the feeling of emotion is connected) requires, however, a different
|
||
standard of estimation from that relied upon by taste. A pure
|
||
judgement of taste has, then, for its determining ground neither charm
|
||
nor emotion, in a word, no sensation as matter of the aesthetic
|
||
judgement.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 135}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 15. The judgement of taste is entirely independent
|
||
of the concept of perfection.
|
||
-
|
||
Objective finality can only be cognized by means of a reference of
|
||
the manifold to a definite end, and hence only through a concept. This
|
||
alone makes it clear that the beautiful, which is estimated on the
|
||
ground of a mere formal finality, i.e., a finality apart from an
|
||
end, is wholly independent of the representation of the good. For
|
||
the latter presupposes an objective finality, i.e., the reference of
|
||
the object to a definite end.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 140}
|
||
Objective finality is either external, i.e., the utility, or
|
||
internal, i. e., the perfection, of the object. That the delight in an
|
||
object on account of which we call it beautiful is incapable of
|
||
resting on the representation of its utility, is abundantly evident
|
||
from the two preceding articles; for in that case, it would not be
|
||
an immediate delight in the object, which latter is the essential
|
||
condition of the judgement upon beauty. But in an objective,
|
||
internal finality, i.e., perfection, we have what is more akin to
|
||
the predicate of beauty, and so this has been held even by
|
||
philosophers of reputation to be convertible with beauty, though
|
||
subject to the qualification: where it is thought in a confused way.
|
||
In a critique of taste it is of the utmost importance to decide
|
||
whether beauty is really reducible to the concept of perfection.
|
||
For estimating objective finality we always require the concept of
|
||
an end, and, where such finality has to be, not an external one
|
||
(utility), but an internal one, the concept of an internal end
|
||
containing the ground of the internal possibility of the object. Now
|
||
an end is in general that, the concept of which may be regarded as the
|
||
ground of the possibility of the object itself. So in order to
|
||
represent an objective finality in a thing we must first have a
|
||
concept of what sort of a thing it is to be. The agreement of the
|
||
manifold in a thing with this concept (which supplies the rule of
|
||
its synthesis) is the qualitative perfection of the thing.
|
||
Quantitative perfection is entirely distinct from this. It consists in
|
||
the completeness of anything after its kind, and is a mere concept
|
||
of quantity (of totality). In its case the question of what the
|
||
thing is to be is regarded as definitely disposed of, and we only
|
||
ask whether it is possessed of all the requisites that go to make it
|
||
such. What is formal in the representation of a thing, i.e., the
|
||
agreement of its manifold with a unity (i.e., irrespective of what
|
||
it is to be), does not, of itself, afford us any cognition
|
||
whatsoever of objective finality. For since abstraction is made from
|
||
this unity as end (what the thing is to be), nothing is left but the
|
||
subjective finality of the representations in the mind of the
|
||
subject intuiting. This gives a certain finality of the representative
|
||
state of the subject, in which the subject feels itself quite at
|
||
home in its effort to grasp a given form in the imagination, but no
|
||
perfection of any object, the latter not being here thought through
|
||
any concept. For instance, if in a forest I light upon a plot of
|
||
grass, round which trees stand in a circle, and if I do not then
|
||
form any representation of an end, as that it is meant to be used,
|
||
say, for country dances, then not the least hint of a concept of
|
||
perfection is given by the mere form. To suppose a formal objective
|
||
finality that is yet devoid of an end, i.e., the mere form of a
|
||
perfection (apart from any matter or concept of that to which the
|
||
agreement relates, even though there was the mere general idea of a
|
||
conformity to law) is a veritable contradiction.
|
||
Now the judgement of taste is an aesthetic judgement, one resting on
|
||
subjective grounds. No concept can be its determining ground, and
|
||
hence not one of a definite end. Beauty, therefore, as a formal
|
||
subjective finality, involves no thought whatsoever of a perfection of
|
||
the object, as a would-be formal finality which yet, for all that,
|
||
is objective: and the distinction between the concepts of the
|
||
beautiful and the good, which represents both as differing only in
|
||
their logical form, the first being merely a confused, the second a
|
||
clearly defined, concept of perfection, while otherwise alike in
|
||
content and origin, all goes for nothing: for then there would be no
|
||
specific difference between them, but the judgement of taste would
|
||
be just as much a cognitive judgement as one by which something is
|
||
described as good-just as the man in the street, when be says that
|
||
deceit is wrong, bases his judgement on confused, but the
|
||
philosopher on clear grounds, while both appeal in reality to
|
||
identical principles of reason. But I have already stated that an
|
||
aesthetic judgement is quite unique, and affords absolutely no (not
|
||
even a confused) knowledge of the object. It is only through a logical
|
||
judgement that we get knowledge. The aesthetic judgement, on the other
|
||
hand, refers the representation, by which an object is given, solely
|
||
to the subject, and brings to our notice no quality of the object, but
|
||
only the final form in the determination of the powers of
|
||
representation engaged upon it. The judgement is called aesthetic
|
||
for the very reason that its determining ground cannot be a concept,
|
||
but is rather the feeling (of the internal sense) of the concert in
|
||
the play of the mental powers as a thing only capable of being felt.
|
||
If, on the other band, confused concepts, and the objective
|
||
judgement based on them, are going to be called aesthetic, we shall
|
||
find ourselves with an understanding judging by sense, or a sense
|
||
representing its objects by concepts-a mere choice of
|
||
contradictions. The faculty of concepts, be they confused or be they
|
||
clear, is understanding; and although understanding has (as in all
|
||
judgements) its role in the judgement of taste, as an aesthetic
|
||
judgement, its role there is not that of a faculty for cognizing an
|
||
object, but of a faculty for determining that judgement and its
|
||
representation (without a concept) according to its relation to the
|
||
subject and its internal feeling, and for doing so in so far as that
|
||
judgement is possible according to a universal rule.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 16. A judgement of taste by which an object is
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 145}
|
||
described as beautiful, under the condition of
|
||
a definite concept, is not pure.
|
||
-
|
||
There are two kinds of beauty: free beauty (pulchritudo vaga), or
|
||
beauty which is merely dependent (pulchritudo adhaerens). The first
|
||
presupposes no concept of what the object should be; the second does
|
||
presuppose such a concept and, with it, an answering perfection of the
|
||
object. Those of the first kind are said to be (self-subsisting)
|
||
beauties of this thing or that thing; the other kind of beauty,
|
||
being attached to a concept (conditioned beauty), is ascribed to
|
||
objects which come under the concept of a particular end.
|
||
Flowers are free beauties of nature. Hardly anyone but a botanist
|
||
knows the true nature of a flower, and even he, while recognizing in
|
||
the flower the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no attention to
|
||
this natural end when using his taste to judge of its beauty. Hence no
|
||
perfection of any kind-no internal finality, as something to which the
|
||
arrangement of the manifold is related-underlies this judgement.
|
||
Many birds (the parrot, the humming-bird, the bird of paradise), and a
|
||
number of crustacea, are self-subsisting beauties which are not
|
||
appurtenant to any object defined with respect to its end, but
|
||
please freely and on their own account. So designs a la grecque,
|
||
foliage for framework or on wall-papers, etc., have no intrinsic
|
||
meaning; they represent nothing-no object under a definite concept-and
|
||
are free beauties. We may also rank in the same class what in music
|
||
are called fantasias (without a theme), and, indeed, all music that is
|
||
not set to words.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 150}
|
||
In the estimate of a free beauty (according to mere form) we have
|
||
the pure judgement of taste. No concept is here presupposed of any end
|
||
for which the manifold should serve the given object, and which the
|
||
latter, therefore, should represent-an incumbrance which would only
|
||
restrict the freedom of the imagination that, as it were, is at play
|
||
in the contemplation of the outward form.
|
||
But the beauty of man (including under this head that of a man,
|
||
woman, or child), the beauty of a horse, or of a building (such as a
|
||
church, palace, arsenal, or summer-house), presupposes a concept of
|
||
the end that defines what the thing has to be, and consequently a
|
||
concept of its perfection; and is therefore merely appendant beauty.
|
||
Now, just as it is a clog on the purity of the purity of the judgement
|
||
of taste to have the agreeable (of sensation) joined with beauty to
|
||
which properly only the form is relevant, so to combine the good
|
||
with beauty (the good, namely, of the manifold to the thing itself
|
||
according to its end) mars its purity.
|
||
Much might be added to a building that would immediately please
|
||
the eye, were it not intended for a church. A figure might be
|
||
beautified with all manner of flourishes and light but regular
|
||
lines, as is done by the New Zealanders with their tattooing, were
|
||
we dealing with anything but the figure of a human being. And here
|
||
is one whose rugged features might be softened and given a more
|
||
pleasing aspect, only he has got to be a man, or is, perhaps, a
|
||
warrior that has to have a warlike appearance.
|
||
Now the delight in the manifold of a thing, in reference to the
|
||
internal end that determines its possibility, is a delight based on
|
||
a concept, whereas delight in the beautiful is such as does not
|
||
presuppose any concept, but is immediately coupled with the
|
||
representation through which the object is given (not through which it
|
||
is thought). If, now, the judgement of taste in respect of the
|
||
latter delight is made dependent upon the end involved in the former
|
||
delight as a judgement of reason, and is thus placed under a
|
||
restriction, then it is no longer a free and pure judgement of taste.
|
||
Taste, it is true, stands to gain by this combination of
|
||
intellectual delight with the aesthetic. For it becomes fixed, and,
|
||
while not universal, it enables rules to be prescribed for it in
|
||
respect of certain definite final objects. But these rules are then
|
||
not rules of taste, but merely rules for establishing a union of taste
|
||
with reason, i.e., of the beautiful with the good-rules by which the
|
||
former becomes available as an intentional instrument in respect of
|
||
the latter, for the purpose of bringing that temper of the mind
|
||
which is self-sustaining and of subjective universal validity to the
|
||
support and maintenance of that mode of thought which, while
|
||
possessing objective universal validity, can only be preserved by a
|
||
resolute effort. But, strictly speaking, perfection neither gains by
|
||
beauty, nor beauty by perfection. The truth is rather this, when we
|
||
compare the representation through which an object is given to us with
|
||
the object (in respect of what it is meant to be) by means of a
|
||
concept, we cannot help reviewing it also in respect of the
|
||
sensation in the subject. Hence there results a gain to the entire
|
||
faculty of our representative power when harmony prevails between both
|
||
states of mind.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 155}
|
||
In respect of an object with a definite internal end, a judgement of
|
||
taste would only be pure where the person judging either has no
|
||
concept of this end, or else makes abstraction from it in his
|
||
judgement. But in cases like this, although such a person should lay
|
||
down a correct judgement of taste, since he would be estimating the
|
||
object as a free beauty, he would still be found fault with by another
|
||
who saw nothing in its beauty but a dependent quality (i.e., who
|
||
looked to the end of the object) and would be accused by him of
|
||
false taste, though both would, in their own way, be judging
|
||
correctly: the one according to what he had present to his senses, the
|
||
other according to what was present in his thoughts. This
|
||
distinction enables us to settle many disputes about beauty on the
|
||
part of critics; for we may show them how one side is dealing with
|
||
free beauty, and the other with that which is dependent: the former
|
||
passing a pure judgement of taste, the latter one that is applied
|
||
intentionally.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 17. Ideal of beauty.
|
||
-
|
||
There can be no objective rule of taste by which what is beautiful
|
||
may be defined by means of concepts. For every judgement from that
|
||
source is aesthetic, i.e., its determining ground is the feeling of
|
||
the subject, and not any concept of an object. It is only throwing
|
||
away labour to look for a principle of taste that affords a
|
||
universal criterion of the beautiful by definite concepts; because
|
||
what is sought is a thing impossible and inherently contradictory. But
|
||
in the universal communicability of the sensation (of delight or
|
||
aversion)-a communicability, too, that exists apart from any
|
||
concept-in the accord, so far as possible, of all ages and nations
|
||
as to this feeling in the representation of certain objects, we have
|
||
the empirical criterion, weak indeed and scarce sufficient to raise
|
||
a presumption, of the derivation of a taste, thus confirmed by
|
||
examples, from grounds deep seated and shared alike by all men,
|
||
underlying their agreement in estimating the forms under which objects
|
||
are given to them.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 160}
|
||
For this reason some products of taste are looked on as
|
||
exemplary-not meaning thereby that by imitating others taste may be
|
||
acquired. For taste must be an original faculty; whereas one who
|
||
imitates a model, while showing skill commensurate with his success,
|
||
only displays taste as himself a critic of this model.* Hence it
|
||
follows that the highest model, the archetype of taste, is a mere
|
||
idea, which each person must beget in his own consciousness, and
|
||
according to which he must form his estimate of everything that is
|
||
an object of taste, or that is an example of critical taste, and
|
||
even of universal taste itself. Properly speaking, an idea signifies a
|
||
concept of reason, and an ideal the representation of an individual
|
||
existence as adequate to an idea. Hence this archetype of
|
||
taste-which rests, indeed, upon reason's indeterminate idea of a
|
||
maximum, but is not, however, capable of being represented by means of
|
||
concepts, but only in an individual presentation-may more
|
||
appropriately be called the ideal of the beautiful. While not having
|
||
this ideal in our possession, we still strive to beget it within us.
|
||
But it is bound to be merely an ideal of the imagination, seeing
|
||
that it rests, not upon concepts, but upon the presentation-the
|
||
faculty of presentation being the imagination. Now, how do we arrive
|
||
at such an ideal of beauty? Is it a priori or empirically? Further,
|
||
what species of the beautiful admits of an ideal?
|
||
-
|
||
*Models of taste with respect to the arts of speech must be composed
|
||
in a dead and learned language; the first, to prevent their having
|
||
to suffer the changes that inevitably overtake living ones, making
|
||
dignified expressions become degraded, common ones antiquated, and
|
||
ones newly coined after a short currency obsolete: the second to
|
||
ensure its having a grammar that is not subject to the caprices of
|
||
fashion, but has fixed rules of its own.
|
||
-
|
||
First of all, we do well to observe that the beauty for which an
|
||
ideal has to be sought cannot be a beauty that is free and at large,
|
||
but must be one fixed by a concept of objective finality. Hence it
|
||
cannot belong to the object of an altogether pure judgement of
|
||
taste, but must attach to one that is partly intellectual. In other
|
||
words, where an ideal is to have place among the grounds upon which
|
||
any estimate is formed, then beneath grounds of that kind there must
|
||
lie some idea of reason according to determinate concepts, by which
|
||
the end underlying the internal possibility of the object is
|
||
determined a priori. An ideal of beautiful flowers, of a beautiful
|
||
suite of furniture, or of a beautiful view, is unthinkable. But, it
|
||
may also be impossible to represent an ideal of a beauty dependent
|
||
on definite ends, e.g., a beautiful residence, a beautiful tree, a
|
||
beautiful garden, etc., presumably because their ends are not
|
||
sufficiently defined and fixed by their concept, with the result
|
||
that their finality is nearly as free as with beauty that is quite
|
||
at large. Only what has in itself the end of its real existence-only
|
||
man that is able himself to determine his ends by reason, or, where he
|
||
has to derive them from external perception, can still compare them
|
||
with essential and universal ends, and then further pronounce
|
||
aesthetically upon their accord with such ends, only he, among all
|
||
objects in the world, admits, therefore, of an ideal of beauty, just
|
||
as humanity in his person, as intelligence, alone admits of the
|
||
ideal of perfection.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 165}
|
||
Two factors are here involved. First, there is the aesthetic
|
||
normal idea, which is an individual intuition (of the imagination).
|
||
This represents the norm by which we judge of a man as a member of a
|
||
particular animal species. Secondly, there is the rational idea.
|
||
This deals with the ends of humanity so far as capable of sensuous
|
||
representation, and converts them into a principle for estimating
|
||
his outward form, through which these ends are revealed in their
|
||
phenomenal effect. The normal idea must draw from experience the
|
||
constituents which it requires for the form of an animal of a
|
||
particular kind. But the greatest finality in the construction of this
|
||
form-that which would serve as a universal norm for forming an
|
||
estimate of each individual of the species in question-the image that,
|
||
as it were, forms an intentional basis underlying the technic of
|
||
nature, to which no separate individual, but only the race as a whole,
|
||
is adequate, has its seat merely in the idea of the judging subject.
|
||
Yet it is, with all its proportions, an aesthetic idea, and, as
|
||
such, capable of being fully presented in concreto in a model image.
|
||
Now, how is this effected? In order to render the process to some
|
||
extent intelligible (for who can wrest nature's whole secret from
|
||
her?), let us attempt a psychological explanation.
|
||
It is of note that the imagination, in a manner quite
|
||
incomprehensible to us, is able on occasion, even after a long lapse
|
||
of time, not alone to recall the signs for concepts, but also to
|
||
reproduce the image and shape of an object out of a countless number
|
||
of others of a different, or even of the very same, kind. And,
|
||
further, if the mind is engaged upon comparisons, we may well
|
||
suppose that it can in actual fact, though the process is unconscious,
|
||
superimpose as it were one image upon another, and from the
|
||
coincidence of a number of the same kind arrive at a mean contour
|
||
which serves as a common standard for all. Say, for instance, a person
|
||
has seen a thousand full-grown men. Now if he wishes to judge normal
|
||
size determined upon a comparative estimate, then imagination (to my
|
||
mind) allows a great number of these images (perhaps the whole
|
||
thousand) to fall one upon the other, and, if I may be allowed to
|
||
extend to the case the analogy of optical presentation, in the space
|
||
where they come most together, and within the contour where the
|
||
place is illuminated by the greatest concentration of colour, one gets
|
||
a perception of the average size, which alike in height and breadth is
|
||
equally removed from the extreme limits of the greatest and smallest
|
||
statures; and this is the stature of a beautiful man. (The same result
|
||
could be obtained in a mechanical way, by taking the measures of all
|
||
the thousand, and adding together their heights, and their breadths
|
||
[and thicknesses], and dividing the sum in each case by a thousand.)
|
||
But the power of imagination does all this by means of a dynamical
|
||
effect upon the organ of internal sense, arising from the frequent
|
||
apprehension of such forms. If, again, for our average man we seek
|
||
on similar lines for the average head, and for this the average
|
||
nose, and so on, then we get the figure that underlies the normal idea
|
||
of a beautiful man in the country where the comparison is
|
||
instituted. For this reason a Negro must necessarily (under these
|
||
empirical conditions) have a different normal idea of the beauty of
|
||
forms from what a white man has, and the Chinaman one different from
|
||
the European. And the. process would be just the same with the model
|
||
of a beautiful horse or dog (of a particular breed). This normal
|
||
idea is not derived from proportions taken from experience as definite
|
||
rules: rather is it according to this idea that rules forming
|
||
estimates first become possible. It is an intermediate between all
|
||
singular intuitions of individuals, with their manifold variations-a
|
||
floating image for the whole genus, which nature has set as an
|
||
archetype underlying those of her products that belong to the same
|
||
species, but which in no single case she seems to have completely
|
||
attained. But the normal idea is far from giving the complete
|
||
archetype of beauty in the genus. It only gives the form that
|
||
constitutes the indispensable condition of all beauty, and,
|
||
consequently, only correctness in the presentation of the genus. It
|
||
is, as the famous "Doryphorus" of Polycletus was called, the rule (and
|
||
Myron's "Cow" might be similarly employed for its kind). It cannot,
|
||
for that very reason, contain anything specifically characteristic;
|
||
for otherwise it would not be the normal idea for the genus.
|
||
Further, it is not by beauty that its presentation pleases, but merely
|
||
because it does not contradict any of the conditions under which alone
|
||
a thing belonging to this genus can be beautiful. The presentation
|
||
is merely academically correct.*
|
||
-
|
||
*It will be found that a perfectly regular face one that a painter
|
||
might fix his eye on for a model-ordinarily conveys nothing. This is
|
||
because it is devoid of anything characteristic, and so the idea of
|
||
the race is expressed in it rather than the specific qualities of a
|
||
person. The exaggeration of what is characteristic in this way,
|
||
i.e., exaggeration violating the normal idea (the finality of the
|
||
race), is called caricature. Also experience shows that these quite
|
||
regular faces indicate as a rule internally only a mediocre type of
|
||
man; presumably-if one may assume that nature in its external form
|
||
expresses the proportions of the internal -because, where none of
|
||
the mental qualities exceed the proportion requisite to constitute a
|
||
man free from faults, nothing can be expected in the way of what is
|
||
called genius, in which nature seems to make a departure from its
|
||
wonted relations of the mental powers in favour of some special one.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 170}
|
||
But the ideal of the beautiful is still something different from its
|
||
normal idea. For reasons already stated it is only to be sought in the
|
||
human figure. Here the ideal consists in the expression of the
|
||
moral, apart from which the object would not please at once
|
||
universally and positively (not merely negatively in a presentation
|
||
academically correct). The visible expression of moral ideas that
|
||
govern men inwardly can, of course, only be drawn from experience; but
|
||
their combination with all that our reason connects with the morally
|
||
good in the idea of the highest finality-benevolence, purity,
|
||
strength, or equanimity, etc.-may be made, as it were, visible in
|
||
bodily manifestation (as effect of what is internal), and this
|
||
embodiment involves a union of pure ideas of reason and great
|
||
imaginative power, in one who would even form an estimate of it, not
|
||
to speak of being the author of its presentation. The correctness of
|
||
such an ideal of beauty is evidenced by its not permitting any
|
||
sensuous charm to mingle with the delight in its object, in which it
|
||
still allows us to take a great interest. This fact in turn shows that
|
||
an estimate formed according to such a standard can never be purely
|
||
aesthetic, and that one formed according to an ideal of beauty
|
||
cannot be a simple judgement of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
Definition of the Beautiful Derived from this Third Moment.
|
||
-
|
||
Beauty is the form of finality in an object, so far as perceived
|
||
in it apart from the representation of an end.*
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 175}
|
||
-
|
||
*As telling against this explanation, the instance may be adduced
|
||
that there are things in which we see a form suggesting adaptation
|
||
to an end, without any end being cognized in them-as, for example, the
|
||
stone implements frequently obtained from sepulchral tumuli and
|
||
supplied with a hole, as if for [inserting] a handle; and although
|
||
these by their shape manifestly indicate a finality, the end of
|
||
which is unknown, they are not on that account described as beautiful.
|
||
But the very fact of their being regarded as art-products involves
|
||
an immediate recognition that their shape is attributed to some
|
||
purpose or other and to a definite end. For this reason there is no
|
||
immediate delight whatever in their contemplation. A flower, on the
|
||
other hand, such as a tulip, is regarded as beautiful, because we meet
|
||
with a certain finality in its perception, which, in our estimate of
|
||
it, is not referred to any end whatever.
|
||
-
|
||
FOURTH MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste: Moment of
|
||
the Modality of the Delight in the Object.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 180}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 18. Nature of the modality in a judgement of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
I may assert in the case of every representation that the
|
||
synthesis of a pleasure with the representation (as a cognition) is at
|
||
least possible. Of what I call agreeable I assert that it actually
|
||
causes pleasure in me. But what we have in mind in the case of the
|
||
beautiful is a necessary reference on its part to delight. However,
|
||
this necessity is of a special kind. It is not a theoretical objective
|
||
necessity-such as would let us cognize a priori that every one will
|
||
feel this delight in the object that is called beautiful by me. Nor
|
||
yet is it a practical necessity, in which case, thanks to concepts
|
||
of a pure rational will in which free agents are supplied with a rule,
|
||
this delight is the necessary consequence of an objective law, and
|
||
simply means that one ought absolutely (without ulterior object) to
|
||
act in a certain way. Rather, being such a necessity as is thought
|
||
in an aesthetic judgement, it can only be termed exemplary. In other
|
||
words it is a necessity of the assent of all to a judgement regarded
|
||
as exemplifying a universal rule incapable of formulation. Since an
|
||
aesthetic judgement is not an objective or cognitive judgement, this
|
||
necessity is not derivable from definite concepts, and so is not
|
||
apodeictic. Much less is it inferable from universality of
|
||
experience (of a thoroughgoing agreement of judgements about the
|
||
beauty of a certain object). For, apart from the fact that
|
||
experience would hardly furnish evidences sufficiently numerous for
|
||
this purpose, empirical judgements do not afford any foundation for
|
||
a concept of the necessity of these judgements.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 185}
|
||
SS 19. The subjective necessity attributed to a
|
||
judgement of taste is conditioned.
|
||
-
|
||
The judgement of taste exacts agreement from every one; and a person
|
||
who describes something as beautiful insists that every one ought to
|
||
give the object in question his approval and follow suit in describing
|
||
it as beautiful. The ought in aesthetic judgements, therefore, despite
|
||
an accordance with all the requisite data for passing judgement, is
|
||
still only pronounced conditionally. We are suitors for agreement from
|
||
every one else, because we are fortified with a ground common to
|
||
all. Further, we would be able to count on this agreement, provided we
|
||
were always assured of the correct subsumption of the case under
|
||
that ground as the rule of approval.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 190}
|
||
SS 20. The condition of the necessity advanced by a
|
||
judgement of taste is the idea of a common sense.
|
||
-
|
||
Were judgements of taste (like cognitive judgements) in possession
|
||
of a definite objective principle, then one who in his judgement
|
||
followed such a principle would claim unconditioned necessity for
|
||
it. Again, were they devoid of any principle, as are those of the mere
|
||
taste of sense, then no thought of any necessity on their part would
|
||
enter one's head. Therefore they must have a subjective principle, and
|
||
one which determines what pleases or displeases, by means of feeling
|
||
only and not through concepts, but yet with universal validity. Such a
|
||
principle, however, could only be regarded as a common sense. This
|
||
differs essentially from common understanding, which is also sometimes
|
||
called common sense (sensus communis): for the judgement of the latter
|
||
is not one by feeling, but always one by concepts, though usually only
|
||
in the shape of obscurely represented principles.
|
||
The judgement of taste, therefore, depends on our presupposing the
|
||
existence of a common sense. (But this is not to be taken to mean some
|
||
external sense, but the effect arising from the free play of our
|
||
powers of cognition.) Only under the presupposition, I repeat, of such
|
||
a common sense, are we able to lay down a judgement of taste.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 195}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 21. Have we reason for presupposing a common sense?
|
||
-
|
||
Cognitions and judgements must, together with their attendant
|
||
conviction, admit of being universally communicated; for otherwise a
|
||
correspondence with the object would not be due to them. They would be
|
||
a conglomerate constituting a mere subjective play of the powers of
|
||
representation, just as scepticism would have it. But if cognitions
|
||
are to admit of communication, then our mental state, i.e., the way
|
||
the cognitive powers are attuned for cognition generally, and, in
|
||
fact, the relative proportion suitable for a representation (by
|
||
which an object is given to us) from which cognition is to result,
|
||
must also admit of being universally communicated, as, without this,
|
||
which is the subjective condition of the act of knowing, knowledge, as
|
||
an effect, would not arise. And this is always what actually happens
|
||
where a given object, through the intervention of sense, sets the
|
||
imagination at work in arranging the manifold, and the imagination, in
|
||
turn, the understanding in giving to this arrangement the unity of
|
||
concepts. But this disposition of the cognitive powers has a
|
||
relative proportion differing with the diversity of the objects that
|
||
are given. However, there must be one in which this internal ratio
|
||
suitable for quickening (one faculty by the other) is best adapted for
|
||
both mental powers in respect of cognition (of given objects)
|
||
generally; and this disposition can only be determined through feeling
|
||
(and not by concepts). Since, now this disposition itself must admit
|
||
of being universally communicated, and hence also the feeling of it
|
||
(in the case of a given representation), while again, the universal
|
||
communicability of a feeling presupposes a common sense: it follows
|
||
that our assumption of it is well founded. And here, too, we do not
|
||
have to take our stand on psychological observations, but we assume
|
||
a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal
|
||
communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every
|
||
logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of scepticism.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 200}
|
||
SS 22. The necessity of the universal assent that is
|
||
thought in a judgement of taste, is a subjective
|
||
necessity which, under the presupposition of a
|
||
common sense, is represented as objective.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 205}
|
||
In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we
|
||
tolerate no one else being of a different opinion, and in taking up
|
||
this position we do not rest our judgement upon concepts, but only
|
||
on our feeling. Accordingly we introduce this fundamental feeling
|
||
not as a private feeling, but as a public sense. Now, for this
|
||
purpose, experience cannot be made the ground of this common sense,
|
||
for the latter is invoked to justify judgements containing an "ought."
|
||
The assertion is not that every one will fall in with our judgement,
|
||
but rather that every one ought to agree with it. Here I put forward
|
||
my judgement of taste as an example of the judgement of common
|
||
sense, and attribute to it on that account exemplary validity. Hence
|
||
common sense is a mere ideal norm. With this as presupposition, a
|
||
judgement that accords with it, as well as the delight in an object
|
||
expressed in that judgement, is rightly converted into a rule for
|
||
everyone. For the principle, while it is only subjective, being yet
|
||
assumed as subjectively universal (a necessary idea for everyone),
|
||
could, in what concerns the consensus of different judging subjects,
|
||
demand universal assent like an objective principle, provided we
|
||
were assured of our subsumption under it being correct.
|
||
This indeterminate norm of a common sense is, as a matter of fact,
|
||
presupposed by us; as is shown by our presuming to lay down judgements
|
||
of taste. But does such a common sense in fact exist as a constitutive
|
||
principle of the possibility of experience, or is it formed for us
|
||
as a regulative principle by a still higher principle of reason,
|
||
that for higher ends first seeks to beget in us a common sense? Is
|
||
taste, in other words, a natural and original faculty, or is it only
|
||
the idea of one that is artificial and to be acquired by us, so that a
|
||
judgement of taste, with its demand for universal assent, is but a
|
||
requirement of reason for generating such a consensus, and does the
|
||
"ought," i. e., the objective necessity of the coincidence of the
|
||
feeling of all with the particular feeling of each, only betoken the
|
||
possibility of arriving at some sort of unanimity in these matters,
|
||
and the judgement of taste only adduce an example of the application
|
||
of this principle? These are questions which as yet we are neither
|
||
willing nor in a position to investigate. For the present we have only
|
||
to resolve the faculty of taste into its elements, and to unite
|
||
these ultimately in the idea of a common sense.
|
||
-
|
||
Definition of the Beautiful drawn from the Fourth Moment.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 210}
|
||
The beautiful is that which, apart from a concept, is cognized as
|
||
object of a necessary delight.
|
||
-
|
||
General Remark on the First Section of the Analytic.
|
||
-
|
||
The result to be extracted from the foregoing analysis is in
|
||
effect this: That everything runs up into the concept of taste as a
|
||
critical faculty by which an object is estimated in reference to the
|
||
free conformity to law of the imagination. If, now, imagination must
|
||
in the judgement of taste be regarded in its freedom, then, to begin
|
||
with, it is not taken as reproductive, as in its subjection to the
|
||
laws of association, but as productive and exerting an activity of its
|
||
own (as originator of arbitrary forms of possible intuitions). And
|
||
although in the apprehension of a given object of sense it is tied
|
||
down to a definite form of this object and, to that extent, does not
|
||
enjoy free play (as it does in poetry), still it is easy to conceive
|
||
that the object may supply ready-made to the imagination just such a
|
||
form of the arrangement of the manifold as the imagination, if it were
|
||
left to itself, would freely protect in harmony with the general
|
||
conformity to law of the understanding. But that the imagination
|
||
should be both free and of itself conformable to law, i. e., carry
|
||
autonomy with it, is a contradiction. The understanding alone gives
|
||
the law. Where, however, the imagination is compelled to follow a
|
||
course laid down by a definite law, then what the form of the
|
||
product is to be is determined by concepts; but, in that case, as
|
||
already shown, the delight is not delight in the beautiful, but in the
|
||
good (in perfection, though it be no more than formal perfection), and
|
||
the judgement is not one due to taste. Hence it is only a conformity
|
||
to law without a law, and a subjective harmonizing of the
|
||
imagination and the understanding without an objective one-which
|
||
latter would mean that the representation was referred to a definite
|
||
concept of the object-that can consist with the free conformity to law
|
||
of the understanding (which has also been called finality apart from
|
||
an end) and with the specific character of a judgement of taste.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 215}
|
||
Now geometrically regular figures, a circle, a square, a cube, and
|
||
the like, are commonly brought forward by critics of taste as the most
|
||
simple and unquestionable examples of beauty. And yet the very
|
||
reason why they are called regular, is because the only way of
|
||
representing them is by looking on them as mere presentations of a
|
||
determinate concept by which the figure has its rule (according to
|
||
which alone it is possible) prescribed for it. One or other of these
|
||
two views must, therefore, be wrong: either the verdict of the critics
|
||
that attributes beauty to such figures, or else our own, which makes
|
||
finality apart from any concept necessary for beauty.
|
||
One would scarce think it necessary for a man to have taste to
|
||
take more delight in a circle than in a scrawled outline, in an
|
||
equilateral and equiangular quadrilateral than in one that is all
|
||
lop-sided, and, as it were, deformed. The requirements of common
|
||
understanding ensure such a preference without the least demand upon
|
||
taste. Where some purpose is perceived, as, for instance, that of
|
||
forming an estimate of the area of a plot of land, or rendering
|
||
intelligible the relation of divided parts to one another and to the
|
||
whole, then regular figures, and those of the simplest kind, are
|
||
needed; and the delight does not rest immediately upon the way the
|
||
figure strikes the eye, but upon its serviceability for all manner
|
||
of possible purposes. A room with the walls making oblique angles, a
|
||
plot laid out in a garden in a similar way, even any violation of
|
||
symmetry, as well in the figure of animals (e.g., being one-eyed) as
|
||
in that of buildings, or of flower-beds, is displeasing because of its
|
||
perversity of form, not alone in a practical way in respect of some
|
||
definite use to which the thing may be put, but for an estimate that
|
||
looks to all manner of possible purposes. With the judgement of
|
||
taste the case is different. For, when it is pure, it combines delight
|
||
or aversion immediately with the bare contemplation of the object
|
||
irrespective of its use or of any end.
|
||
The regularity that conduces to the concept of an object is, in
|
||
fact, the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non) of
|
||
grasping the object as a single representation and giving to the
|
||
manifold its determinate form. This determination is an end in respect
|
||
of knowledge; and in this connection it is invariably coupled with
|
||
delight (such as attends the accomplishment of any, even
|
||
problematical, purpose). Here, however, we have merely the value set
|
||
upon the solution that satisfies the problem, and not a free and
|
||
indeterminately final entertainment of the mental powers with what
|
||
is called beautiful. In the latter case, understanding is at the
|
||
service of imagination, in the former, this relation is reversed.
|
||
With a thing that owes its possibility to a purpose, a building,
|
||
or even an animal, its regularity, which consists in symmetry, must
|
||
express the unity of the intuition accompanying the concept of its
|
||
end, and belongs with it to cognition. But where all that is
|
||
intended is the maintenance of a free play of the powers of
|
||
representation (subject, however, to the condition that there is to be
|
||
nothing for understanding to take exception to), in ornamental
|
||
gardens, in the decoration of rooms, in all kinds of furniture that
|
||
shows good taste, etc., regularity in the shape of constraint is to be
|
||
avoided as far as possible. Thus English taste in gardens, and
|
||
fantastic taste in furniture, push the freedom of imagination to the
|
||
verge of what is grotesque the idea being that in this divorce from
|
||
all constraint of rules the precise instance is being afforded where
|
||
taste can exhibit its perfection in projects of the imagination to the
|
||
fullest extent.
|
||
All stiff regularity (such as borders on mathematical regularity) is
|
||
inherently repugnant to taste, in that the contemplation of it affords
|
||
us no lasting entertainment. Indeed, where it has neither cognition
|
||
nor some definite practical end expressly in view, we get heartily
|
||
tired of it. On the other hand, anything that gives the imagination
|
||
scope for unstudied and final play is always fresh to us. We do not
|
||
grow to hate the very sight of it. Marsden, in his description of
|
||
Sumatra, observes that the free beauties of nature so surround the
|
||
beholder on all sides that they cease to have much attraction for him.
|
||
On the other band he found a pepper garden full of charm, on coming
|
||
across it in mid-forest with its rows of parallel stakes on which
|
||
the plant twines itself. From all this he infers that wild, and in its
|
||
appearance quite irregular beauty, is only pleasing as a change to one
|
||
whose eyes have become surfeited with regular beauty. But he need only
|
||
have made the experiment of passing one day in his pepper garden to
|
||
realize that once the regularity has enabled the understanding to
|
||
put itself in accord with the order that is the constant
|
||
requirement, instead of the object diverting him any longer, it
|
||
imposes an irksome constraint upon the imagination: whereas nature
|
||
subject to no constraint of artificial rules, and lavish, as it
|
||
there is, in its luxuriant variety can supply constant food for his
|
||
taste. Even a bird's song, which we can reduce to no musical rule,
|
||
seems to have more freedom in it, and thus to be richer for taste,
|
||
than the human voice singing in accordance with all the rules that the
|
||
art of music prescribes; for we grow tired much sooner of frequent and
|
||
lengthy repetitions of the latter. Yet here most likely our sympathy
|
||
with the mirth of a dear little creature is confused with the beauty
|
||
of its song, for if exactly imitated by man (as has been sometimes
|
||
done with the notes of the nightingale) it would strike our ear as
|
||
wholly destitute of taste.
|
||
{SEC1|BK1 ^paragraph 220}
|
||
Further, beautiful objects have to be distinguished from beautiful
|
||
views of objects (where the distance often prevents a clear
|
||
perception). In the latter case, taste appears to fasten, not so
|
||
much on what the imagination grasps in this field, as on the incentive
|
||
it receives to indulge in poetic fiction, i. e., in the peculiar
|
||
fancies with which the mind entertains itself as it is being
|
||
continually stirred by the variety that strikes the eye. It is just as
|
||
when we watch the changing shapes of the fire or of a rippling
|
||
brook: neither of which are things of beauty, but they convey a
|
||
charm to the imagination, because they sustain its free play.
|
||
-
|
||
|
||
SEC1|BK2
|
||
FIRST PART CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT
|
||
SECTION I. ANALYTIC OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT.
|
||
BOOK II. Analytic of the Sublime.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 23. Transition from the faculty of estimating the
|
||
beautiful to that of estimating the sublime.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 5}
|
||
The beautiful and the sublime agree on the point of pleasing on
|
||
their own account. Further they agree in not presupposing either a
|
||
judgement of sense or one logically determinant, but one of
|
||
reflection. Hence it follows that the delight does not depend upon a
|
||
sensation, as with the agreeable, nor upon a definite concept, as does
|
||
the delight in the good, although it has, for all that, an
|
||
indeterminate reference to concepts. Consequently the delight is
|
||
connected with the mere presentation or faculty of presentation, and
|
||
is thus taken to express the accord, in a given intuition, of the
|
||
faculty of presentation, or the imagination, with the faculty of
|
||
concepts that belongs to understanding or reason, in the sense of
|
||
the former assisting the latter. Hence both kinds of judgements are
|
||
singular, and yet such as profess to be universally valid in respect
|
||
of every subject, despite the fact that their claims are directed
|
||
merely to the feeling of pleasure and not to any knowledge of the
|
||
object.
|
||
There are, however, also important and striking differences
|
||
between the two. The beautiful in nature is a question of the form
|
||
of object, and this consists in limitation, whereas the sublime is
|
||
to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately
|
||
involves, or else by its presence provokes a representation of
|
||
limitlessness, yet with a superadded thought of its totality.
|
||
Accordingly, the beautiful seems to be regarded as a presentation of
|
||
an indeterminate concept of understanding, the sublime as a
|
||
presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason. Hence the
|
||
delight is in the former case coupled with the representation of
|
||
quality, but in this case with that of quantity. Moreover, the
|
||
former delight is very different from the latter in kind. For the
|
||
beautiful is directly attended with a feeling of the furtherance of
|
||
life, and is thus compatible with charms and a playful imagination. On
|
||
the other hand, the feeling of the sublime is a pleasure that only
|
||
arises indirectly, being brought about by the feeling of a momentary
|
||
check to the vital forces followed at once by a discharge all the more
|
||
powerful, and so it is an emotion that seems to be no sport, but
|
||
dead earnest in the affairs of the imagination. Hence charms are
|
||
repugnant to it; and, since the mind is not simply attracted by the
|
||
object, but is also alternately repelled thereby, the delight in the
|
||
sublime does not so much involve positive pleasure as admiration or
|
||
respect, i. e., merits the name of a negative pleasure.
|
||
But the most important and vital distinction between the sublime and
|
||
the beautiful is certainly this: that if, as is allowable, we here
|
||
confine our attention in the first instance to the sublime in
|
||
objects of nature (that of art being always restricted by the
|
||
conditions of an agreement with nature), we observe that whereas
|
||
natural beauty (such as is self-subsisting) conveys a finality in
|
||
its form making the object appear, as it were, preadapted to our power
|
||
of judgement, so that it thus forms of itself an object of our
|
||
delight, that which, without our indulging in any refinements of
|
||
thought, but, simply in our apprehension of it, excites the feeling of
|
||
the sublime, may appear, indeed, in point of form to contravene the
|
||
ends of our power of judgement, to be ill-adapted to our faculty of
|
||
presentation, and to be, as it were, an outrage on the imagination,
|
||
and yet it is judged all the more sublime on that account.
|
||
From this it may be seen at once that we express ourselves on the
|
||
whole inaccurately if we term any object of nature sublime, although
|
||
we may with perfect propriety call many such objects beautiful. For
|
||
how can that which is apprehended as inherently contra-final be
|
||
noted with an expression of approval? All that we can say is that
|
||
the object lends itself to the presentation of a sublimity
|
||
discoverable in the mind.
|
||
For the sublime, in the strict sense of the word, cannot be
|
||
contained in any sensuous form, but rather concerns ideas of reason,
|
||
which, although no adequate presentation of them is possible, may be
|
||
excited and called into the mind by that very inadequacy itself
|
||
which does admit of sensuous presentation. Thus the broad ocean
|
||
agitated by storms cannot be called sublime. Its aspect is horrible,
|
||
and one must have stored one's mind in advance with a rich stock of
|
||
ideas, if such an intuition is to raise it to the pitch of a feeling
|
||
which is itself sublime-sublime because the mind has been incited to
|
||
abandon sensibility and employ itself upon ideas involving higher
|
||
finality.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 10}
|
||
Self-subsisting natural beauty reveals to us a technic of nature
|
||
which shows it in the light of a system ordered in accordance with
|
||
laws the principle of which is not to be found within the range of our
|
||
entire faculty of understanding. This principle is that of a
|
||
finality relative to the employment of judgement in respect of
|
||
phenomena which have thus to be assigned, not merely to nature
|
||
regarded as aimless mechanism, but also to nature regarded after the
|
||
analogy of art. Hence it gives a veritable extension, not, of
|
||
course, to our knowledge of objects of nature, but to our conception
|
||
of nature itself-nature as mere mechanism being enlarged to the
|
||
conception of nature as art-an extension inviting profound inquiries
|
||
as to the possibility of such a form. But in what we are wont to
|
||
call sublime in nature there is such an absence of anything leading to
|
||
particular objective principles and corresponding forms of nature that
|
||
it is rather in its chaos, or in its wildest and most irregular
|
||
disorder and desolation, provided it gives signs of magnitude and
|
||
power, that nature chiefly excites the ideas of the sublime. Hence
|
||
we see that the concept of the sublime in nature is far less important
|
||
and rich in consequences than that of its beauty. It gives on the
|
||
whole no indication of anything final in nature itself, but only in
|
||
the possible employment of our intuitions of it in inducing a
|
||
feeling in our own selves of a finality quite independent of nature.
|
||
For the beautiful in nature we must seek a ground external to
|
||
ourselves, but for the sublime one merely in ourselves and the
|
||
attitude of mind that introduces sublimity into the representation
|
||
of nature. This is a very needful preliminary remark. It entirely
|
||
separates the ideas of the sublime from that of a finality of
|
||
nature, and makes the theory of the sublime a mere appendage to the
|
||
aesthetic estimate of the finality of nature, because it does not give
|
||
a representation of any particular form in nature, but involves no
|
||
more than the development of a final employment by the imagination
|
||
of its own representation.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 24. Subdivision of an investigation of the feeling
|
||
of the sublime.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 15}
|
||
In the division of the moments of an aesthetic estimate of objects
|
||
in respect of the feeling of the sublime, the course of the Analytic
|
||
will be able to follow the same principle as in the analysis of
|
||
judgements of taste. For, the judgement being one of the aesthetic
|
||
reflective judgement, the delight in the sublime, just like that in
|
||
the beautiful, must in its quantity be shown to be universally
|
||
valid, in its quality independent of interest, in its relation
|
||
subjective finality, and the latter, in its modality, necessary. Hence
|
||
the method here will not depart from the lines followed in the
|
||
preceding section: unless something is made of the point that there,
|
||
where the aesthetic judgement bore on the form of the object, we began
|
||
with the investigation of its quality, whereas here, considering the
|
||
formlessness that may belong to what we call sublime, we begin with
|
||
that of its quantity, as first moment of the aesthetic judgement on
|
||
the sublime-a divergence of method the reason for which is evident
|
||
from SS 23.
|
||
But the analysis of the sublime obliges a division not required by
|
||
that of the beautiful, namely one into the mathematically and the
|
||
dynamically sublime.
|
||
For the feeling of sublime involves as its characteristic feature
|
||
a mental movement combined with the estimate of the object, whereas
|
||
taste in respect of the beautiful presupposes that the mind is in
|
||
restful contemplation, and preserves it in this state. But this
|
||
movement has to be estimated as subjectively final (since the
|
||
sublime pleases). Hence it is referred through the imagination
|
||
either to the faculty of cognition or to that of desire; but to
|
||
whichever faculty the reference is made, the finality of the given
|
||
representation is estimated only in respect of these faculties
|
||
(apart from end or interest). Accordingly the first is attributed to
|
||
the object as a mathematical, the second as a dynamical, affection
|
||
of the imagination. Hence we get the above double mode of representing
|
||
an object as sublime.
|
||
-
|
||
A. THE MATHEMATICALLY SUBLIME.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 20}
|
||
SS 25. Definition of the term "sublime".
|
||
-
|
||
Sublime is the name given to what is absolutely great. But to be
|
||
great and to be a magnitude are entirely different concepts (magnitudo
|
||
and quantitas). In the same way, to assert without qualification
|
||
(simpliciter) that something is great is quite a different thing
|
||
from saying that it is absolutely great (absolute, non comparative
|
||
magnum). The latter is what is beyond all comparison great. What,
|
||
then, is the meaning of the assertion that anything is great, or
|
||
small, or of medium size? What is indicated is not a pure concept of
|
||
understanding, still less an intuition of sense; and just as little is
|
||
it a concept of reason, for it does not import any principle of
|
||
cognition. It must, therefore, be a concept of judgement, or have
|
||
its source in one, and must introduce as basis of the judgement a
|
||
subjective finality of the representation with reference to the
|
||
power of judgement. Given a multiplicity of the homogeneous together
|
||
constituting one thing, and we may at once cognize from the thing
|
||
itself that it is a magnitude (quantum). No comparison with other
|
||
things is required. But to determine how great it is always requires
|
||
something else, which itself has magnitude, for its measure. Now,
|
||
since in the estimate of magnitude we have to take into account not
|
||
merely the multiplicity (number of units) but also the magnitude of
|
||
the unit (the measure), and since the magnitude of this unit in turn
|
||
always requires something else as its measure and as the standard of
|
||
its comparison, and so on, we see that the computation of the
|
||
magnitude of phenomena is, in all cases, utterly incapable of
|
||
affording us any absolute concept of a magnitude, and can, instead,
|
||
only afford one that is always based on comparison.
|
||
If, now, I assert without qualification that anything is great, it
|
||
would seem that I have nothing in the way of a comparison present to
|
||
my mind, or at least nothing involving an objective measure, for no
|
||
attempt is thus made to determine how great the object is. But,
|
||
despite the standard of comparison being merely subjective, the
|
||
claim of the judgement is none the less one to universal agreement;
|
||
the judgements: "that man is beautiful" and "He is tall", do not
|
||
purport to speak only for the judging subject, but, like theoretical
|
||
judgements, they demand the assent of everyone.
|
||
Now in a judgement that without qualification describes anything
|
||
as great, it is not merely meant that the object has a magnitude,
|
||
but greatness is ascribed to it pre-eminently among many other objects
|
||
of a like kind, yet without the extent of this pre-eminence being
|
||
determined. Hence a standard is certainly laid at the basis of the
|
||
judgement, which standard is presupposed to be one that can be taken
|
||
as the same for every one, but which is available only for an
|
||
aesthetic estimate of the greatness, and not for one that is logical
|
||
(mathematically determined), for the standard is a merely subjective
|
||
one underlying the reflective judgement upon the greatness.
|
||
Furthermore, this standard may be empirical, as, let us say, the
|
||
average size of the men known to us, of animals of a certain kind,
|
||
of trees, of houses, of mountains, and so forth. Or it may be a
|
||
standard given a priori, which by reason of the imperfections of the
|
||
judging subject is restricted to subjective conditions of presentation
|
||
in concreto; as, in the practical sphere, the greatness of a
|
||
particular virtue, or of public liberty and justice in a country;
|
||
or, in the theoretical sphere, the greatness of the accuracy or
|
||
inaccuracy of an experiment or measurement, etc.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 25}
|
||
Here, now, it is of note that, although we have no interest whatever
|
||
in the object, i.e., its real existence may be a matter of no
|
||
concern to us, still its mere greatness, regarded even as devoid of
|
||
form, is able to convey a universally communicable delight and so
|
||
involve the consciousness of a subjective finality in the employment
|
||
of our cognitive faculties, but not, be it remembered, a delight in
|
||
the object, for the latter may be formless, but, in
|
||
contradistinction to what is the case with the beautiful, where the
|
||
reflective judgement finds itself set to a key that is final in
|
||
respect of cognition generally, a delight in an extension affecting
|
||
the imagination itself.
|
||
If (subject as above) we say of an object, without qualification,
|
||
that it is great, this is not a mathematically determinant, but a mere
|
||
reflective judgement upon its representation, which is subjectively
|
||
final for a particular employment of our cognitive faculties in the
|
||
estimation of magnitude, and we then always couple with the
|
||
representation a kind of respect, just as we do a kind of contempt
|
||
with what we call absolutely small. Moreover, the estimate of things
|
||
as great or small extends to everything, even to all their
|
||
qualities. Thus we call even their beauty great or small. The reason
|
||
of this is to be found in the fact that we have only got to present
|
||
a thing in intuition, as the precept of judgement directs
|
||
(consequently to represent it aesthetically), for it to be in its
|
||
entirety a phenomenon, and hence a quantum.
|
||
If, however, we call anything not alone great, but, without
|
||
qualification, absolutely, and in every respect (beyond all
|
||
comparison) great, that is to say, sublime, we soon perceive that
|
||
for this it is not permissible to seek an appropriate standard outside
|
||
itself, but merely in itself. It is a greatness comparable to itself
|
||
alone. Hence it comes that the sublime is not to be looked for in
|
||
the things of nature, but only in our own ideas. But it must be left
|
||
to the deduction to show in which of them it resides.
|
||
The above definition may also be expressed in this way: that is
|
||
sublime in comparison with which all else is small. Here we readily
|
||
see that nothing can be given in nature, no matter how great we may
|
||
judge it to be, which, regarded in some other relation, may not be
|
||
degraded to the level of the infinitely little, and nothing so small
|
||
which in comparison with some still smaller standard may not for our
|
||
imagination be enlarged to the greatness of a world. Telescopes have
|
||
put within our reach an abundance of material to go upon in making the
|
||
first observation, and microscopes the same in making the second.
|
||
Nothing, therefore, which can be an object of the senses is to be
|
||
termed sublime when treated on this footing. But precisely because
|
||
there is a striving in our imagination towards progress ad
|
||
infinitum, while reason demands absolute totality, as a real idea,
|
||
that same inability on the part of our faculty for the estimation of
|
||
the magnitude of things of the world of sense to attain to this
|
||
idea, is the awakening of a feeling of a supersensible faculty
|
||
within us; and it is the use to which judgement naturally puts
|
||
particular objects on behalf of this latter feeling, and not the
|
||
object of sense, that is absolutely great, and every other
|
||
contrasted employment small. Consequently it is the disposition of
|
||
soul evoked by a particular representation engaging the attention of
|
||
the reflective judgement, and not the object, that is to be called
|
||
sublime.
|
||
The foregoing formulae defining the sublime may, therefore, be
|
||
supplemented by yet another: The sublime is that, the mere capacity of
|
||
thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard
|
||
of sense.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 30}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 26. The estimation of the magnitude of natural
|
||
things requisite for the idea of the sublime.
|
||
-
|
||
The estimation of magnitude by means of concepts of number (or their
|
||
signs in algebra) is mathematical, but that in mere intuition (by
|
||
the eye) is aesthetic. Now we can only get definite concepts of how
|
||
great anything is by having recourse to numbers (or, at any rate, by
|
||
getting approximate measurements by means of numerical series
|
||
progressing ad infinitum), the unit being the measure; and to this
|
||
extent all logical estimation of magnitude is mathematical. But, as
|
||
the magnitude of the measure has to be assumed as a known quantity,
|
||
if, to form an estimate of this, we must again have recourse to
|
||
numbers involving another standard for their unit, and consequently
|
||
must again proceed mathematically, we can never arrive at a first or
|
||
fundamental measure, and so cannot get any definite concept of a given
|
||
magnitude. The estimation of the magnitude of the fundamental
|
||
measure must, therefore, consist merely in the immediate grasp which
|
||
we can get of it in intuition, and the use to which our imagination
|
||
can put this in presenting the numerical concepts: i.e., all
|
||
estimation of the magnitude of objects of nature is in the last resort
|
||
aesthetic (i.e., subjectively and not objectively determined).
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 35}
|
||
Now for the mathematical estimation of magnitude there is, of
|
||
course, no greatest possible (for the power of numbers extends to
|
||
infinity), but for the aesthetic estimation there certainly is and
|
||
of it I say that where it is considered an absolute measure beyond
|
||
which no greater is possible subjectively (i.e., for the judging
|
||
subject), it then conveys the idea of the sublime and calls forth that
|
||
emotion which no mathematical estimation of magnitudes by numbers
|
||
can evoke (unless in so far as the fundamental aesthetic measure is
|
||
kept vividly present to the imagination): because the latter
|
||
presents only the relative magnitude due to comparison with others
|
||
of a like kind, whereas the former presents magnitude absolutely, so
|
||
far as the mind can grasp it in an intuition.
|
||
To take in a quantum intuitively in the imagination so as to be able
|
||
to use it as a measure, or unit for estimating magnitude by numbers,
|
||
involves two operations of this faculty: apprehension (apprehensio)
|
||
and comprehension (comprehension aesthetica). Apprehension presents no
|
||
difficulty: for this process can be carried on ad infinitum; but
|
||
with the advance of apprehension comprehension becomes more
|
||
difficult at every step and soon attains its maximum, and this is
|
||
the aesthetically greatest fundamental measure for the estimation of
|
||
magnitude. For if the apprehension has reached a point beyond which
|
||
the representations of sensuous intuition in the case of the parts
|
||
first apprehended begin to disappear from the imagination as this
|
||
advances to the apprehension of yet others, as much, then, is lost
|
||
at one end as is gained at the other, and for comprehension we get a
|
||
maximum which the imagination cannot exceed.
|
||
This explains Savary's observations in his account of Egypt, that in
|
||
order to get the full emotional effect of the size of the Pyramids
|
||
we must avoid coming too near just as much as remaining too far
|
||
away. For in the latter case the representation of the apprehended
|
||
parts (the tiers of stones) is but obscure, and produces no effect
|
||
upon the aesthetic judgement of the Subject. In the former, however,
|
||
it takes the eye some time to complete the apprehension from the
|
||
base to the summit; but in this interval the first tiers always in
|
||
part disappear before the imagination has taken in the last, and so
|
||
the comprehension is never complete. The same explanation may also
|
||
sufficiently account for the bewilderment, or sort of perplexity,
|
||
which, as is said, seizes the visitor on first entering St. Peter's in
|
||
Rome. For here a feeling comes home to him of the inadequacy of his
|
||
imagination for presenting the idea of a whole within which that
|
||
imagination attains its maximum, and, in its fruitless efforts to
|
||
extend this limit, recoils upon itself, but in so doing succumbs to an
|
||
emotional delight.
|
||
At present I am not disposed to deal with the ground of this
|
||
delight, connected, as it is, with a representation in which we
|
||
would least of all look for it-a representation, namely, that lets
|
||
us see its own inadequacy, and consequently its subjective want of
|
||
finality for our judgement in the estimation of magnitude-but
|
||
confine myself to the remark that if the aesthetic judgement is to
|
||
be pure (unmixed with any teleological judgement which, as such,
|
||
belongs to reason), and if we are to give a suitable example of it for
|
||
the Critique of aesthetic judgement, we must not point to the
|
||
sublime in works of art, e.g., buildings, statues and the like,
|
||
where a human end determines the form as well as the magnitude, nor
|
||
yet in things of nature, that in their very concept import a
|
||
definite end, e.g., animals of a recognized natural order, but in rude
|
||
nature merely as involving magnitude (and only in this so far as it
|
||
does not convey any charm or any emotion arising from actual
|
||
danger). For, in a representation of this kind, nature contains
|
||
nothing monstrous (nor what is either magnificent or horrible)-the
|
||
magnitude apprehended may be increased to any extent provided
|
||
imagination is able to grasp it all in one whole. An object is
|
||
monstrous where by its size it defeats the end that forms its concept.
|
||
The colossal is the mere presentation of a concept which is almost too
|
||
great for presentation, i.e., borders on the relatively monstrous; for
|
||
the end to be attained by the presentation of a concept is made harder
|
||
to realize by the intuition of the object being almost too great for
|
||
our faculty of apprehension. A pure judgement upon the sublime must,
|
||
however, have no end belonging to the object as its determining
|
||
ground, if it is to be aesthetic and not to be tainted with any
|
||
judgement of understanding or reason.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 40}
|
||
Since whatever is to be a source of pleasure, apart from interest,
|
||
to the merely reflective judgement must involve in its
|
||
representation subjective, and, as such, universally valid
|
||
finality-though here, however, no finality of the form of the object
|
||
underlies our estimate of it (as it does in the case of the
|
||
beautiful)-the question arises: What is the subjective finality, and
|
||
what enables it to be prescribed as a norm so as to yield a ground for
|
||
universally valid delight in the mere estimation of magnitude, and
|
||
that, too, in a case where it is pushed to the point at which
|
||
faculty of imagination breaks down in presenting the concept of a
|
||
magnitude, and proves unequal to its task?
|
||
In the successive aggregation of units requisite for the
|
||
representation of magnitudes, the imagination of itself advances ad
|
||
infinitum without let or hindrance-understanding, however,
|
||
conducting it by means of concepts of number for which the former must
|
||
supply the schema. This procedure belongs to the logical estimation of
|
||
magnitude, and, as such, is doubtless something objectively final
|
||
according to the concept of an end (as all measurement is), but it
|
||
is hot anything which for the aesthetic judgement is final or
|
||
pleasing. Further, in this intentional finality there is nothing
|
||
compelling us to tax the utmost powers of the imagination, and drive
|
||
it as far as ever it can reach in its presentations, so as to
|
||
enlarge the size of the measure, and thus make the single intuition
|
||
holding the many in one (the comprehension) as great as possible. For,
|
||
in the estimation of magnitude by the understanding (arithmetic), we
|
||
get just as far, whether the comprehension of the units is pushed to
|
||
the number 10 (as in the decimal scale) or only to 4 (as in the
|
||
quaternary); the further production of magnitude being carried out
|
||
by the successive aggregation of units, or, if the quantum is given in
|
||
intuition, by apprehension, merely progressively (not
|
||
comprehensively), according to an adopted principle of progression. In
|
||
this mathematical estimation of magnitude, understanding is as well
|
||
served and as satisfied whether imagination selects for the unit a
|
||
magnitude which one can take in at a glance, e.g., a foot, or a perch,
|
||
or else a German mile, or even the earth's diameter, the
|
||
apprehension of which is indeed possible, but not its comprehension
|
||
in, sit intuition of the imagination (i.e., it is not possible by
|
||
means of a comprehension aesthetica, thought quite so by means of a
|
||
comprehension logica in a numerical concept). In each case the logical
|
||
estimation of magnitude advances ad infinitum with nothing to stop it.
|
||
The mind, however, hearkens now to the voice of reason, which for
|
||
all given magnitudes-even for those which can never be completely
|
||
apprehended, though (in sensuous representation) estimated as
|
||
completely given-requires totality, and consequently comprehension
|
||
in one intuition, and which calls for a presentation answering to
|
||
all the above members of a progressively increasing numerical
|
||
series, and does not exempt even the infinite (space and time past)
|
||
from this requirement, but rather renders it inevitable for us to
|
||
regard this infinite (in the judgement of common reason) as completely
|
||
given (i.e., given in its totality).
|
||
But the infinite is absolutely (not merely comparatively) great.
|
||
In comparison with this all else (in the way of magnitudes of the same
|
||
order) is small. But the point of capital importance is that the
|
||
mere ability even to think it as a whole indicates a faculty of mind
|
||
transcending every standard of sense. For the latter would entail a
|
||
comprehension yielding as unit a standard bearing to the infinite
|
||
ratio expressible in numbers, which is impossible. Still the mere
|
||
ability even to think the given infinite without contradiction, is
|
||
something that requires the presence in the human mind of a faculty
|
||
that is itself supersensible. For it is only through this faculty
|
||
and its idea of a noumenon, which latter, while not itself admitting
|
||
of any intuition, is yet introduced as substrate underlying the
|
||
intuition of the world as mere phenomenon, that the infinite of the
|
||
world of sense, in the pure intellectual estimation of magnitude, is
|
||
completely comprehended under a concept, although in the
|
||
mathematical estimation by means of numerical concepts it can never be
|
||
completely thought. Even a faculty enabling the infinite of
|
||
supersensible intuition to be regarded as given (in its intelligible
|
||
substrate), transcends every standard of sensibility and is great
|
||
beyond all comparison even with the faculty of mathematical
|
||
estimation: not, of course, from a theoretical point of view that
|
||
looks to the interests of our faculty of knowledge, but as a
|
||
broadening of the mind that from another (the practical) point of view
|
||
feels itself empowered to pass beyond the narrow confines of
|
||
sensibility.
|
||
Nature, therefore, is sublime in such of its phenomena as in their
|
||
intuition convey the idea of their infinity. But this can only occur
|
||
through the inadequacy of even the greatest effort of our
|
||
imagination in the estimation of the magnitude of an object. But, now,
|
||
in the case of the mathematical estimation of magnitude, imagination
|
||
is quite competent to supply a measure equal to the requirements of
|
||
any object. For the numerical concepts of the understanding can by
|
||
progressive synthesis make any measure adequate to any given
|
||
magnitude. Hence it must be the aesthetic estimation of magnitude in
|
||
which we get at once a feeling of the effort towards a comprehension
|
||
that exceeds the faculty of imagination for mentally grasping the
|
||
progressive apprehension in a whole of intuition, and, with it, a
|
||
perception of the inadequacy of this faculty, which has no bounds to
|
||
its progress, for taking in and using for the estimation of
|
||
magnitude a fundamental measure that understanding could turn to
|
||
account without the least trouble. Now the proper unchangeable
|
||
fundamental measure of nature is its absolute whole, which, with it,
|
||
regarded as a phenomenon, means infinity comprehended. But, since this
|
||
fundamental measure is a self-contradictory concept (owing to the
|
||
impossibility of the absolute totality of an endless progression),
|
||
it follows that where the size of a natural object is such that the
|
||
imagination spends its whole faculty of comprehension upon it in vain,
|
||
it must carry our concept of nature, to a supersensible substrate
|
||
(underlying both nature and our faculty of thought). which is, great
|
||
beyond every standard of sense. Thus, instead of the object, it is
|
||
rather the cast of the mind in appreciating it that we have to
|
||
estimate as sublime.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 45}
|
||
Therefore, just as the aesthetic judgement in its estimate of the
|
||
beautiful refers the imagination in its free play to the
|
||
understanding, to bring out its agreement with the concepts of the
|
||
latter in general (apart from their determination): so in its estimate
|
||
of a thing as sublime it refers that faculty to reason to bring out
|
||
its subjective accord with ideas of reason (indeterminately
|
||
indicated), i.e., to induce a temper of mind conformable-to that which
|
||
the influence of definite (practical) ideas would produce upon
|
||
feeling, and in common accord with it.
|
||
This makes it evident that true sublimity must be sought only in the
|
||
mind of the judging subject, and not in the object of nature that
|
||
occasions this attitude by the estimate formed of it. Who would
|
||
apply the term "sublime" even to shapeless mountain masses towering
|
||
one above the other in wild disorder, with their pyramids of ice, or
|
||
to the dark tempestuous ocean, or such like things? But in the
|
||
contemplation of them, without any regard to their form, the mind
|
||
abandons itself to the imagination and to a reason placed, though
|
||
quite apart from any definite end, in conjunction therewith, and
|
||
merely broadening its view, and it feels itself elevated in its own
|
||
estimate of itself on finding all the might of imagination still
|
||
unequal to its ideas.
|
||
We get examples of the mathematically sublime of nature in mere
|
||
intuition in all those instances where our imagination is afforded,
|
||
not so much a greater numerical concept as a large unit as measure
|
||
(for shortening the numerical series). A tree judged by the height
|
||
of man gives, at all events, a standard for a mountain; and, supposing
|
||
this is, say, a mile high, it can serve as unit for the number
|
||
expressing the earth's diameter, so as to make it intuitable;
|
||
similarly the earth's diameter for the known planetary system; this
|
||
again for the system of the Milky Way; and the immeasurable host of
|
||
such systems, which go by the name of nebulae, and most likely in turn
|
||
themselves form such a system, holds out no prospect of a limit. Now
|
||
in the aesthetic estimate of such an immeasurable whole, the sublime
|
||
does not lie so much in the greatness of the number, as in the fact
|
||
that in our onward advance we always arrive at proportionately greater
|
||
units. The systematic division of the cosmos conduces to this
|
||
result. For it represents all that is great in nature as in turn
|
||
becoming little; or, to be more exact, it represents our imagination
|
||
in all its boundlessness, and with it nature, as sinking into
|
||
insignificance before the ideas of reason, once their adequate
|
||
presentation is attempted.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 27. Quality of the delight in our estimate
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 50}
|
||
of the sublime.
|
||
-
|
||
The feeling of our incapacity to attain to an idea that is a law for
|
||
us, is respect. Now the idea of the comprehension of any phenomenon
|
||
whatever, that may be given us, in a whole of intuition, is an idea
|
||
imposed upon us by a law of reason, which recognizes no definite,
|
||
universally valid and unchangeable measure except the absolute
|
||
whole. But our imagination, even when taxing itself to the uttermost
|
||
on the score of this required comprehension of a given object in a
|
||
whole of intuition (and so with a view to the presentation of the idea
|
||
of reason), betrays its limits and its inadequacy, but still, at the
|
||
same time, its proper vocation of making itself adequate to the same
|
||
as law. Therefore the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect
|
||
for our own vocation, which we attribute to an object of nature by a
|
||
certain subreption (substitution of a respect for the object in
|
||
place of one for the idea of humanity in our own self-the subject);
|
||
and this feeling renders, as it were, intuitable the supremacy of
|
||
our cognitive faculties on the rational side over the greatest faculty
|
||
of sensibility.
|
||
The feeling of the sublime is, therefore, at once a feeling of
|
||
displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of imagination in the
|
||
aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to its estimation by
|
||
reason, and a simultaneously awakened pleasure, arising from this very
|
||
judgement of the inadequacy of the greatest faculty of sense being
|
||
in accord with ideas of reason, so far as the effort to attain to
|
||
these is for us a law. It is, in other words, for us a law (of
|
||
reason), which goes to make us what we are, that we should esteem as
|
||
small in comparison with ideas of reason everything which for us is
|
||
great in nature as an object of sense; and that which makes us alive
|
||
to the feeling of this supersensible side of our being harmonizes with
|
||
that law. Now the greatest effort of the imagination in the
|
||
presentation of the unit for the estimation of magnitude involves in
|
||
itself a reference to something absolutely great, consequently a
|
||
reference also to the law of reason that this alone is to be adopted
|
||
as the supreme measure of what is great. Therefore the inner
|
||
perception of the inadequacy of every standard of sense to serve for
|
||
the rational estimation of magnitude is a coming into accord with
|
||
reason's laws, and a displeasure that makes us alive to the feeling of
|
||
the supersensible side of our being, according to which it is final,
|
||
and consequently a pleasure, to find every standard of sensibility
|
||
falling short of the ideas of reason.
|
||
The mind feels itself set in motion in the representation of the
|
||
sublime in nature; whereas in the aesthetic judgement upon what is
|
||
beautiful therein it is in restful contemplation. This movement,
|
||
especially in its inception, may be compared with vibration, i.e.,
|
||
with a rapidly alternating repulsion and attraction produced by one
|
||
and the same object. The point of excess for the imagination
|
||
(towards which it is driven in the apprehension of the intuition) is
|
||
like an abyss in which it fears to lose itself, yet again for the
|
||
rational idea of the supersensible it is not excessive, but
|
||
conformable to law, and directed to drawing out such an effort on
|
||
the part of the imagination: and so in turn as much a source of
|
||
attraction as it was repellent to mere sensibility. But the
|
||
judgement itself all the while steadfastly preserves its aesthetic
|
||
character, because it represents, without being grounded on any
|
||
definite concept of the object, merely the subjective play of the
|
||
mental powers (imagination and reason) as harmonious by virtue of
|
||
their very contrast. For just as in the estimate of the beautiful
|
||
imagination and understanding by their concert generate subjective
|
||
finality of the mental faculties, so imagination and reason do so here
|
||
by their conflict-that is to say they induce a feeling of our
|
||
possessing a pure and self-sufficient reason, or a faculty for the
|
||
estimation of magnitude, whose preeminence can only be made
|
||
intuitively evident by the inadequacy of that faculty which in the
|
||
presentation of magnitudes (of objects of sense) is itself unbounded.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 55}
|
||
Measurement of a space (as apprehension) is at the same time a
|
||
description of it, and so an objective movement in the imagination and
|
||
a progression. On the other hand, the comprehension of the manifold in
|
||
the unity, not of thought, but of intuition, and consequently the
|
||
comprehension of the successively apprehended parts at one glance,
|
||
is a retrogression that removes the time-condition in the
|
||
progression of the imagination, and renders coexistence intuitable.
|
||
Therefore, since the time-series is a condition of the internal
|
||
sense and of an intuition, it is a subjective movement of the
|
||
imagination by which it does violence to the internal sense-a violence
|
||
which must be proportionately more striking the greater the quantum
|
||
which the imagination comprehends in one intuition. The effort,
|
||
therefore, to receive in a single intuition a measure for magnitudes
|
||
which it takes an appreciable time to apprehend, is a mode of
|
||
representation which, subjectively considered, is contra-final, but
|
||
objectively, is requisite for the estimation of magnitude, and is
|
||
consequently final. Here the very same violence that is wrought on the
|
||
subject through the imagination is estimated as final for the whole
|
||
province of the mind.
|
||
The quality of the feeling of the sublime consists in being, in
|
||
respect of the faculty of forming aesthetic estimates, a feeling of
|
||
displeasure at an object, which yet, at the same time, is
|
||
represented as being final-a representation which derives its
|
||
possibility from the fact that the subject's very incapacity betrays
|
||
the consciousness of an unlimited faculty of the same subject, and
|
||
that the mind can only form an aesthetic estimate of the latter
|
||
faculty by means of that incapacity.
|
||
In the case of the logical estimation of magnitude, the
|
||
impossibility of ever arriving at absolute totality by the progressive
|
||
measurement of things of the sensible world in time and space was
|
||
cognized as an objective impossibility, i.e., one of thinking the
|
||
infinite as given, and not as simply subjective, i.e., an incapacity
|
||
for grasping it; for nothing turns there on the amount of the
|
||
comprehension in one intuition, as measure, but everything depends
|
||
on a numerical concept. But in an aesthetic estimation of magnitude
|
||
the numerical concept must drop out of count or undergo a change.
|
||
The only thing that is final for such estimation is the
|
||
comprehension on the part of imagination in respect of the unit of
|
||
measure (the concept of a law of the successive production of the
|
||
concept of magnitude being consequently avoided). If, now, a magnitude
|
||
begins to tax the utmost stretch of our faculty of comprehension in an
|
||
intuition, and still numerical magnitudes-in respect of which we are
|
||
conscious of the boundlessness of our faculty-call upon the
|
||
imagination for aesthetic comprehension in a greater unit, the mind
|
||
then gets a feeling of being aesthetically confined within bounds.
|
||
Nevertheless, with a view to the extension of imagination necessary
|
||
for adequacy with what is unbounded in our faculty of reason, namely
|
||
the idea of the absolute whole, the attendant displeasure, and,
|
||
consequently, the want of finality in our faculty of imagination, is
|
||
still represented as final for ideas of reason and their animation.
|
||
But in this very way the aesthetic judgement itself is subjectively
|
||
final for reason as source of ideas, i.e., of such an intellectual
|
||
comprehension as makes all aesthetic comprehension small, and the
|
||
object is received as sublime with a pleasure that is only possible
|
||
through the mediation of a displeasure.
|
||
-
|
||
B. THE DYNAMICALLY SUBLIME IN NATURE.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 60}
|
||
SS 28. Nature as Might.
|
||
-
|
||
Might is a power which is superior to great hindrances. It is termed
|
||
dominion if it is also superior to the resistance of that which itself
|
||
possesses might. Nature, considered in an aesthetic judgement as might
|
||
that has no dominion over us, is dynamically sublime.
|
||
If we are to estimate nature as dynamically sublime, it must be
|
||
represented as a source of fear (though the converse, that every
|
||
object that is a source of fear, in our aesthetic judgement,
|
||
sublime, does not hold). For in forming an aesthetic estimate (no
|
||
concept being present) the superiority to hindrances can only be
|
||
estimated according to the greatness of the resistance. Now that which
|
||
we strive to resist is an evil, and, if we do not find our powers
|
||
commensurate to the task, an object of fear. Hence the aesthetic
|
||
judgement can only deem nature a might, and so dynamically sublime, in
|
||
so far as it is looked upon as an object of fear.
|
||
But we may look upon an object as fearful, and yet not be afraid
|
||
of it, if, that is, our estimate takes the form of our simply
|
||
picturing to ourselves the case of our wishing to offer some
|
||
resistance to it and recognizing that all such resistance would be
|
||
quite futile. So the righteous man fears God without being afraid of
|
||
Him, because he regards the case of his wishing to resist God and
|
||
His commandments as one which need cause him no anxiety. But in
|
||
every such case, regarded by him as not intrinsically impossible, he
|
||
cognizes Him as One to be feared.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 65}
|
||
One who is in a state of fear can no more play the part of a judge
|
||
of the sublime of nature than one captivated by inclination and
|
||
appetite can of the beautiful. He flees from the sight of an object
|
||
filling him with dread; and it is impossible to take delight in terror
|
||
that is seriously entertained. Hence the agreeableness arising from
|
||
the cessation of an uneasiness is a state of joy. But this,
|
||
depending upon deliverance from a danger, is a rejoicing accompanied
|
||
with a resolve never again to put oneself in the way of the danger: in
|
||
fact we do not like bringing back to mind how we felt on that occasion
|
||
not to speak of going in search of an opportunity for experiencing
|
||
it again.
|
||
Bold, overhanging, and, as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds
|
||
piled up the vault of heaven, borne along with flashes and peals,
|
||
volcanos in all their violence of destruction, hurricanes leaving
|
||
desolation in their track, the boundless ocean rising with
|
||
rebellious force, the high waterfall of some mighty river, and the
|
||
like, make our power of resistance of trifling moment in comparison
|
||
with their might. But, provided our own position is secure, their
|
||
aspect is all the more attractive for its fearfulness; and we
|
||
readily call these objects sublime, because they raise the forces of
|
||
the soul above the height of vulgar commonplace, and discover within
|
||
us a power of resistance of quite another kind, which gives us courage
|
||
to be able to measure ourselves against the seeming omnipotence of
|
||
nature.
|
||
In the immeasurableness of nature and the incompetence of our
|
||
faculty for adopting a standard proportionate to the aesthetic
|
||
estimation of the magnitude of its realm, we found our own limitation.
|
||
But with this we also found in our rational faculty another
|
||
non-sensuous standard, one which has that infinity itself under it
|
||
as a unit, and in comparison with which everything in nature is small,
|
||
and so found in our minds a pre-eminence over nature even in it
|
||
immeasurability. Now in just the same way the irresistibility of the
|
||
might of nature forces upon us the recognition of our physical
|
||
helplessness as beings of nature, but at the same time reveals a
|
||
faculty of estimating ourselves as independent of nature, and
|
||
discovers a pre-eminence above nature that is the foundation of a
|
||
self-preservation of quite another kind from that which may be
|
||
assailed and brought into danger by external nature. This saves
|
||
humanity in our own person from humiliation, even though as mortal men
|
||
we have to submit to external violence. In this way, external nature
|
||
is not estimated in our aesthetic judgement as sublime so far as
|
||
exciting fear, but rather because it challenges our power (one not
|
||
of nature) to regard as small those things of which we are wont to
|
||
be solicitous (worldly goods, health, and life), and hence to regard
|
||
its might (to which in these matters we are no doubt subject) as
|
||
exercising over us and our personality no such rude dominion that we
|
||
should bow down before it, once the question becomes one of our
|
||
highest principles and of our asserting or forsaking them. Therefore
|
||
nature is here called sublime merely because it raises the imagination
|
||
to a presentation of those cases in which the mind can make itself
|
||
sensible of the appropriate sublimity of the sphere of its own
|
||
being, even above nature.
|
||
This estimation of ourselves loses nothing by the fact that we
|
||
must see ourselves safe in order to feel this soul-stirring
|
||
delight-a fact from which it might be plausibly argued that, as
|
||
there is no seriousness in the danger, so there is just as little
|
||
seriousness in the sublimity of our faculty of soul. For here the
|
||
delight only concerns the province of our faculty disclosed in such
|
||
a case, so far as this faculty has its root in our nature;
|
||
notwithstanding that its development and exercise is left to ourselves
|
||
and remains an obligation. Here indeed there is truth-no matter how
|
||
conscious a man, when he stretches his reflection so far abroad, may
|
||
be of his actual present helplessness.
|
||
This principle has, doubtless, the appearance of being too
|
||
far-fetched and subtle, and so of lying beyond the reach of an
|
||
aesthetic judgement. But observation of men proves the reverse, and
|
||
that it may be the foundation of the commonest judgements, although
|
||
one is not always conscious of its presence. For what is it that, even
|
||
to the savage, is the object of the greatest admiration? It is a man
|
||
who is undaunted, who knows no fear, and who, therefore, does not give
|
||
way to danger, but sets manfully to work with full deliberation.
|
||
Even where civilization has reached a high pitch, there remains this
|
||
special reverence for the soldier; only that there is then further
|
||
required of him that he should also exhibit all the virtues of
|
||
peace-gentleness, sympathy, and even becoming thought for his own
|
||
person; and for the reason that in this we recognize that his mind
|
||
is above the threats of danger. And so, comparing the statesman and
|
||
the general, men may argue as they please as to the pre-eminent
|
||
respect which is due to either above the other; but the verdict of the
|
||
aesthetic judgement is for the latter. War itself, provided it is
|
||
conducted with order and a sacred respect for the rights of civilians,
|
||
has something sublime about it, and gives nations that carry it on
|
||
in such a manner a stamp of mind only the more sublime the more
|
||
numerous the dangers to which they are exposed, and which they are
|
||
able to meet with fortitude. On the other hand, a prolonged peace
|
||
favours the predominance of a mere commercial spirit, and with it a
|
||
debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminacy, and tends to
|
||
degrade the character of the nation.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 70}
|
||
So far as sublimity is predicated of might, this solution of the
|
||
concept of it appears at variance with the fact that we are wont to
|
||
represent God in the tempest, the storm, the earthquake, and the like,
|
||
as presenting Himself in His wrath, but at the same time also in His
|
||
sublimity, and yet here it would be alike folly and presumption to
|
||
imagine a pre-eminence of our minds over the operations and, as it
|
||
appears, even over the direction of such might. Here, instead of a
|
||
feeling of the sublimity of our own nature, submission, prostration,
|
||
Aristotle's remarks on Courage, in the utter helplessness seem more to
|
||
constitute the attitude of mind befitting the manifestation of such an
|
||
object, and to be that also more customarily associated with the
|
||
idea of it on the occasion of a natural phenomenon of this kind. In
|
||
religion, as a rule, prostration, adoration with bowed head, coupled
|
||
with contrite, timorous posture and voice, seems to be the only
|
||
becoming demeanour in presence of the Godhead, and accordingly most
|
||
nations have assumed and still observe it. Yet this cast of mind is
|
||
far from being intrinsically and necessarily involved in the idea of
|
||
the sublimily of a religion and of its object. The man that is
|
||
actually in a state of fear, finding in himself good reason to be
|
||
so, because he is conscious of offending with his evil disposition
|
||
against a might directed by a will at once irresistible and just, is
|
||
far from being in the frame of mind for admiring divine greatness, for
|
||
which a temper of calm reflection and a quite free judgement are
|
||
required. Only when he becomes conscious of having a disposition
|
||
that is upright and acceptable to God, do those operations of might
|
||
serve, to stir within him the idea of the sublimity of this Being,
|
||
so far as he recognizes the existence in himself of a sublimity of
|
||
disposition consonant with His will, and is thus raised above the
|
||
dread of such operations of nature, in which he no longer sees God
|
||
pouring forth the vials of the wrath. Even humility, taking the form
|
||
of an uncompromising judgement upon his shortcomings, which, with
|
||
consciousness of good intentions, might readily be glossed over on the
|
||
ground of the frailty of human nature, is a sublime temper of the mind
|
||
voluntarily to undergo the pain of remorse as a means of more and more
|
||
effectually eradicating its cause. In this way religion is
|
||
intrinsically distinguished from superstition, which latter rears in
|
||
the mind, not reverence for the sublime, but dread and apprehension of
|
||
the all-powerful Being to whose will terror-stricken man sees
|
||
himself subjected, yet without according Him due honour. From this
|
||
nothing can arise but grace-begging and vain adulation, instead of a
|
||
religion consisting in a good life.
|
||
Sublimity, therefore, does not reside in any of the things of
|
||
nature, but only in our own mind, in so far as we may become conscious
|
||
of our superiority over nature within, and thus also over nature
|
||
without us (as exerting influence upon us). Everything that provokes
|
||
this feeling in us, including the might of nature which challenges our
|
||
strength, is then, though improperly, called sublime, and it is only
|
||
under presupposition of this idea within us, and in relation to it,
|
||
that we are capable of attaining to the idea of the sublimity of
|
||
that Being Which inspires deep respect in us, not by the mere
|
||
display of its might in nature, but more by the faculty which is
|
||
planted in us of estimating that might without fear, and of
|
||
regarding our estate as exalted above it.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 29. Modality of the judgement on the sublime
|
||
in nature.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 75}
|
||
-
|
||
Beautiful nature contains countless things as to which we at once
|
||
take every one as in their judgement concurring with our own, and as
|
||
to which we may further expect this concurrence without facts
|
||
finding us far astray. But in respect of our judgement upon the
|
||
sublime in nature, we cannot so easily vouch for ready acceptance by
|
||
others. For a far higher degree of culture, not merely of the
|
||
aesthetic judgement, but also of the faculties of cognition which
|
||
lie at its basis, seems to be requisite to enable us to lay down a
|
||
judgement upon this high distinction of natural objects.
|
||
The proper mental mood for a feeling of the sublime postulates the
|
||
mind's susceptibility for ideas, since it is precisely in the
|
||
failure of nature to attain to these- and consequently only under
|
||
presupposition of this susceptibility and of the straining of the
|
||
imagination to use nature as a schema for ideas- that there is
|
||
something forbidding to sensibility, but which, for all that, has an
|
||
attraction for us, arising from the fact of its being a dominion which
|
||
reason exercises over sensibility with a view to extending it to the
|
||
requirements of its own realm (the practical) and letting it look
|
||
out beyond itself into the infinite, which for it is an abyss. In
|
||
fact, without the development of moral ideas, that which, thanks to
|
||
preparatory culture, we call sublime, merely strikes the untutored man
|
||
as terrifying. He will see in the evidences which the ravages of
|
||
nature give of her dominion, and in the vast scale of her might,
|
||
compared with which his own is diminished to insignificance, only
|
||
the misery, peril, and distress that would compass the man who was
|
||
thrown to its mercy. So the simpleminded, and, for the most part,
|
||
intelligent, Savoyard peasant, (as Herr von Sassure relates),
|
||
unhesitatingly called all lovers of snow mountains fools. And who
|
||
can tell whether he would have been so wide of the mark, if that
|
||
student of nature had taken the risk of the dangers to which he
|
||
exposed himself merely, as most travellers do, for a fad, or so as
|
||
some day to be able to give a thrilling account of his adventures? But
|
||
the mind of Sassure was bent on the instruction of mankind, and
|
||
soul-stirring sensations that excellent man indeed had, and the reader
|
||
of his travels got them thrown into the bargain.
|
||
But the fact that culture is requisite for the judgement upon the
|
||
sublime in nature (more than for that upon the beautiful) does not
|
||
involve its being an original product of culture and something
|
||
introduced in a more or less conventional way into society. Rather
|
||
is it in human nature that its foundations are laid, and, in fact,
|
||
in that which, at once with common understanding, we may expect
|
||
every one to possess and may require of him, namely, a native capacity
|
||
for the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e., for moral feeling.
|
||
This, now, is the foundation of the necessity of that agreement
|
||
between other men's judgements upon the sublime and our own, which
|
||
we make our own imply. For just as we taunt a man who is quite
|
||
inappreciative when forming an estimate of an object of nature in
|
||
which we see beauty, with want of taste, so we say of a man who
|
||
remains unaffected in the presence of what we consider sublime, that
|
||
he has no feeling. But we demand both taste and feeling of every
|
||
man, and, granted some degree of culture, we give him credit for both.
|
||
Still, we do so with this difference: that, in the, case of the
|
||
former, since judgement there refers the imagination merely to the
|
||
understanding, as a the faculty of concepts, we make the requirement
|
||
as a matter of course, whereas in the case of the latter, since here
|
||
the judgement refers the imagination to reason, as a faculty of ideas,
|
||
we do so only under a subjective presupposition (which, however, we
|
||
believe we are warranted in making), namely, that of the moral feeling
|
||
in man. And, on this assumption, we attribute necessity to the
|
||
latter aesthetic judgement also.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 80}
|
||
In this modality of aesthetic judgements, namely, their assumed
|
||
necessity, lies what is for the Critique of judgement a moment of
|
||
capital importance. For this is exactly what makes an a priori
|
||
principle apparent in their case, and lifts them out of the sphere
|
||
of empirical psychology, in which otherwise they would remain buried
|
||
amid the feelings of gratification and pain (only with the senseless
|
||
epithet of finer feeling), so as to place them, and, thanks to them,
|
||
to place the faculty of judgement itself, in the class of judgements
|
||
of which the basis of an a priori principle is the distinguishing
|
||
feature, and, thus distinguished, to introduce them into
|
||
transcendental philosophy.
|
||
-
|
||
General Remark upon the Exposition of
|
||
Aesthetic Reflective Judgements.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 85}
|
||
In relation to the feeling of pleasure an object is to be counted
|
||
either as agreeable, or beautiful, or sublime, or good (absolutely),
|
||
(incundum, pulchrum, sublime, honestum).
|
||
As the motive of desires the agreeable is invariably of one and
|
||
the same kind, no matter what its source or how specifically different
|
||
the representation (of sense and sensation objectively considered).
|
||
Hence in estimating its influence upon the mind, the multitude of
|
||
its charms (simultaneous or successive) is alone revelant, and so
|
||
only, as it were, the mass of the agreeable sensation, and it is
|
||
only by the quantity, therefore, that this can be made intelligible.
|
||
Further it in no way conduces to our culture, but belongs only to mere
|
||
enjoyment. The beautiful, on the other hand, requires the
|
||
representation of a certain quality of the object, that pern-fits also
|
||
of being understood and reduced to concepts (although in the aesthetic
|
||
judgement it is not reduced), and it cultivates, as it instructs us to
|
||
attend to, finality in the feeling of pleasure. The sublime consists
|
||
merely in the relation exhibited by the estimate of the serviceability
|
||
of the sensible in the representation of nature for a possible
|
||
supersensible employment. The absolutely good, estimated
|
||
subjectively according to the feeling it inspires (the object of the
|
||
moral feeling), as the determinability of the powers of the subject by
|
||
means of the representation of an absolutely necessitating law, is
|
||
principally distinguished, by the modality of a necessity resting upon
|
||
concepts a priori, and involving not a mere claim, but a command
|
||
upon every one to assent, and belongs intrinsically not to the
|
||
aesthetic, but to the pure intellectual judgement. Further, it is
|
||
not ascribed to nature but to freedom, and that in a determinant and
|
||
not a merely reflective judgement. But the determinability of the
|
||
subject by means of this idea, and, what is more, that of a subject
|
||
which can be sensible, in the way of a modification of its state, to
|
||
hindrances on the part of sensibility, while, at the same time, it can
|
||
by surmounting them feel superiority over them-a determinability, in
|
||
other words, as moral feeling-is still so allied to aesthetic
|
||
judgement and its formal conditions as to be capable of being
|
||
pressed into the service of the aesthetic representation of the
|
||
conformity to law of action from duty, i.e., of the representation
|
||
of this as sublime, or even as beautiful, without forfeiting its
|
||
purity-an impossible result were one to make it naturally bound up
|
||
with the feeling of the agreeable.
|
||
The net result to be extracted from the exposition so far given of
|
||
both kinds of aesthetic judgements may be summed up in the following
|
||
brief definitions:
|
||
The beautiful is what pleases in the mere estimate formed of it
|
||
(consequently not by intervention of any feeling of sense in
|
||
accordance with a concept of the understanding). From this it
|
||
follows at once that it must please apart from all interest.
|
||
The sublime is what pleases immediately by reason of its
|
||
opposition to the interest of sense.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 90}
|
||
Both, as definitions of aesthetic universally valid estimates,
|
||
have reference to subjective grounds. In the one case the reference is
|
||
to grounds of sensibility, in so far as these are final on behalf of
|
||
the contemplative understanding, in the other case in so far as, in
|
||
their opposition to sensibility, they are, on the contrary, final in
|
||
reference to the ends of practical reason. Both, however, as united in
|
||
the same subject, are final in reference to the moral feeling. The
|
||
beautiful prepares us to love something, even nature, apart from any
|
||
interest: the sublime to esteem something highly even in opposition to
|
||
our (sensible) interest object,
|
||
The sublime may be described in this way: It is an object (of
|
||
nature) the representation of which determines the mind to regard
|
||
the elevation of nature beyond our reach as equivalent to a
|
||
presentation of ideas.
|
||
In a literal sense and according to their logical import, ideas
|
||
cannot be presented. But if we enlarge our empirical faculty of
|
||
representation (mathematical or dynamical) with a view to the
|
||
intuition of nature, reason inevitably steps forward, as the faculty
|
||
concerned with the independence of the absolute totality, and calls
|
||
forth the effort of the mind, unavailing though it be, to make
|
||
representation of sense adequate to this totality. This effort, and
|
||
the feeling of the unattainability of the idea by means of
|
||
imagination, is itself a presentation of the subjective finality of
|
||
our mind in the employment of the imagination in the interests of
|
||
the mind's supersensible province, and compels us subjectively to
|
||
think nature itself in its totality as a presentation of something
|
||
supersensible, without our being able to effectuate this
|
||
presentation objectively.
|
||
For we readily see that nature in space and time falls entirely
|
||
short of the unconditioned, consequently also of the absolutely great,
|
||
which still the commonest reason demands. And by this we are also
|
||
reminded that we have only to do with nature as phenomenon, and that
|
||
this itself must be regarded as the mere presentation of a
|
||
nature-in-itself (which exists in the idea of reason). But this idea
|
||
of the supersensible, which no doubt we cannot further determine so
|
||
that we cannot cognize nature as its presentation, but only think it
|
||
as such-is awakened in us by an object the aesthetic estimating of
|
||
which strains the imagination to its utmost, whether in respect of its
|
||
extension (mathematical), or of its might over the mind (dynamical).
|
||
For it is founded upon the feeling of a sphere of the mind which
|
||
altogether exceeds the realm of nature (i.e., upon the moral feeling),
|
||
with regard to which the representation of the object is estimated
|
||
as subjectively final.
|
||
As a matter of fact, a feeling for the sublime in nature is hardly
|
||
thinkable unless in association with an attitude of mind resembling
|
||
the moral. And though, like that feeling, the immediate pleasure in
|
||
the beautiful in nature presupposes and cultivates a certain
|
||
liberality of thought, i.e., makes our delight independent of any mere
|
||
enjoyment of sense, still it represents freedom rather as in play than
|
||
as exercising a law-ordained function, which is the genuine
|
||
characteristic of human morality, where reason has to impose its
|
||
dominion upon sensibility. There is, however, this qualification, that
|
||
in the aesthetic judgement upon the sublime this dominion is
|
||
represented as exercised through the imagination itself as an
|
||
instrument of reason.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 95}
|
||
Thus, too, delight in the sublime in nature is only negative
|
||
(whereas that in the beautiful is positive): that is to say, it is a
|
||
feeling of imagination by its own act depriving itself of its
|
||
freedom by receiving a final determination in accordance with a law
|
||
other than that of its empirical employment. In this way it gains an
|
||
extension and a might greater than that which it sacrifices. But the
|
||
ground of this is concealed from it, and in its place it feels the
|
||
sacrifice or deprivation, as well as its cause, to which it is
|
||
subjected. The astonishment amounting almost to terror, the awe and
|
||
thrill of devout feeling, that takes hold of one when gazing upon
|
||
the prospect of mountains ascending to heaven, deep ravines and
|
||
torrents raging there, deep shadowed solitudes that invite to brooding
|
||
melancholy, and the like-all this, when we are assured of our own
|
||
safety, is not actual fear. Rather is it an attempt to gain access
|
||
to it through imagination, for the purpose of feeling the might of
|
||
this faculty in combining the movement of the mind thereby aroused
|
||
with its serenity, and of thus being superior to internal and,
|
||
therefore, to external, nature, so far as the latter can have any
|
||
bearing upon our feeling of well-being. For the imagination, in
|
||
accordance with laws of association, makes our state of contentment
|
||
dependent upon physical conditions. But acting in accordance with
|
||
principles of the schematism of judgement (consequently so far as it
|
||
is subordinated to freedom), it is at the same time an instrument of
|
||
reason and its ideas. But in this capacity it is a might enabling us
|
||
to assert our independence as against the influences of nature, to
|
||
degrade what is great in respect of the latter to the level of what is
|
||
little, and thus to locate the absolutely great only in the proper
|
||
estate of the subject. This reflection of aesthetic judgement by which
|
||
it raises itself to the point of adequacy with reason, though
|
||
without any determinate concept of reason, is still a representation
|
||
of the object as subjectively final, by virtue even of the objective
|
||
inadequacy of the imagination in its greatest extension for meeting
|
||
the demands of reason (as the faculty of ideas).
|
||
Here we have to attend generally to what has been already adverted
|
||
to, that in the transcendental aesthetic of judgement there must be no
|
||
question of anything but pure aesthetic judgements. Consequently
|
||
examples are not to be selected from such beautiful, or sublime
|
||
objects as presuppose the concept of an end. For then the finality
|
||
would be either teleological, or based upon mere sensations of an
|
||
object: (gratification or pain) and so, in the first case, not
|
||
aesthetic, and, in the second, not merely formal. So, if we call the
|
||
sight of the starry heaven sublime, we must not found our estimate
|
||
of it upon any concepts of worlds inhabited by rational beings, with
|
||
the bright spots, which we see filling the space above us, as their
|
||
suns moving in orbits prescribed for them with the wisest regard to
|
||
ends. But we must take it, just as it strikes the eye, as a broad
|
||
and all-embracing canopy: and it is merely under such a representation
|
||
that we may posit the sublimity which the pure aesthetic judgement
|
||
attributes to this object. Similarly, as to the prospect of the ocean,
|
||
we are not to regard it as we, with our minds stored with knowledge on
|
||
a variety of matters (which, however, is not contained in the
|
||
immediate intuition), are wont to represent it in thought, as, let
|
||
us say, a spacious realm of aquatic creatures, or as the mighty
|
||
reservoirs from which are drawn the vapours that fill the air with
|
||
clouds of moisture for the good of the land, or yet as an element
|
||
which no doubt divides continent from continent, but at the same
|
||
time affords the means of the greatest commercial intercourse
|
||
between them-for in this way we get nothing beyond teleological
|
||
judgements. Instead of this we must be able to see sublimity in the
|
||
ocean, regarding it, as the poets do, according to what the impression
|
||
upon the eye reveals, as, let us say, in its calm a clear mirror of
|
||
water bounded only by the heavens, or, be it disturbed, as threatening
|
||
to overwhelm and engulf everything. The same is to be said of the
|
||
sublime and beautiful in the human form. Here, for determining grounds
|
||
of the judgement, we must not have recourse to concepts of ends
|
||
subserved by all: all its and members, or allow their accordance
|
||
with these ends to influence our aesthetic judgement (in such case
|
||
no longer pure), although it is certainly also a also a necessary
|
||
condition of aesthetic delight that they should not conflict. With
|
||
these ends. Aesthetic finality is the conformity to law of judgement
|
||
in its freedom. The delight in the object depends on the reference
|
||
which we seek to give to the imagination, subject to the proviso
|
||
that it is to entertain the mind in a free activity. If, on the
|
||
other hand, something else-be it sensation or concept of the
|
||
understanding-determines the judgement, it is then conformable to law,
|
||
no doubt, but not an act of free judgement.
|
||
Hence to speak of intellectual beauty or sublimity is to use
|
||
expressions which, in the first place, are not quite correct. For
|
||
these are aesthetic modes of representation which would be entirely
|
||
foreign to us were we merely pure intelligences (or if we even put
|
||
ourselves in thought in the position of such). Secondly, although
|
||
both, as objects of an intellectual (moral) delight, are compatible
|
||
with aesthetic delight to the extent of not resting upon any interest,
|
||
still, on the: Other hand, there is a difficulty in the way of their
|
||
alliance with such delight, since their function is to produce an
|
||
interest, and, on the assumption that the presentation has to accord
|
||
with delight in the aesthetic estimate, this interest could only be
|
||
effected by means of an interest of sense combined with it in the
|
||
presentation. But in this way the intellectual finality would be
|
||
violated and rendered impure.
|
||
The object of a pure and unconditioned intellectual delight is the
|
||
moral law in the might which it exerts in us over all antecedent
|
||
motives of the mind. Now, since it is only through sacrifices that
|
||
this might makes itself known to us aesthetically (and this involves a
|
||
deprivation of something -though in the interest of inner
|
||
freedom-whilst in turn it reveals in us an unfathomable depth of
|
||
this supersensible faculty, the consequences of which extend beyond
|
||
reach of the eye of sense), it follows that the delight, looked at
|
||
from the aesthetic side (in reference to sensibility) is negative,
|
||
i.e., opposed to this interest, but from the intellectual side,
|
||
positive and bound up with an interest. Hence it follows that the
|
||
intellectual and intrinsically final (moral) good, estimated
|
||
aesthetically, instead of being represented as beautiful, must
|
||
rather be represented as sublime, with the result that it arouses more
|
||
a feeling of respect (which disdains charm) than of love or of the
|
||
heart being drawn towards it-for human nature does not of its own
|
||
proper motion accord with the good, but only by virtue of the dominion
|
||
which reason exercises over sensibility. Conversely, that, too,
|
||
which we call sublime in external nature, or even internal nature
|
||
(e.g., certain affections) is only represented as a might of the
|
||
mind enabling it to overcome this or that hindrance of sensibility
|
||
by means of moral principles, and it is from this that it derives
|
||
its interest.
|
||
I must dwell while on the latter point. The idea of the good to
|
||
which affection is superadded is enthusiasm. This state of mind
|
||
appears to be sublime: so much so that there is a common saying that
|
||
nothing great can be achieved without it. But now every affection*
|
||
is blind either as to the choice of its end, or, supposing this has
|
||
been furnished by reason, in the way it is effected for it is that
|
||
mental movement whereby the exercise of free deliberation upon
|
||
fundamental principles, with a view to determining oneself
|
||
accordingly, is rendered impossible. On this account it cannot merit
|
||
any delight on the part of reason. Yet, from an aesthetic point of
|
||
view, enthusiasm is sublime, because it is an effort of one's powers
|
||
called forth by ideas which give to the mind an impetus of far
|
||
stronger and more enduring efficacy than the stimulus afforded by
|
||
sensible representations. But (as seems strange) even freedom from
|
||
affection (apatheia, phlegma in significatu bono) in a mind that
|
||
strenuously follows its unswerving principles is sublime, and that,
|
||
too, in a manner vastly superior, because it has at the same time
|
||
the delight of pure reason on its side. Such a stamp of mind is
|
||
alone called noble. This expression, however, comes in time to be
|
||
applied to things-such as buildings, a garment, literary style, the
|
||
carriage of one's person, and the like-provided they do not so much
|
||
excite astonishment (the affection attending the representation of
|
||
novelty exceeding expectation) as admiration (an astonishment which
|
||
does not cease when the novelty wears off)-and this obtains where
|
||
ideas undesignedly and artlessly accord in their presentation with
|
||
aesthetic delight.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 100}
|
||
-
|
||
*There is a specific distinction between affections and Passions.
|
||
Affections are related merely to feeling; passions belong to the
|
||
faculty of desire, and are inclinations that hinder or render
|
||
impossible all determinability of the elective will by principles.
|
||
Affections are impetuous and irresponsible; passions are abiding and
|
||
deliberate. Thus resentment, in the form of anger, is an affection:
|
||
but in the form of hatred (vindictiveness) it is a passion. Under no
|
||
circumstances can the latter be called sublime; for, while the freedom
|
||
of the mind is, no doubt, impeded in the case of affection, in passion
|
||
it is abrogated.
|
||
-
|
||
Every affection of the STRENUOUS TYPE (such, that is, as excites the
|
||
consciousness of our power of overcoming every resistance [animus
|
||
strenuus]) is aesthetically sublime, e.g., anger, even desperation
|
||
(the rage of forlorn hope but not faint-hearted despair). On the other
|
||
hand, affection of the LANGUID TYPE (which converts the very effort of
|
||
resistance into an object of displeasure [animus languidus] has
|
||
nothing noble about it, though it may take its rank as possessing
|
||
beauty of the sensuous order. Hence the emotions capable of
|
||
attaining the strength of an affection are very diverse. We have
|
||
spirited, and we have tender emotions. When the strength of the latter
|
||
reaches that of an affection they can be turned to no account. The
|
||
propensity to indulge in them is sentimentality. A sympathetic grief
|
||
that refuses to be consoled, or one that has to do with imaginary
|
||
misfortune to which we deliberately give way so far as to allow our
|
||
fancy to delude us into thinking it actual fact, indicates and goes to
|
||
make a tender, but at the same time weak, soul, which shows a
|
||
beautiful side, and may no doubt be called fanciful, but never
|
||
enthusiastic. Romances, maudlin dramas, shallow homilies, which trifle
|
||
with so-called (though falsely so) noble sentiments, but in fact
|
||
make the heart enervated, insensitive to the stem precepts of duty,
|
||
and incapable of respect for the worth of humanity in our own person
|
||
and the rights of men (which is something quite other than their
|
||
happiness), and in general incapable of all firm principles; even a
|
||
religious discourse which recommends a cringing and abject
|
||
grace-begging and favour-seeking, abandoning all reliance on our own
|
||
ability to resist the evil within us, in place of the vigorous
|
||
resolution to try to get the better of our inclinations by means of
|
||
those powers which, miserable sinners though we be, are still left
|
||
to us; that false humility by which self-abasement, whining
|
||
hypocritical repentance and a merely passive frame of mind are set
|
||
down as the method by which alone we can become acceptable to the
|
||
Supreme Being-these have neither lot nor fellowship with what may be
|
||
reckoned to belong to beauty, not to speak of sublimity, of mental
|
||
temperament.
|
||
But even impetuous movements of the mind be they allied under the
|
||
name of edification with ideas of religion, or, as pertaining merely
|
||
to culture, with ideas involving a social interest no matter what
|
||
tension of the imagination they may produce, can in no way lay claim
|
||
to the honour of a sublime presentation, if they do not leave behind
|
||
them a temper of mind which, though it be only indirectly, has an
|
||
influence upon the consciousness of the mind's strength and
|
||
resoluteness in respect of that which carries with it pure
|
||
intellectual finality (the supersensible). For, in the absence of
|
||
this, all these emotions belong only to motion, which we welcome in
|
||
the interests of good health. The agreeable lassitude that follows
|
||
upon being stirred up in that way by the play of the affections, is
|
||
a fruition of the state of well-being arising from the restoration
|
||
of the equilibrium of the various vital forces within us. This, in the
|
||
last resort, comes to no more than what the Eastern voluptuaries
|
||
find so soothing when they get their bodies massaged, and all their
|
||
muscles and joints softly pressed and bent; only that in the first
|
||
case the principle that occasions the movement is chiefly internal,
|
||
whereas here it is entirely external. Thus, many a man believes
|
||
himself edified by a sermon in which there is no establishment of
|
||
anything (no system of good maxims); or thinks himself improved by a
|
||
tragedy, when he is merely glad at having got well rid of the
|
||
feeling of being bored. Thus the sublime must in every case have
|
||
reference to our way of thinking, i.e., to maxims directed to giving
|
||
the intellectual side of our nature and the ideas of reason
|
||
supremacy over sensibility.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 105}
|
||
We have no reason to fear that the feeling of the sublime will
|
||
suffer from an abstract mode of presentation like this, which is
|
||
altogether negative as to what is sensuous. For though the
|
||
imagination, no doubt, finds nothing beyond the sensible world to
|
||
which it can lay hold, still this thrusting aside of the sensible
|
||
barriers gives it a feeling of being unbounded; and that removal is
|
||
thus a presentation of the infinite. As such it can never be
|
||
anything more than a negative presentation-but still it expands the
|
||
soul. Perhaps there is no more sublime passage in the Jewish Law
|
||
than the commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,
|
||
or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven or on earth, or under
|
||
the earth, etc." This commandment can alone explain the enthusiasm
|
||
which the Jewish people, in their moral period, felt for their
|
||
religion when comparing themselves with others, or the pride
|
||
inspired by Mohammedanism. The very same holds good of our
|
||
representation of the moral law and of our native capacity for
|
||
morality. The fear that, if we divest this representation of
|
||
everything that can commend it to the senses, it will thereupon be
|
||
attended only with a cold and lifeless approbation and not with any
|
||
moving force or emotion, is wholly unwarranted. The very reverse is
|
||
the truth. For when nothing any longer meets the eye of sense, and the
|
||
unmistakable and ineffaceable idea of morality is left in possession
|
||
of the field, there would be need rather of tempering the ardour of an
|
||
unbounded imagination to prevent it rising to enthusiasm, than of
|
||
seeking to lend these ideas the aid of images and childish devices for
|
||
fear of their being wanting in potency. For this reason, governments
|
||
have gladly let religion be fully equipped with these accessories,
|
||
seeking in this way to relieve their subjects of the exertion, but
|
||
to deprive them, at the same time, of the ability, required for
|
||
expanding their spiritual powers beyond the limits arbitrarily laid
|
||
down for them, and which facilitate their being treated as though they
|
||
were merely passive.
|
||
This pure, elevating, merely negative presentation of morality
|
||
involves, on the other hand, no fear of fanaticism, which is a
|
||
delusion that would will some VISION beyond all the bounds of
|
||
sensibility; i.e., would dream according to principles (rational
|
||
raving). The safeguard is the purely negative character of the
|
||
presentation. For the inscrutability of the idea of freedom
|
||
precludes all positive presentation. The moral law, however, is a
|
||
sufficient and original source of determination within us: so it
|
||
does not for a moment permit us to cast about for a ground of
|
||
determination external to itself. If enthusiasm is comparable to
|
||
delirium, fanaticism may be compared to mania. Of these, the latter is
|
||
least of all compatible with the sublime, for it is profoundly
|
||
ridiculous. In enthusiasm, as an affection, the imagination is
|
||
unbridled; in fanaticism, as a deep-seated, brooding passion, it is
|
||
anomalous. The first is a transitory accident to which the
|
||
healthiest understanding is liable to become at times the victim;
|
||
the second is an undermining disease.
|
||
Simplicity (artless finality) is, as it were, the style adopted by
|
||
nature in the sublime. It is also that of morality. The latter is a
|
||
second (supersensible) nature, whose laws alone we know, without being
|
||
able to attain to an intuition of the supersensible faculty within
|
||
us-that which contains the ground of this legislation.
|
||
One further remark. The delight in the sublime, no less than in
|
||
the beautiful, by reason of its universal communicability not alone is
|
||
plainly distinguished from other aesthetic judgements, but also from
|
||
this same property acquires an interest in society (in which it admits
|
||
of such communication). Yet, despite this, we have to note the fact
|
||
that isolation from all society is looked upon as something sublime,
|
||
provided it rests upon ideas which disregard all sensible interest. To
|
||
be self-sufficing, and so not to stand in need of society, yet without
|
||
being unsociable, i.e., without shunning it, is something
|
||
approaching the sublime-a remark applicable to all superiority to
|
||
wants. On the other hand, to shun our fellow men from misanthropy,
|
||
because of enmity towards them, or from anthropophobia, because we
|
||
imagine the hand of every man is against us, is partly odious,
|
||
partly contemptible. There is, however, a misanthropy (most improperly
|
||
so called), the tendency towards which is to be found with advancing
|
||
years in many right minded men, that, as far as good will goes, is
|
||
no doubt, philanthropic enough, but as the result of long and sad
|
||
experience, is widely removed from delight in mankind. We see
|
||
evidences of this in the propensity to recluseness, in the fanciful
|
||
desire for a retired country seat, or else (with the young) in the
|
||
dream of the happiness of being able to spend one's life with a little
|
||
family on an island unknown to the rest of the world-material of which
|
||
novelists or writers of Robinsonades know how to make such good use.
|
||
Falsehood, ingratitude, injustice, the puerility of the ends which
|
||
we ourselves look upon as great and momentous, and to compass which
|
||
man inflicts upon his brother man all imaginable evils-these all so
|
||
contradict the idea of what men might be if they only would, and are
|
||
so at variance with our active wish to see them better, that, to avoid
|
||
hating where we cannot love, it seems but a slight sacrifice to forego
|
||
all the joys of fellowship with our kind. This sadness, which is not
|
||
directed to the evils which fate brings down upon others (a sadness
|
||
which springs from sympathy), but to those which they inflict upon
|
||
themselves (one which is based on antipathy in questions of
|
||
principle), is sublime because it is founded on ideas, whereas that
|
||
springing from sympathy can only be accounted beautiful. Sassure,
|
||
who was no less ingenious than profound, in the description of his
|
||
Alpine travels remarks of Bonhomme, one of the Savoy mountains: "There
|
||
reigns there a certain insipid sadness." He recognized, therefore,
|
||
that, besides this, there is an interesting sadness, such as is
|
||
inspired by the sight of some desolate place into which men might fain
|
||
withdraw themselves so as to hear no more of the world without, and be
|
||
no longer versed in its affairs, a place, however, which must yet
|
||
not be so altogether inhospitable as only to afford a most miserable
|
||
retreat for a human being. I only make this observation as a
|
||
reminder that even melancholy, (but not dispirited sadness), may
|
||
take its place among the vigorous affections, provided it has its root
|
||
in moral ideas. If, however, it is grounded upon sympathy, and, as
|
||
such, is lovable, it belongs only to the languid affections. And
|
||
this serves to call attention to the mental temperament which in the
|
||
first case alone is sublime are
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 110}
|
||
The transcendental exposition of aesthetic judgements now brought to
|
||
a close may be compared with the physiological, as worked out by Burke
|
||
and many acute men among us, so that we may see where a merely
|
||
empirical exposition of the sublime and beautiful would bring us.
|
||
Burke, who deserves to be called the foremost author in this method of
|
||
treatment, deduces, on these lines, "that the feeling of the sublime
|
||
is grounded on the impulse towards self-preservation and on fear,
|
||
i.e., on a pain, which, since it does not go the length of disordering
|
||
the bodily parts, calls forth movements which, as they clear the
|
||
vessels, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and troublesome
|
||
encumbrance, are capable of producing delight; not pleasure but a sort
|
||
of delightful horror, a sort of tranquility tinged With terror." The
|
||
beautiful, which he grounds on love (from which, still, he would
|
||
have desire kept separate), he reduces to "the relaxing, slackening,
|
||
and enervating of the fibres of the body, and consequently a
|
||
softening, a dissolving, a languor, and a fainting, dying, and melting
|
||
away for pleasure." And this explanation he supports, not alone by
|
||
instances in which the feeling of the beautiful as well as of the
|
||
sublime is capable of being excited in us by the imagination in
|
||
conjunction with the understanding, but even by instances when it is
|
||
in conjunction with sensations. As psychological observations, these
|
||
analyses of our mental phenomena are extremely fine, and supply a
|
||
wealth of material for the favourite investigations of empirical
|
||
anthropology. But, besides that, there is no denying the fact that all
|
||
representations within us, no matter whether they are objectively
|
||
merely sensible or wholly intellectual, are still subjectively
|
||
associable with gratification or pain, however imperceptible either of
|
||
these may be. (For these representations one and all have an influence
|
||
on the feeling of life, and none of them, so far as it is a
|
||
modification of the subject, can be indifferent.) We must even admit
|
||
that, as Epicurus maintained, gratification and pain though proceeding
|
||
from the imagination or even from representations of the
|
||
understanding, are always in the last resort corporeal, since apart
|
||
from any feeling of the bodily organ life would be merely a
|
||
consciousness of one's existence, and could not include any feeling of
|
||
well-being or the reverse, i.e., of the furtherance or hindrance of
|
||
the vital forces. For, of itself alone, the mind is all life (the
|
||
life-principle itself), and hindrance or furtherance has to be
|
||
sought outside it, and yet in the man himself consequently in the
|
||
connection with his body and melting
|
||
But if we attribute the delight in the object wholly and entirely to
|
||
the gratification which it affords through charm or emotion, then we
|
||
must not exact from any one else agreement with the aesthetic
|
||
judgement passed by us. For, in such matters each person rightly
|
||
consults his own personal feeling alone. But in that case there is
|
||
an end of all censorship of taste-unless the afforded by others as the
|
||
result of a contingent coincidence of their judgements is to be held
|
||
over us as commanding our assent. But this principle we would
|
||
presumably resent, and appeal to our natural right of submitting a
|
||
judgement to our own sense, where it rests upon the immediate
|
||
feeling of personal well-being, instead of submitting it to that of
|
||
others.
|
||
Hence if the import of the judgement of taste, where we appraise
|
||
it as a judgement entitled to require the concurrence of every one,
|
||
cannot be egoistic, but must necessarily, from its inner nature, be
|
||
allowed a pluralistic validity, i.e., on account of what taste
|
||
itself is, and not on account of the examples which others give of
|
||
their taste, then it must found upon some a priori principle (be it
|
||
subjective or objective), and no amount of prying into the empirical
|
||
laws of the changes that go on within the mind can succeed in
|
||
establishing such a principle. For these laws only yield a knowledge
|
||
of how we do judge, but they do not give us a command as to how we
|
||
ought to judge, and, what is more, such a command as is
|
||
unconditioned-and commands of this kind are presupposed by
|
||
judgements of taste, inasmuch as they require delight to be taken as
|
||
immediately connected with a representation. Accordingly, though the
|
||
empirical exposition of aesthetic judgements may be a first step
|
||
towards accumulating the material for a higher investigation, yet a
|
||
transcendental examination of this faculty is possible, and forms an
|
||
essential part of the Critique of Taste. For, were not taste in
|
||
possession of a priori principles, it could not possibly sit in
|
||
judgement upon the judgements of others and pass sentence of
|
||
commendation or condemnation upon them, with even the least
|
||
semblance of authority.
|
||
The remaining part of the Analytic of the aesthetic judgement
|
||
contains first of all the:
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 115}
|
||
Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgements.
|
||
SS 30. The deduction of aesthetic judgements upon objects of
|
||
nature must not be directed to what we call sublime in
|
||
nature, but only to the beautiful.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 120}
|
||
The claim of an aesthetic judgement to universal validity for
|
||
every subject, being a judgement which must rely on some a priori
|
||
principle, stands in need of a deduction (i.e., a derivation of its
|
||
title). Further, where the delight or aversion turns on the form of
|
||
the object this has to be something over and above the exposition of
|
||
the judgement. Such is the case with judgements of taste upon the
|
||
beautiful in nature. For there the finality has its foundation in
|
||
the object and its outward form-although it does not signify the
|
||
reference of this to other objects according to concepts (for the
|
||
purpose of cognitive judgements), but is merely concerned in general
|
||
with the apprehension of this form so far as it proves accordant in
|
||
the mind with the faculty of concepts as well as with that of their
|
||
presentation (which is identical with that of apprehension). With
|
||
regard to the beautiful in nature, therefore, we may start a number of
|
||
questions touching the cause of this finality of their forms e.g., how
|
||
we are to explain why nature has scattered beauty abroad with so
|
||
lavish a hand even in the depth of the ocean where it can but seldom
|
||
be reached by the eye of man-for which alone it is. final?
|
||
But the sublime in nature-if we pass upon it a pure aesthetic
|
||
judgement unmixed with concepts of perfection, as objective
|
||
finality, which would make the judgement teleological-may be
|
||
regarded as completely wanting in form or figure, and none the less be
|
||
looked upon as an object of pure delight, and indicate a subjective
|
||
finality of the given representation. So, now, the question suggests
|
||
itself, whether in addition to the exposition of what is thought in an
|
||
aesthetic judgement of this kind, we may be called upon to give a
|
||
deduction of its claim to some (subjective) a priori principle.
|
||
This we may meet with the reply that the sublime in nature is
|
||
improperly so called, and that sublimity should, in strictness, be
|
||
attributed merely to the attitude of thought, or, rather, to that
|
||
which serves as basis for this in human nature. The apprehension of an
|
||
object otherwise formless and in conflict with ends supplies the
|
||
mere occasion for our coming to a consciousness of this basis; and the
|
||
object is in this way put to a subjectively-final use, but it is not
|
||
estimated as subjectively-final on its own account and because of
|
||
its form. (It is, as it were, a species finalis accepta, non data.)
|
||
Consequently the exposition we gave of judgements upon the sublime
|
||
in nature was at the same time their deduction. For, in our analysis
|
||
of the reflection on the part of judgement in this case, we found that
|
||
in such judgements there is a final relation of the cognitive
|
||
faculties, which has to be laid a priori at the basis of the faculty
|
||
of ends (the will), and which is therefore itself a priori final.
|
||
This, then, at once involves the deduction, i.e., the justification of
|
||
the claim of such a judgement to universally-necessary validity.
|
||
Hence we may confine our search to one for the deduction of
|
||
judgements of taste, i.e., of judgements upon the beauty of things
|
||
of nature, and this will satisfactorily dispose of the problem for the
|
||
entire aesthetic faculty of judgement.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 125}
|
||
SS 31. Of the method of the deduction of judgements
|
||
of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
The obligation to furnish a deduction, i.e., a guarantee of the
|
||
legitimacy of judgements of a particular kind, only arises where the
|
||
judgement lays claim to necessity. This is the case even where it
|
||
requires subjective universality, i.e., the concurrence of every
|
||
one, albeit the judgement is not a cognitive judgement, but only one
|
||
of pleasure or displeasure in a given object, i.e., an assumption of a
|
||
subjective finality that has a thoroughgoing validity for every one,
|
||
and which, since the judgement is one of taste, is not to be
|
||
grounded upon any concept of the thing.
|
||
Now, in the latter case, we are not dealing with a judgement of
|
||
cognition-neither with a theoretical one based on the concept of a
|
||
nature in general, supplied by understanding, nor with a (pure)
|
||
practical one based on the idea of freedom, as given a priori by
|
||
reason-and so we are not called upon to justify a priori the
|
||
validity of a judgement which represents either what a thing is, or
|
||
that there is something which I ought to do in order to produce it.
|
||
Consequently, if for judgement generally we demonstrate the
|
||
universal validity of a singular judgement expressing the subjective
|
||
finality of an empirical representation of the form of an object, we
|
||
shall do all that is needed to explain how it is possible that
|
||
something can please in the mere formation of an estimate of it
|
||
(without sensation or concept), and how, just as the estimate of an
|
||
object for the sake of a cognition generally has universal rules,
|
||
the delight of any one person may be pronounced as a rule for every
|
||
other.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 130}
|
||
Now if this universal validity is not to be based on a collection of
|
||
votes and interrogation of others as to what sort of sensations they
|
||
experience, but is to rest, as it were, upon an, autonomy of the
|
||
subject passing judgement on the feeling of pleasure (in the given
|
||
representation), i.e., upon his own taste, and yet is also not to be
|
||
derived from concepts; then it follows that such a judgement-and
|
||
such the judgement of taste in fact is-has a double and also logical
|
||
peculiarity. For, first, it has universal validity a priori, yet
|
||
without having a logical universality according to concepts, but
|
||
only the universality of a singular judgement. Secondly, it has a
|
||
necessity (which must invariably rest upon a priori grounds), but
|
||
one which depends upon no a priori proofs by the representation of
|
||
which it would be competent to enforce the assent which the
|
||
judgement of taste demands of every one.
|
||
The solution of these logical peculiarities, which distinguish a
|
||
judgement of taste from all cognitive judgements, will of itself
|
||
suffice for a deduction of this strange faculty, provided we
|
||
abstract at the outset from all content of the judgement, viz., from
|
||
the feeling of pleasure, and merely compare the aesthetic form with
|
||
the form of objective judgements as prescribed by logic. We shall
|
||
first try, with the help of examples, to illustrate and bring out
|
||
these characteristic properties of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 32. First peculiarity of the judgement of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 135}
|
||
The judgement of taste determines its object in respect of delight
|
||
(as a thing of beauty) with a claim to the agreement of every one,
|
||
just as if it were objective.
|
||
To say: "this flower is beautiful is tantamount to repeating its own
|
||
proper claim to the delight of everyone. The agreeableness of its
|
||
smell gives it no claim at all. One man revels in it, but it gives
|
||
another a headache. Now what else are we to suppose from this than
|
||
that its beauty is to be taken for a property of the flower itself
|
||
which does not adapt itself to the diversity of heads and the
|
||
individual senses of the multitude, but to which they must adapt
|
||
themselves, if they are going to pass judgement upon it. And yet
|
||
this is not the way the matter stands. For the judgement of taste
|
||
consists precisely in a thing being called beautiful solely in respect
|
||
of that quality in which it adapts itself to our mode of taking it in.
|
||
Besides, every judgement which is to show the taste of the
|
||
individual, is required to be an independent judgement of the
|
||
individual himself. There must be no need of groping about among other
|
||
people's judgements and getting previous instruction from their
|
||
delight in or aversion to the same object. Consequently his
|
||
judgement should be given out a priori, and not as an imitation
|
||
relying on the general pleasure a thing gives as a matter of fact. One
|
||
would think, however, that a judgement a priori must involve a concept
|
||
of the object for the cognition of which it contains the principle.
|
||
But the judgement of taste is not founded on concepts, and is in no
|
||
way a cognition, but only an aesthetic judgement.
|
||
Hence it is that a youthful poet refuses to allow himself to be
|
||
dissuaded from the conviction that his poem is beautiful, either by
|
||
the judgement of the public or of his friends. And even if he lends
|
||
them an ear, he does so,-not because he has now come to a different
|
||
judgement, but because, though the whole public, at least so far as
|
||
his work is concerned, should have false taste, he still, in his
|
||
desire for recognition, finds good reason to accommodate himself to
|
||
the popular error (even against his own judgement). It is only in
|
||
aftertime, when his judgement has been sharpened by exercise, that
|
||
of his own free will and accord he deserts his former judgements
|
||
behaving in just the same way as with those of his judgements which
|
||
depend wholly upon reason. Taste lays claim simply to autonomy. To
|
||
make the judgements of others the determining ground of one's own
|
||
would be heteronomy.
|
||
The fact that we recommend the works of the ancients as models,
|
||
and rightly too, and call their authors classical, as constituting
|
||
sort of nobility among writers that leads the way and thereby gives
|
||
laws to the people, seems to indicate a posteriori sources of taste
|
||
and to contradict the autonomy of taste in each individual. But we
|
||
might just as well say that the ancient mathematicians, who, to this
|
||
day, are looked upon as the almost indispensable models of perfect
|
||
thoroughness and elegance in synthetic methods, prove that reason also
|
||
is on our part only imitative, and that it is incompetent with the
|
||
deepest intuition to produce of itself rigorous proofs by means of the
|
||
construction of concepts. There is no employment of our powers, no
|
||
matter how free, not even of reason itself (which must create all
|
||
its judgements from the common a priori source), which, if each
|
||
individual had always to start afresh with the crude equipment of
|
||
his natural state, would not get itself involved in blundering
|
||
attempts, did not those of others tie before it as a warning. Not that
|
||
predecessors make those who follow in their steps mere imitators,
|
||
but by their methods they set others upon the track of seeking in
|
||
themselves for the principles, and so of adopting their own, often
|
||
better, course. Even in religion-where undoubtedly every one bas to
|
||
derive his rule of conduct from himself, seeing that he himself
|
||
remains responsible for it and, when he goes wrong, cannot shift the
|
||
blame upon others as teachers or leaders-general precepts learned at
|
||
the feet either of priests or philosophers, or even drawn from ones'
|
||
own resources, are never so efficacious as an example of virtue or
|
||
holiness, which, historically portrayed, does not dispense with the
|
||
autonomy of virtue drawn from the spontaneous and original idea of
|
||
morality (a priori), or convert this into a mechanical process of
|
||
imitation. Following which has reference to a precedent, and not
|
||
imitation, is the proper expression for all influence which the
|
||
products of an exemplary author may exert upon others and this means
|
||
no more than going to the same sources for a creative work as those to
|
||
which he went for his creations, and learning from one's predecessor
|
||
no more than the mode of availing oneself of such sources. Taste, just
|
||
because its judgement cannot be determined by concepts or precepts, is
|
||
among all faculties and talents the very one that stands most in
|
||
need of examples of what has in the course of culture maintained
|
||
itself longest in esteem. Thus it avoids an early lapse into crudity
|
||
and a return to the rudeness of its earliest efforts.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 140}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 33. Second peculiarity of the judgement of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
Proofs are of no avail whatever for determining the judgement of
|
||
taste, and in this connection matters stand just as they would were
|
||
that judgement simply subjective.
|
||
If any one does not think a building, view, or poem beautiful, then,
|
||
in the first place, he refuses, so far as his inmost conviction
|
||
goes, to allow approval to be wrung from him by a hundred voices all
|
||
lauding it to the skies. Of course he may affect to be pleased with
|
||
it, so as not to be considered as wanting in taste. He may even
|
||
begin to harbour doubts as to whether he has formed his taste upon
|
||
an acquaintance with a sufficient number of objects of a particular
|
||
kind (just as one who in the distance recognizes, as he believes,
|
||
something as a wood which every one else regards as a town, becomes
|
||
doubtful of the judgement of his own eyesight). But, for all that,
|
||
he clearly perceives that the approval of others affords no valid
|
||
proof, available for the estimate of beauty. He recognizes that
|
||
others, perchance, may see and observe for him, and that what many
|
||
have seen in one and the same way may, for the purpose of a
|
||
theoretical, and therefore logical, judgement, serve as an adequate
|
||
ground of proof for or albeit he believes he saw otherwise, but that
|
||
what has pleased others can never serve him as the ground of an
|
||
aesthetic judgement. The judgement of others, where unfavourable to
|
||
ours, may, no doubt, rightly make us suspicious in respect of our own,
|
||
but convince us that it is wrong it never can. Hence there is no
|
||
empirical ground of proof that can coerce any one's judgement of
|
||
taste.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 145}
|
||
In the second place, a proof a priori according to definite rules is
|
||
still less capable of determining the judgement as to beauty. If any
|
||
one reads me his poem, or brings me to a play, which, all said and
|
||
done, fails to commend itself to my taste, then let him adduce Batteux
|
||
or Lessing, or still older and more famous critics of taste, with
|
||
all the host of rules laid down by them, as a proof of the beauty of
|
||
his poem; let certain passages particularly displeasing to me accord
|
||
completely with the rules of beauty (as set out by these critics and
|
||
universally recognized): I stop my ears: I do not want to hear any
|
||
reasons or any arguing about the matter. I would prefer to suppose
|
||
that those rules of the critics were at fault, or at least have no
|
||
application, than to allow my judgement to be determined by a priori
|
||
proofs. I take my stand on the ground that my judgement is to be one
|
||
of taste, and not one of understanding or reason.
|
||
This would appear to be one of the chief reasons why this faculty of
|
||
aesthetic judgement has been given the name of taste. For a man may
|
||
recount to me all the ingredients of a dish, and observe of each and
|
||
every one of them that it is just what I like, and, in addition,
|
||
rightly commend the wholesomeness of the food; yet I am deaf to all
|
||
these arguments. I try the dish with my own tongue and palate, and I
|
||
pass judgement according to their verdict (not according to
|
||
universal principles).
|
||
As a matter of fact, the judgement of taste is invariably laid
|
||
down as a singular judgement upon the object. The understanding can,
|
||
from the comparison of the object, in point of delight, with the
|
||
judgements of others, form a universal judgement, e.g.: "All tulips
|
||
are beautiful." But that judgement is then not one of taste, but is
|
||
a logical judgement which converts the reference of an object to our
|
||
taste into a predicate belonging to things of a certain kind. But it
|
||
is only the judgement whereby I regard an individual given tulip as
|
||
beautiful, i.e., regard my delight in it as of universal validity,
|
||
that is a judgement of taste. Its peculiarity, however, consists in
|
||
the fact, that, although it has merely subjective validity, still it
|
||
extends its claims to all subjects, as unreservedly as it would if
|
||
it were an objective judgement, resting on grounds of cognition and
|
||
capable of being proved to demonstration.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 34. An objective principle of taste is not possible.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 150}
|
||
-
|
||
A principle of taste would mean a fundamental premiss under the
|
||
condition of which one might subsume the concept of an object, and
|
||
then, by a syllogism, draw the inference that it is beautiful. That,
|
||
however, is absolutely impossible. For I must feel the pleasure
|
||
immediately in the representation of the object, and I cannot be
|
||
talked into it by any grounds of proof. Thus although critics, as Hume
|
||
says, are able to reason more plausibly than cooks, they must still
|
||
share the same fate. For the determining ground of their judgement
|
||
they are not able to look to the force of demonstrations, but only
|
||
to the reflection of the subject upon his own state (of pleasure or
|
||
displeasure), to the exclusion of precepts and rules.
|
||
There is, however, a matter upon which it is competent for critics
|
||
to exercise their subtlety, and upon which they ought to do so, so
|
||
long as it tends to the rectification and extension of our
|
||
judgements of taste. But that matter is not one of exhibiting the
|
||
determining ground of aesthetic judgements of this kind in a
|
||
universally applicable formula-which is impossible. Rather is it the
|
||
investigation of the faculties of cognition and their function in
|
||
these judgements, and the illustration, by the analysis of examples,
|
||
of their mutual subjective finality, the form of which in a given
|
||
representation has been shown above to constitute the beauty of
|
||
their object. Hence with regard to the representation whereby an
|
||
object is given, the critique of taste itself is only subjective;
|
||
viz., it is the art or science of reducing the mutual relation of
|
||
the understanding and the imagination in the given representation
|
||
(without reference to antecedent sensation or concept), consequently
|
||
their accordance or discordance, to rules, and of determining them
|
||
with regard to their conditions. It is art if it only illustrates this
|
||
by examples; it is science if it deduces the possibility of such an
|
||
estimate from the nature of these faculties as faculties of
|
||
knowledge-in general. It is only with the latter, as transcendental
|
||
critique, that we have here any concern. Its proper scope is the
|
||
development and justification of the subjective principle of taste, as
|
||
an a priori principle of judgement. As an art, critique merely looks
|
||
to the physiological (here psychological) and, consequently, empirical
|
||
rules, according to which in actual fact taste proceeds (passing by
|
||
the question of their possibility) and seeks to apply them in
|
||
estimating its objects. The latter critique criticizes the products of
|
||
fine art, just as the former does the faculty of estimating them.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 35. The principle of taste is the subjective principle
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 155}
|
||
of the general power of judgement.
|
||
-
|
||
The judgement of taste is differentiated from logical judgement by
|
||
the fact that, whereas the latter subsumes a representation under a
|
||
concept of the object, the judgement of taste does not subsume under a
|
||
concept at all-for, if it did, necessary and universal approval
|
||
would be capable of being enforced by proofs. And yet it does bear
|
||
this resemblance to the logical judgement, that it asserts a
|
||
universality and necessity, not, however, according to concepts of the
|
||
object, but a universality and necessity that are, consequently,
|
||
merely subjective. Now the concepts in a judgement constitute its
|
||
content (what belongs to the cognition of the object). But the
|
||
judgement of taste is not determinable by means of concepts. Hence
|
||
it can only have its ground in the subjective formal condition of a
|
||
judgement in general. The subjective condition of all judgements is
|
||
the judging faculty itself, or judgement. Employed in respect of a
|
||
representation whereby an object is given, this requires the
|
||
harmonious accordance of two powers of representation. These are:
|
||
the imagination (for the intuition and the arrangement of the manifold
|
||
of intuition), and the understanding (for the concept as a
|
||
representation of the unity of this arrangement). Now, since no
|
||
concept of the object underlies the judgement here, it can consist
|
||
only in the subsumption of the imagination itself (in the case of a
|
||
representation whereby an object is given) under the conditions
|
||
enabling the understanding in general to advance from the intuition to
|
||
concepts. That is to say, since the freedom of the imagination
|
||
consists precisely in the fact that it schematizes without a
|
||
concept, the judgement of taste must found upon a mere sensation of
|
||
the mutually quickening activity of the imagination in its freedom,
|
||
and of the understanding with its conformity to law. It must therefore
|
||
rest upon a feeling that allows the object to be estimated by the
|
||
finality of the representation (by which an object is given) for the
|
||
furtherance of the cognitive faculties in their free play. Taste,
|
||
then, as a subjective power of judgement, contains a principle of
|
||
subsumption, not of intuitions under concepts, but of the faculty of
|
||
intuitions or presentations, i.e., of the imagination, under the
|
||
faculty of concepts, i.e., the understanding, so far as the former
|
||
in its freedom accords with the latter in its conformity to law.
|
||
For the discovery of this title by means of a deduction of
|
||
judgements of taste, we can only avail ourselves of the guidance of
|
||
the formal peculiarities of judgements of this kind, and
|
||
consequently the mere consideration of their logical form.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 160}
|
||
SS 36. The problem of a deduction of judgements of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
To form a cognitive judgement we may immediately connect with the
|
||
perception of an object the concept of an object in general, the
|
||
empirical predicates of which are contained in that perception. In
|
||
this way, a judgement of experience is produced. Now this judgement
|
||
rests on the foundation of a priori concepts of the synthetical
|
||
unity of the manifold of intuition, enabling it to be thought as the
|
||
determination of an object. These concepts (the categories) call for a
|
||
deduction, and such was supplied in the Critique of Pure Reason.
|
||
That deduction enabled us to solve the problem: How are synthetical
|
||
a priori cognitive judgements possible? This problem had, accordingly,
|
||
to do with the a priori principles of pure understanding and its
|
||
theoretical judgements.
|
||
But we may also immediately connect with a perception a feeling of
|
||
pleasure (or displeasure) and a delight, attending the
|
||
representation of the object and serving it instead of a predicate. In
|
||
this way there arises a judgement which is aesthetic and not
|
||
cognitive. Now, if such a judgement is not merely one of sensation,
|
||
but a formal judgement of reflection that exacts this delight from
|
||
everyone as necessary, something must lie at its basis as its a priori
|
||
principle. This principle may, indeed, be a mere subjective one
|
||
(supposing an objective one should be impossible for judgements of
|
||
this kind), but, even as such, it requires a deduction to make it
|
||
intelligible how an aesthetic judgement can lay claim to necessity.
|
||
That, now, is what lies at the bottom of the problem upon which we are
|
||
at present engaged, i.e.: How are judgements of taste possible? This
|
||
problem, therefore, is concerned with the a priori principles of
|
||
pure judgement in aesthetic judgements, i.e., not those in which (as
|
||
in theoretical judgements) it has merely to subsume under objective
|
||
concepts of understanding, and in which it comes under a law, but
|
||
rather those in which it is itself, subjectively, object as well as
|
||
law.
|
||
We may also put the problem in this way: How a judgement possible
|
||
which, going merely upon the individual's own feeling of pleasure in
|
||
an object independent of the concept of it, estimates this as a
|
||
pleasure attached to the representation of the same object in every
|
||
other individual, and does so a priori, i.e., without being allowed to
|
||
wait and see if other people will be of the same mind?
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 165}
|
||
It is easy to see that judgements of taste are synthetic, for they
|
||
go beyond the concept and even the intuition of the object, and join
|
||
as predicate to that intuition something which is not even a cognition
|
||
at all, namely, the feeling of pleasure (or displeasure). But,
|
||
although the predicate (the personal pleasure that is connected with
|
||
the representation) is empirical, still we need not go further than
|
||
what is involved in the expressions of their claim to see that, so far
|
||
as concerns the agreement required of everyone, they are a priori
|
||
judgements, or mean to pass for such. This problem of the Critique
|
||
of judgement, therefore, is part of the general problem of
|
||
transcendental philosophy: How are synthetic a priori judgements
|
||
possible?
|
||
-
|
||
SS 37. What exactly it is that is asserted a priori of an
|
||
object in a judgement of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 170}
|
||
The immediate synthesis of the representation of an object with
|
||
pleasure can only be a matter of internal perception, and, were
|
||
nothing more than this sought to be indicated, would only yield a mere
|
||
empirical judgement. For with no representation can I a priori connect
|
||
a determinate feeling (of pleasure or displeasure) except where I rely
|
||
upon the basis of an a priori principle in reason determining the
|
||
will. The truth is that the pleasure (in the moral feeling) is the
|
||
consequence of the determination of the will by the principle. It
|
||
cannot, therefore, be compared with the pleasure in taste. For it
|
||
requires a determinate concept of a law: whereas the pleasure in taste
|
||
has to be connected immediately with the sample estimate prior to
|
||
any concept. For the same reason, also, all judgements of taste are
|
||
singular judgements, for they unite their predicate of delight, not to
|
||
a concept, but to a given singular empirical representation.
|
||
Hence, in a judgement of taste, what is represented a priori as a
|
||
universal rule for the judgement and as valid for everyone, is not the
|
||
pleasure but the universal validity of this pleasure perceived, as
|
||
it is, to be combined in the mind with the mere estimate of an object.
|
||
A judgement to the effect that it is with pleasure that I perceive and
|
||
estimate some object is an empirical judgement. But if it asserts that
|
||
I think the object beautiful, i.e., that I may attribute that
|
||
delight to everyone as necessary, it is then an a priori judgement.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 38. Deduction of judgements of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 175}
|
||
Admitting that in a pure judgement of taste the delight in the
|
||
object is connected with the mere estimate of its form, then what we
|
||
feel to be associated in the mind with the representation of the
|
||
object is nothing else than its subjective finality for judgement.
|
||
Since, now, in respect of the formal rules of estimating, apart from
|
||
all matter (whether sensation or concept), judgement can only be
|
||
directed to the subjective conditions of its employment in general
|
||
(which is not restricted to the particular mode of sense nor to a
|
||
particular concept of the understanding), and so can only be
|
||
directed to that subjective factor which we may presuppose in all
|
||
men (as requisite for a possible experience generally), it follows
|
||
that the accordance of a representation with these conditions of the
|
||
judgement must admit of being assumed valid a priori for every one. In
|
||
other words, we are warranted in exacting from every one the
|
||
pleasure or subjective finality of the representation in respect of
|
||
the relation of the cognitive faculties engaged in the estimate of a
|
||
sensible object in general*.
|
||
-
|
||
*In order to be justified in claiming universal agreement an
|
||
aesthetic judgement merely resting on subjective grounds, it is
|
||
sufficient to assume: (1) that the subjective conditions of this
|
||
faculty of aesthetic judgement are identical with all men in what
|
||
concerns the relation of the cognitive faculties, there brought into
|
||
action, with a view to a cognition in general. This must be true, as
|
||
otherwise men would be incapable of communicating their
|
||
representations or even their knowledge; (2) that the judgement has
|
||
paid regard merely to this relation (consequently merely to the formal
|
||
condition of the faculty of judgement), and is pure, i.e., is free
|
||
from confusion either with concepts of the object or sensations as
|
||
determining grounds. If any mistake is made in this latter point, this
|
||
only touches the incorrect application to a particular case of the
|
||
right which a law gives us, and does not do away with the right
|
||
generally.
|
||
-
|
||
Remark.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 180}
|
||
-
|
||
What makes this deduction so easy is that it is spared the necessity
|
||
of having to justify the objective reality of a concept. For beauty is
|
||
not a concept of the object, and the judgement of taste is not a
|
||
cognitive judgement. All that it holds out for is that we are
|
||
justified in presupposing that the same subjective conditions of
|
||
judgement which we find in ourselves are universally present in
|
||
every man, and further that we have rightly subsumed the given
|
||
object under these conditions. The latter, no doubt, has to face
|
||
unavoidable difficulties which do not affect the logical judgement.
|
||
(For there the subsumption is under concepts; whereas in the aesthetic
|
||
judgement it is under a mere sensible relation of the imagination
|
||
and understanding mutually harmonizing with one another in the
|
||
represented form of the object, in which case the subsumption may
|
||
easily prove fallacious.) But this in no way detracts from the
|
||
legitimacy of the claim of the judgement to count upon universal
|
||
agreement-a claim which amounts to no more than this: the
|
||
correctness of the principle of judging validly for every one upon
|
||
subjective grounds. For as to the difficulty and uncertainty
|
||
concerning the correctness of the subsumption under that principle, it
|
||
no more casts a doubt upon the legitimacy of the claim to this
|
||
validity on the part of an aesthetic judgement generally, or,
|
||
therefore, upon the principle itself, than the mistakes (though. not
|
||
so often or easily incurred), to which the subsumption of the
|
||
logical judgement under its principle is similarly liable, can
|
||
render the latter principle, which is objective, open to doubt. But if
|
||
the question were: How is it possible to assume a priori that nature
|
||
is a complex of objects of taste? the problem would then have
|
||
reference to teleology, because it would have to be regarded as an end
|
||
of nature belonging essentially to its concept that it should
|
||
exhibit forms that are final for our judgement. But the correctness of
|
||
this assumption may still be seriously questioned, while the actual
|
||
existence of beauties of nature is patent to experience.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 39. The communicability of a sensation.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 185}
|
||
Sensation, as the real in perception, where referred to knowledge,
|
||
is called organic sensation and its specific quality may be
|
||
represented as completely communicable to others in a like mode,
|
||
provided we assume that every one has a like sense to our own. This,
|
||
however, is an absolutely inadmissible presupposition in the case of
|
||
an organic sensation. Thus a person who is without a sense of smell
|
||
cannot have a sensation of this kind communicated to him, and, even if
|
||
be does not suffer from this deficiency, we still cannot be certain
|
||
that he gets precisely the same sensation from a flower that we get
|
||
from it. But still more divergent must we consider men to be in
|
||
respect of the agreeableness or disagreeableness derived from the
|
||
sensation of one and the same object of sense, and it is absolutely
|
||
out of the question to require that pleasure in such objects should be
|
||
acknowledged by every one. Pleasure of this kind, since it enters into
|
||
the mind through sense-our role, therefore, being a passive one-may be
|
||
called the pleasure of enjoyment.
|
||
On the other hand, delight in an action on the score of its moral
|
||
character is not a pleasure of enjoyment, but one of self-asserting
|
||
activity and in this coming up to the idea of what it is meant to
|
||
be. But this feeling, which is called the moral feeling, requires
|
||
concepts and is the presentation of a finality, not free, but
|
||
according to law. It, therefore, admits of communication only
|
||
through the instrumentality of reason and, if the pleasure is to be of
|
||
the same kind for everyone, by means of very determinate practical
|
||
concepts of reason.
|
||
The pleasure in the sublime in nature, as one of rationalizing
|
||
contemplation, lays claim also to universal participation, but still
|
||
it presupposes another feeling, that, namely, of our supersensible
|
||
sphere, which feeling, however obscure it may be, has a moral
|
||
foundation. But there is absolutely no authority for my presupposing
|
||
that others will pay attention to this and take a delight in beholding
|
||
the uncouth dimensions of nature (one that in truth cannot be ascribed
|
||
to its aspect, which is terrifying rather than otherwise).
|
||
Nevertheless, having regard to the fact that attention ought to be
|
||
paid upon every appropriate occasion to this moral birthright, we
|
||
may still demand that delight from everyone; but we can do so only
|
||
through the moral law, which, in its turn, rests upon concepts of
|
||
reason.
|
||
The pleasure in the beautiful is, on the other hand, neither a
|
||
pleasure of enjoyment nor of an activity according to law, nor yet one
|
||
of a rationalizing contemplation according to ideas, but rather of
|
||
mere reflection. Without any guiding-line of end or principle, this
|
||
pleasure attends the ordinary apprehension of an object by means of
|
||
the imagination, as the faculty of intuition, but with a reference
|
||
to the understanding as faculty of concepts, and through the operation
|
||
of a process of judgement which bas also to be invoked in order to
|
||
obtain the commonest experience. In the latter case, however, its
|
||
functions are directed to perceiving an empirical objective concept,
|
||
whereas in the former (in the aesthetic mode of estimating) merely
|
||
to perceiving the adequacy of the representation for engaging both
|
||
faculties of knowledge in their freedom in an harmonious (subjectively
|
||
final) employment, i.e., to feeling with pleasure the subjective
|
||
bearings of the representation. This pleasure must of necessity depend
|
||
for every one upon the same conditions, seeing that they are the
|
||
subjective conditions of the possibility of a cognition in general,
|
||
and the proportion of these cognitive faculties which is requisite for
|
||
taste is requisite also for ordinary sound understanding, the presence
|
||
of which we are entitled to presuppose in every one. And, for this
|
||
reason also, one who judges with taste (provided he does not make a
|
||
mistake as to this consciousness, and does not take the matter for the
|
||
form, or charm for beauty) can impute the subjective finality, i.e.,
|
||
his delight in the object, to everyone else and suppose his feeling
|
||
universally communicable, and that, too, without the mediation of
|
||
concepts.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 190}
|
||
SS 40. Taste as a kind of sensus communis.
|
||
-
|
||
The name of sense is often given to judgement where what attracts
|
||
attention is not so much its reflective act as merely its result. So
|
||
we speak of a sense of truth, of a sense of propriety, or of
|
||
justice, etc. And yet, of course, we know, or at least ought well
|
||
enough to know, that a sense cannot be the true abode of these
|
||
concepts, not to speak of its being competent, even in the slightest
|
||
degree, to pronounce universal rules. On the contrary, we recognize
|
||
that a representation of this kind, be it of truth, propriety, beauty,
|
||
or justice, could never enter our thoughts were we not able to raise
|
||
ourselves above the level of the senses to that of higher faculties of
|
||
cognition. Common human understanding which as mere sound (not yet
|
||
cultivated) understanding, is looked upon as the least we can expect
|
||
from any one claiming the name of man, has therefore the doubtful
|
||
honour of having the name of common sense (sensus communis) bestowed
|
||
upon it; and bestowed, too, in an acceptation of the word common
|
||
(not merely in our own language, where it actually has a double
|
||
meaning, but also in many others) which makes it amount to what is
|
||
vulgar-what is everywhere to be met with-a quality which by no means
|
||
confers credit or distinction upon its possessor.
|
||
However, by the name sensus communis is to be understood the idea of
|
||
a public sense, i.e., a critical faculty which in its reflective act
|
||
takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of everyone
|
||
else, in order, as it were, to weigh its judgement with the collective
|
||
reason of mankind, and thereby avoid the illusion arising from
|
||
subjective and personal conditions which could readily be taken for
|
||
objective, an illusion that would exert a prejudicial influence upon
|
||
its judgement. This is accomplished by weighing the judgement, not
|
||
so much with actual, as rather with the merely possible, judgements of
|
||
others, and by putting ourselves in the position of everyone else,
|
||
as the result of a mere abstraction from the limitations which
|
||
contingently affect our own estimate. This, in turn, is effected by so
|
||
far as possible letting go the element of matter, i.e., sensation,
|
||
in our general state of representative activity, and confining
|
||
attention to the formal peculiarities of our representation or general
|
||
state of representative activity. Now it may seem that this
|
||
operation of reflection is too artificial to be attributed to the
|
||
faculty which we call common sense. But this is an appearance due only
|
||
to its expression in abstract formulae. In itself nothing is more
|
||
natural than to abstract from charm and emotion where one is looking
|
||
for a judgement intended to serve as a universal rule.
|
||
While the following maxims of common human understanding do not
|
||
properly come in here as constituent parts of the critique of taste,
|
||
they may still serve to elucidate its fundamental propositions. They
|
||
are these: (I) to think for oneself; (2) to think from the
|
||
standpoint of everyone else; (3) always to think consistently. The
|
||
first is the maxim of unprejudiced thought, the second that of
|
||
enlarged thought, the third that of consistent thought. The first is
|
||
the maxim of a never-passive reason. To be given to such passivity,
|
||
consequently to heteronomy of reason, is called prejudice; and the
|
||
greatest of all prejudices is that of fancying nature not to be
|
||
subject to rules which the understanding by virtue of its own
|
||
essential laws lays at its basis, i.e., superstition. Emancipation
|
||
from superstition is called enlightenment*; for although this term
|
||
applies also to emancipation from prejudices generally, still
|
||
superstition deserves pre-eminently (in sensu eminenti) to be called a
|
||
prejudice. For the condition of blindness into which superstition puts
|
||
one, which is as much as demands from one as an obligation, makes
|
||
the need of being led by others, and consequently the passive state of
|
||
the reason, pre-eminently conspicuous. As to the second maxim
|
||
belonging to our habits of thought, we have quite got into the way
|
||
of calling a man narrow (narrow, as opposed to being of enlarged mind)
|
||
whose talents fall short of what is required for employment upon
|
||
work of any magnitude (especially that involving intensity). But the
|
||
question here is not one of the faculty of cognition, but of the
|
||
mental habit of making a final use of it. This, however small the
|
||
range and degree to which man's natural endowments extend, still
|
||
indicates a man of enlarged mind: if he detaches himself from the
|
||
subjective personal conditions of his judgement, which cramp the minds
|
||
of so many others, and reflects upon his own judgement from a
|
||
universal standpoint (which he can only determine by shifting his
|
||
ground to the standpoint of others). The third maxim-that, namely,
|
||
of consistent thought-is the hardest of attainment, and is only
|
||
attainable by the union of both the former, and after constant
|
||
attention to them has made one at home in their observance. We may
|
||
say: The first of these is the maxim of understanding, the second that
|
||
of judgement, the third of that reason.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 195}
|
||
-
|
||
*We readily see that enlightenment, while easy, no doubt, in
|
||
thesi, in hypothesis is difficult and slow of realization. For not
|
||
to be passive with one's reason, but always to be self-legislative, is
|
||
doubtless quite an easy matter for a man who only desires to be
|
||
adapted to his essential end, and does not seek to know what is beyond
|
||
his understanding. But as the tendency in the latter direction is
|
||
hardly avoidable, and others are always coming and promising with full
|
||
assurance that they are able to satisfy one's curiosity, it must be
|
||
very difficult to preserve or restore in the mind (and particularly in
|
||
the public mind) that merely negative attitude (which constitutes
|
||
enlightenment proper).
|
||
-
|
||
I resume the thread of the discussion interrupted by the above
|
||
digression, and I say that taste can with more justice be called a
|
||
sensus communis than can sound understanding; and that the
|
||
aesthetic, rather than the intellectual, judgement can bear the name
|
||
of a public sense,* i.e., taking it that we are prepared to use the
|
||
word sense of an effect that mere reflection has upon the mind; for
|
||
then by sense we mean the feeling of pleasure. We might even define
|
||
taste as the faculty of estimating what makes our feeling in a given
|
||
representation universally communicable without the mediation of a
|
||
concept.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 200}
|
||
*Taste may be designated a sensus communis aestheticus, common human
|
||
understanding a sensus communis logicus.
|
||
-
|
||
The aptitude of men for communicating their thoughts requires, also,
|
||
a relation between the imagination and the understanding, in order
|
||
to connect intuitions with concepts, and concepts, in turn, with
|
||
intuitions, which both unite in cognition. But there the agreement
|
||
of both mental powers is according to law, and under the constraint of
|
||
definite concepts. Only when the imagination in its freedom stirs
|
||
the understanding, and the understanding apart from concepts puts
|
||
the imagination into regular play, does the representation communicate
|
||
itself not as thought, but as an internal feeling of a final state
|
||
of the mind.
|
||
Taste is, therefore, the faculty of forming an a priori estimate
|
||
of the communicability of the feeling that, without the mediation of a
|
||
concept, are connected with a given representation.
|
||
Supposing, now, that we could assume that the mere universal
|
||
communicability of our feeling must of itself carry with it an
|
||
interest for us (an assumption, however, which we are not entitled
|
||
to draw as a conclusion from the character of a merely reflective
|
||
judgement), we should then be in a position to explain how the feeling
|
||
in the judgement of taste comes to be exacted from everyone as a
|
||
sort of duty.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 205}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 41. The empirical interest in the beautiful.
|
||
-
|
||
Abundant proof bas been given above to show that the judgement of
|
||
taste by which something is declared beautiful must have no interest
|
||
as its determining ground. But it does not follow from this that,
|
||
after it has once been posited as a pure aesthetic judgement, an
|
||
interest cannot then enter into combination with it. This combination,
|
||
however, can never be anything but indirect. Taste must, that is to
|
||
say, first of all be represented in conjunction with something else,
|
||
if the delight attending the mere reflection upon an object is to
|
||
admit of having further conjoined with it a pleasure in the real
|
||
existence of the object (as that wherein all interest consists). For
|
||
the saying, a posse ad esse non valet consequentia,* which is
|
||
applied to cognitive judgements, holds good here in the case of
|
||
aesthetic judgements. Now this "something else" may be something
|
||
empirical, such as an inclination proper to the nature of human
|
||
beings, or it may be something intellectual, as a property of the will
|
||
whereby it admits of rational determination a priori. Both of these
|
||
involve a delight in the existence of the object, and so can lay the
|
||
foundation for an interest in what has already pleased of itself and
|
||
without regard to any interest whatsoever.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 210}
|
||
*["From possibility to actuality."]
|
||
-
|
||
The empirical interest in the beautiful exists only in society.
|
||
And if we admit that the impulse to society is natural to mankind, and
|
||
that the suitability for and the propensity towards it, i.e.,
|
||
sociability, is a property essential to the requirements of man as a
|
||
creature intended for society, and one, therefore, that belongs to
|
||
humanity, it is inevitable that we should also look upon taste in
|
||
the light of a faculty for estimating whatever enables us to
|
||
communicate even our feeling to every one else, and hence as a means
|
||
of promoting that upon which the natural inclination of everyone is
|
||
set.
|
||
With no one to take into account but himself, a man abandoned on a
|
||
desert island would not adorn either himself or his hut, nor would
|
||
he look for flowers, and still less plant them, with the object of
|
||
providing himself with personal adornments. Only in society does it
|
||
occur to him to be not merely a man, but a man refined after the
|
||
manner of his kind (the beginning of civilization)-for that is the
|
||
estimate formed of one who has the bent and turn for communicating his
|
||
pleasure to others, and who is not quite satisfied with an object
|
||
unless his feeling of delight in it can be shared in communion with
|
||
others. Further, a regard to universal communicability is a thing
|
||
which every one expects and requires from every one else, just as if
|
||
it were part of an original compact dictated by humanity itself. And
|
||
thus, no doubt, at first only charms, e.g., colours for painting
|
||
oneself (roucou among the Caribs and cinnabar among the Iroquois),
|
||
or flowers, sea-shells, beautifully coloured feathers, then, in the
|
||
course of time, also beautiful forms (as in canoes, wearing-apparel,
|
||
etc.) which convey no gratification, i.e., delight of enjoyment,
|
||
become of moment in society and attract a considerable interest.
|
||
Eventually, when civilization has reached its height it makes this
|
||
work of communication almost the main business of refined inclination,
|
||
and the entire value of sensations is placed in the degree to which
|
||
they permit of universal communication. At this stage, then, even
|
||
where the pleasure which each one has in an object is but
|
||
insignificant and possesses of itself no conspicuous interest, still
|
||
the idea of its universal communicability almost indefinitely augments
|
||
its value.
|
||
This interest, indirectly attached to the beautiful by the
|
||
inclination towards society, and, consequently, empirical, is,
|
||
however, of no importance for us here. For that to which we have alone
|
||
to look is what can have a bearing a priori, even though indirect,
|
||
upon the judgement of taste. For, if even in this form an associated
|
||
interest should betray itself, taste would then reveal a transition on
|
||
the part of our critical faculty. from the enjoyment of sense to the
|
||
moral feeling. This would not merely mean that we should be supplied
|
||
with a more effectual guide for the final employment of taste, but
|
||
taste would further be presented as a link in the chain' of the
|
||
human faculties a priori upon which all legislation, depend. This much
|
||
may certainly be said of the empirical interest in objects of taste,
|
||
and in taste itself, that as taste thus pays homage to inclination,
|
||
however refined, such interest will nevertheless readily fuse also
|
||
with all inclinations and passions, which in society attain to their
|
||
greatest variety and highest degree, and the interest in the
|
||
beautiful, if this is made its ground, can but afford a very ambiguous
|
||
transition from the agreeable to the good. We have reason, however, to
|
||
inquire whether this transition may not still in some way be furthered
|
||
by means of taste when taken in its purity.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 215}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 42. The intellectual interest in the beautiful.
|
||
-
|
||
It has been with the best intentions that those who love to see in
|
||
the ultimate end of humanity, namely the morally good, the goal of all
|
||
activities to which men are impelled by the inner bent of their
|
||
nature, have regarded it as a mark of a good moral character to take
|
||
an interest in the beautiful generally. But they have, not without
|
||
reason, been contradicted, by others, who appeal to the fact of
|
||
experience, that virtuosi in matters of taste being not alone often,
|
||
but one might say as a general rule, vain, capricious, and addicted to
|
||
injurious passions, could perhaps more rarely than others lay claim to
|
||
any pre-eminent attachment to moral principles. And so it would
|
||
seem, not only that the feeling for the beautiful is specifically
|
||
different from the moral feeling (which as a matter of fact is the
|
||
case), but also that the interest which we may combine with it will
|
||
hardly consort with the moral, and certainly not on grounds of inner
|
||
affinity.
|
||
Now I willingly admit that the interest in the beautiful of art
|
||
(including under this heading the artificial use of natural beauties
|
||
for personal adornment, and so from vanity) gives no evidence at all
|
||
of a habit of mind attached to the morally good, or even inclined that
|
||
way. But, on the other hand, I do maintain that to take an immediate
|
||
interest in the beauty of nature (not merely to have taste in
|
||
estimating it) is always a mark of a good soul; and that, where this
|
||
interest is habitual, it is at least indicative of a temper of mind
|
||
favourable to the moral feeling that it should readily associate
|
||
itself with the contemplation of nature. It must, however, be borne in
|
||
mind that I mean to refer strictly to the beautiful forms of nature,
|
||
and to put to one side the charms which she is wont so lavishly to
|
||
combine with them; because, though the interest in these is no doubt
|
||
immediate, it is nevertheless empirical.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 220}
|
||
One who alone (and without any intention of communicating his
|
||
observations to others) regards the beautiful form of a wild flower, a
|
||
bird, an insect, or the like, out of admiration and love of them,
|
||
and being loath to let them escape him in nature, even at the risk
|
||
of some misadventure to himself-so far from there being any prospect
|
||
of advantage to him-such a one takes an immediate, and in fact
|
||
intellectual, interest in the beauty of nature. This means that he
|
||
is not alone pleased with nature's product in respect of its form, but
|
||
is also pleased at its existence, and is so without any charm of sense
|
||
having a share in the matter, or without his associating with it any
|
||
end whatsoever.
|
||
In this connection, however, it is of note that were we to play a
|
||
trick on our lover of the beautiful, and plant in the ground
|
||
artificial flowers (which can be made so as to look just like
|
||
natural ones), and perch artfully carved birds on the branches of
|
||
trees, and he were to find out how he had been taken in, the immediate
|
||
interest which these things previously had for him would at once
|
||
vanish-though, perhaps, a different interest might intervene in its
|
||
stead, that, namely, of vanity in decorating his room with them for
|
||
the eyes of others. The fact is that our intuition and reflection must
|
||
have as their concomitant the thought that the beauty in question is
|
||
nature's handiwork; and this is the sole basis of the immediate
|
||
interest that is taken in it. Failing this, we are either left with
|
||
a bare judgement of taste void of all interest whatever, or else
|
||
only with one that is combined with an interest that is mediate,
|
||
involving, namely, a reference to society; which latter affords no
|
||
reliable indication of morally good habits of thought.
|
||
The superiority which natural beauty has over that of art, even
|
||
where it is excelled by the latter in point of form, in yet being
|
||
alone able to awaken an immediate interest, accords with the refined
|
||
and well-grounded habits of thought of all men who have cultivated
|
||
their moral feeling. If a man with taste enough to judge of works of
|
||
fine art with the greatest correctness and refinement readily quits
|
||
the room in which he meets with those beauties that minister to vanity
|
||
or, at least, social joys, and betakes himself to the beautiful in
|
||
nature, so that he may there find as it were a feast for his soul in a
|
||
train of thought which he can never completely evolve, we will then
|
||
regard this his choice even with veneration, and give him credit for a
|
||
beautiful soul, to which no connoisseur or art collector can lay claim
|
||
on the score of the interest which his objects have for him. Here,
|
||
now, are two kinds of objects which in the judgement of mere taste
|
||
could scarcely contend with one another for a superiority. What
|
||
then, is the distinction that makes us hold them in such different
|
||
esteem?
|
||
We have a faculty of judgement which is merely aesthetic-a faculty
|
||
of judging of forms without the aid of concepts, and of finding, in
|
||
the mere estimate of them, a delight that we at the same time make
|
||
into a rule for every one, without this judgement being founded on
|
||
an interest, or yet producing one. On the other hand, we have also a
|
||
faculty of intellectual judgement for the mere forms of practical
|
||
maxims (so far as they are of themselves qualified for universal
|
||
legislation)-a faculty of determining an a priori delight, which we
|
||
make into a law for everyone, without our judgement being founded on
|
||
any interest, though here it produces one. The pleasure or displeasure
|
||
in the former judgement is called that of taste; the latter is
|
||
called that of the moral feeling.
|
||
But, now, reason is further interested in ideas (for which in our
|
||
moral feeling it brings about an immediate interest), having also
|
||
objective reality. That is to say, it is of interest to reason that
|
||
nature should at least show a trace or give a hint that it contains in
|
||
itself some ground or other for assuming a uniform accordance of its
|
||
products with our wholly disinterested delight (a delight which we
|
||
cognize-a priori as a law for every one without being able to ground
|
||
it upon proofs). That being so, reason must take an interest in
|
||
every manifestation on the part of nature of some such accordance.
|
||
Hence the mind cannot reflect on the beauty of nature without at the
|
||
same time finding its interest engaged. But this interest is akin to
|
||
the moral. One, then, who takes such an interest in the beautiful in
|
||
nature can only do so in so far as he has previously set his
|
||
interest deep in the foundations of the morally good. On these grounds
|
||
we have reason for presuming the presence of at least the germ of a
|
||
good moral disposition in the case of a man to whom the beauty of
|
||
nature is a matter of immediate interest.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 225}
|
||
It will be said that this interpretation of aesthetic judgements
|
||
on the basis of kinship with our moral feeling has far too studied
|
||
an appearance to be accepted as the true construction of the cypher in
|
||
which nature speaks to us figuratively in its beautiful forms. But,
|
||
first of all, this immediate interest in the beauty of nature is not
|
||
in fact common. It is peculiar to those whose habits of thought are
|
||
already trained to the good or else are eminently susceptible of
|
||
such training; and under the circumstances the analogy in which the
|
||
pure judgement of taste that, without relying upon any interest, gives
|
||
us a feeling of delight, and at the same time represents it a priori
|
||
as proper to mankind in general, stands to the moral judgement that
|
||
does just the same from concepts, is one which, without any clear,
|
||
subtle, and deliberate reflection, conduces to a like immediate
|
||
interest being taken in the objects of the former judgement as in
|
||
those of the latter-with this one difference, that the interest in the
|
||
first case is free, while in the latter it is one founded on objective
|
||
laws. In addition to this, there is our admiration of Nature, which in
|
||
her beautiful products displays herself as art, not as mere matter
|
||
of chance, but, as it were, designedly, according to a law-directed
|
||
arrangement, and as finality apart from any end. As we never meet with
|
||
such an end outside ourselves, we naturally look for it in
|
||
ourselves, and, in fact, in that which constitutes the ultimate end of
|
||
our existence-the moral side of our being. (The inquiry into the
|
||
ground of the possibility of such a natural finality will, however,
|
||
first come under discussion in the Teleology.)
|
||
The fact that the delight in beautiful art does not, in the pure
|
||
judgement of taste, involve an immediate interest, as does that in
|
||
beautiful nature, may be readily explained. For the former is either
|
||
such an imitation of the latter as goes the length of deceiving us, in
|
||
which case it acts upon us in the character of a natural beauty, which
|
||
we take it to be; or else it is an intentional art obviously
|
||
directed to our delight. In the latter case, however, the delight in
|
||
the product would, it is true, be brought about immediately by
|
||
taste, but there would be nothing but a mediate interest in the
|
||
cause that lay beneath-an interest, namely, in an art only capable
|
||
of interesting by its end, and never in itself. It will, perhaps, be
|
||
said that this is also the case where an object of nature only
|
||
interests by its beauty so far as a moral idea is brought into
|
||
partnership therewith. But it is not the object that is of immediate
|
||
interest, but rather the inherent character of the beauty qualifying
|
||
it for such a partnership-a character, therefore, that belongs to
|
||
the very essence of beauty.
|
||
The charms in natural beauty, which are to be found blended, as it
|
||
were, so frequently with beauty of form, belong either to the
|
||
modifications of light (in colouring) or of sound (in tones). For
|
||
these are the only sensations which permit not merely of a feeling
|
||
of the senses, but also of reflection upon the form of these
|
||
modifications of sense, and so embody as it were a language in which
|
||
nature speaks to us and which has the semblance of a higher meaning.
|
||
Thus the white colour of the lily seems to dispose the mind to ideas
|
||
of innocence, and the other seven colours, following the series from
|
||
the red to the violet, similarly to ideas of (1) sublimity, (2)
|
||
courage, (3) candour, (4) amiability, (5) modesty, (6) constancy,
|
||
(7) tenderness. The bird's song tells of joyousness and contentment
|
||
with its existence. At least so we interpret nature-whether such be
|
||
its purpose or not. But it is the indispensable requisite of the
|
||
interest which we here take in beauty, that the beauty should be
|
||
that of nature, and it vanishes completely as soon as we are conscious
|
||
of having been deceived, and that it is only the work of art-so
|
||
completely that even taste can then no longer find in it anything
|
||
beautiful nor sight anything attractive. What do poets set more
|
||
store on than the nightingale's bewitching and beautiful note, in a
|
||
lonely thicket on a still summer evening by the soft light of the
|
||
moon? And yet we have instances of how, where no such songster was
|
||
to be found, a jovial host has played a trick on the guests with him
|
||
on a visit to enjoy the country air, and has done so to their huge
|
||
satisfaction, by biding in a thicket a rogue of a youth who (with a
|
||
reed or rush in his mouth) knew how to reproduce this note so as to
|
||
hit off nature to perfection. But the instant one realizes that it
|
||
is all a fraud no one will long endure listening to this song that
|
||
before was regarded as so attractive. And it is just the same with the
|
||
song of any other bird. It must be nature, or be mistaken by us for
|
||
nature, to enable us to take an immediate interest in the beautiful as
|
||
such; and this is all the more so if we can even call upon others to
|
||
take a similar interest. And such a demand we do in fact make, since
|
||
we regard as coarse and low the habits of thought of those who have no
|
||
feeling for beautiful nature (for this is the word we use for
|
||
susceptibility to an interest in the contemplation of beautiful
|
||
nature), and who devote themselves to the mere enjoyments of sense
|
||
found in eating and drinking.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 43. Art in general.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 230}
|
||
-
|
||
(1.) Art is distinguished from nature as making (facere) is from
|
||
acting or operating in general (agere), and the product or the
|
||
result of the former is distinguished from that of the latter as
|
||
work (opus) from operation (effectus).
|
||
By right it is only production through freedom, i.e., through an act
|
||
of will that places reason at the basis of its action, that should
|
||
be termed art. For, although we are pleased to call what bees
|
||
produce (their regularly constituted cells) a work of art, we only
|
||
do so on the strength of an analogy with art; that is to say, as
|
||
soon as we call to mind that no rational deliberation forms the
|
||
basis of their labour, we say at once that it is a product of their
|
||
nature (of instinct), and it is only to their Creator that we
|
||
ascribe it as art.
|
||
If, as sometimes happens, in a search through a bog, we light on a
|
||
piece of hewn wood, we do not say it is a product of nature but of
|
||
art. Its producing cause had an end in view to which the object owes
|
||
its form. Apart from such cases, we recognize an art in everything
|
||
formed in such a way that its actuality must have been preceded by a
|
||
representation of the thing in its cause (as even in the case of the
|
||
bees), although the effect could not have been thought by the cause.
|
||
But where anything is called absolutely a work of art, to
|
||
distinguish it from a natural product, then some work of man is always
|
||
understood.
|
||
(2.) Art, as human skill, is distinguished also from science (as
|
||
ability from knowledge), as a practical from a theoretical faculty, as
|
||
technic from theory (as the art of surveying from geometry). For
|
||
this reason, also, what one can do the' moment one only knows what
|
||
is to be done, hence without-anything more than sufficient knowledge
|
||
of the desired result, is not called art. To art that alone belongs
|
||
which the possession of the most complete knowledge does not involve
|
||
one's having then and there the skill to do it. Camper, describes very
|
||
exactly how the best shoe must be made, but he, doubtless, was not
|
||
able to turn one out himself.*
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 235}
|
||
-
|
||
*In my part of the country, if you set a common man a problem like
|
||
that of Columbus and his egg, he says, "There is no art in that, it is
|
||
only science": i.e., you can do it if you know how; and he says just
|
||
the same of all the would-be arts of jugglers. To that of the
|
||
tight-rope dancer, on the other hand, he has not the least compunction
|
||
in giving the name of art.
|
||
-
|
||
(3.) Art is further distinguished from handicraft. The first is
|
||
called free, the other may be called industrial art. We look on the
|
||
former as something which could only prove final (be a success) as
|
||
play, i.e., an occupation which is agreeable on its own account; but
|
||
on the second as labour, i.e., a business, which on its own account is
|
||
disagreeable (drudgery), and is only attractive by means of what it
|
||
results in (e.g., the pay), and which is consequently capable of being
|
||
a compulsory imposition. Whether in the list of arts and crafts we are
|
||
to rank watchmakers as artists, and smiths on the contrary as
|
||
craftsmen, requires a standpoint different from that here adopted-one,
|
||
that is to say, taking account of the proposition of the talents which
|
||
the business undertaken in either case must necessarily involve.
|
||
Whether, also, among the so-called seven free arts some may not have
|
||
been included which should be reckoned as sciences, and many, too,
|
||
that resemble handicraft, is a matter I will not discuss here. It is
|
||
not amiss, however, to remind the reader of this: that in all free
|
||
arts something of a compulsory character is still required, or, as
|
||
it is called, a mechanism, without which the soul, which in art must
|
||
be free, and which alone gives life to the work, would be bodyless and
|
||
evanescent (e.g., in the poetic art there must be correctness and
|
||
wealth of language, likewise prosody and metre). For not a few leaders
|
||
of a newer school believe that the best way to promote a free art is
|
||
to sweep away all restraint and convert it from labour into mere play.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 240}
|
||
SS 44. Fine art
|
||
-
|
||
There is no science of the beautiful, but only a critique. Nor,
|
||
again, is there an elegant (schone) science, but only a fine
|
||
(schone) art. For a science of the beautiful would have to determine
|
||
scientifically, i.e., by means of proofs, whether a thing was to be
|
||
considered beautiful or not; and the judgement upon beauty,
|
||
consequently, would, if belonging to science, fail to be a judgement
|
||
of taste. As for a beautiful science-a science which, as such, is to
|
||
be beautiful, is a nonentity. For if, treating it as a science, we
|
||
were to ask for reasons and proofs, we would be put off with elegant
|
||
phrases (bons mots). What has given rise to the current expression
|
||
elegant sciences is, doubtless, no more than this, that common
|
||
observation has, quite accurately, noted the fact that for fine art,
|
||
in the fulness of its perfection, a large store of science is
|
||
required, as, for example, knowledge of ancient languages,
|
||
acquaintance with classical authors, history, antiquarian learning,
|
||
etc. Hence these historical sciences, owing to the fact that they form
|
||
the necessary preparation and groundwork for fine art, and partly also
|
||
owing to the fact that they are taken to comprise even the knowledge
|
||
of the products of fine art (rhetoric and poetry), have by a-confusion
|
||
of words, actually got the name of elegant sciences.
|
||
Where art, merely seeking to actualize a possible object to the
|
||
cognition of which it is adequate, does whatever acts are required for
|
||
that purpose. then it is mechanical. But should the feeling of
|
||
pleasure be what it has immediately in view, it is then termed
|
||
aesthetic art. As such it may be either agreeable or fine art. The
|
||
description "agreeable art" applies where the end of the art is that
|
||
the pleasure should accompany the representations considered as mere
|
||
sensations, the description "fine art" where it is to accompany them
|
||
considered as modes of cognition.
|
||
Agreeable arts are those which have mere enjoyment for their object.
|
||
Such are all the charms that can gratify a dinner party:
|
||
entertaining narrative, the art of starting the whole table in
|
||
unrestrained and sprightly conversation, or with jest and laughter
|
||
inducing a certain air of gaiety. Here, as the saying goes, there
|
||
may be much loose talk over the glasses, without a person wishing to
|
||
be brought to book for all he utters, because it is only given out for
|
||
the entertainment of the moment, and not as a lasting matter to be
|
||
made the subject of reflection or repetition. (Of the same sort is
|
||
also the art of arranging the table for enjoyment, or, at large
|
||
banquets, the music of the orchestra-a quaint idea intended to act
|
||
on the mind merely as an agreeable noise fostering a genial spirit,
|
||
which, without any one paying the smallest attention to the
|
||
composition, promotes the free flow of conversation between guest
|
||
and guest.) In addition must be included play of every kind which is
|
||
attended with no further interest than that of making the time pass by
|
||
unheeded.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 245}
|
||
Fine art, on the other hand, is a mode of representation which is
|
||
intrinsically final, and which, although devoid of an end, has the
|
||
effect of advancing the culture of the mental powers in the
|
||
interests of social communication.
|
||
The universal communicability of a pleasure involves in its very
|
||
concept that the pleasure is not one of enjoyment arising out of
|
||
mere sensation, but must be one of reflection. Hence aesthetic art, as
|
||
art which is beautiful, is one having for its standard the
|
||
reflective judgement and not organic sensation.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 45. Fine art is an art, so far as it has at the same
|
||
time the appearance of being nature.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 250}
|
||
-
|
||
A product of fine art must be recognized to be art and not
|
||
nature. Nevertheless the finality in its form must appear just as free
|
||
from the constraint of arbitrary rules as if it were a product of mere
|
||
nature. Upon this feeling of freedom in the play of our cognitive
|
||
faculties-which play has at the same time to be final rests that
|
||
pleasure which alone is universally communicable without being based
|
||
on concepts. Nature proved beautiful when it wore the appearance of
|
||
art; and art can only be termed beautiful, where we are conscious of
|
||
its being art, while yet it has the appearance of nature.
|
||
For, whether we are dealing with beauty of nature or beauty of
|
||
art, we may make the universal statement: That is beautiful which
|
||
pleases in the mere estimate of it (not in sensation or by means of
|
||
a concept). Now art has always got a definite intention of producing
|
||
something. Were this "something," however, to be mere sensation
|
||
(something merely subjective), intended to be accompanied with
|
||
pleasure, then such product would, in our estimation of it, only
|
||
please through the agency of the feeling of the senses. On the other
|
||
hand, were the intention one directed to the production of a
|
||
definite object, then, supposing this were attained by art, the object
|
||
would only please by means of a concept. But in both cases the art
|
||
would please, not in the mere estimate of it, i.e., not as fine art,
|
||
but rather as mechanical art.
|
||
Hence the finality in the product of fine art, intentional though it
|
||
be, must not have the appearance of being intentional; i.e., fine
|
||
art must be clothed with the aspect of nature, although we recognize
|
||
it to be art. But the way in which a product of art seems like
|
||
nature is by the presence of perfect exactness in the agreement with
|
||
rules prescribing how alone the product can be what it is intended
|
||
to be, but with an absence of laboured effect (without academic form
|
||
betraying itself), i.e., without a trace appearing of the artist
|
||
having always had the rule present to him and of its having fettered
|
||
his mental powers.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 255}
|
||
SS 46. Fine art is the art of genius.
|
||
-
|
||
Genius is the talent (natural endowment) which gives the rule to
|
||
art. Since talent, as an innate productive faculty of the artist,
|
||
belongs itself to nature, we may put it this way: Genius is the innate
|
||
mental aptitude (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art.
|
||
Whatever may be the merits of this definition, and whether it is
|
||
merely arbitrary, or whether it is adequate or not to the concept
|
||
usually associated with the word genius (a point which the following
|
||
sections have to clear up), it may still be shown at the outset
|
||
that, according to this acceptation of the word, fine arts must
|
||
necessarily be regarded as arts of genius.
|
||
For every art presupposes rules which are laid down as the
|
||
foundation which first enables a product, if it is to be called one of
|
||
art, to be represented as possible. The concept of fine art,
|
||
however, does not permit of the judgement upon the beauty of its
|
||
product being derived from any rule that has a concept for its
|
||
determining ground, and that depends, consequently, on a concept of
|
||
the way in which the product is possible. Consequently fine art cannot
|
||
of its own self excogitate the rule according to which it is to
|
||
effectuate its product. But since, for all that, a product can never
|
||
be called art unless there is a preceding rule, it follows that nature
|
||
in the individual (and by virtue of the harmony of his faculties) must
|
||
give the rule to art, i.e., fine art is only possible as a product
|
||
of genius.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 260}
|
||
From this it may be seen that genius (1) is a talent for producing
|
||
that for which no definite rule can be given, and not an aptitude in
|
||
the way of cleverness for what can be learned according to some
|
||
rule; and that consequently originality must be its primary
|
||
property. (2) Since there may also be original nonsense, its
|
||
products must at the same time be models, i.e., be exemplary; and,
|
||
consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they
|
||
must serve that purpose for others, i.e., as a standard or rule of
|
||
estimating. (3) It cannot indicate scientifically how it brings
|
||
about its product, but rather gives the rule as nature. Hence, where
|
||
an author owes a product to his genius, he does not himself know how
|
||
the ideas for it have entered into his head, nor has he it in his
|
||
power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate
|
||
the same to others in such precepts as would put them in a position to
|
||
produce similar products. (Hence, presumably, our word Genie is
|
||
derived from genius, as the peculiar guardian and guiding spirit given
|
||
to a man at his birth, by the inspiration of which those original
|
||
ideas were obtained.) (4) Nature prescribes the rule through genius
|
||
not to science but to art, and this also only in so far as it is to be
|
||
fine art.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 47. Elucidation and confirmation of the above
|
||
explanation of genius.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 265}
|
||
Every one is agreed on the point of the complete opposition
|
||
between genius and the spirit of imitation. Now since learning is
|
||
nothing but imitation, the greatest ability, or aptness as a pupil
|
||
(capacity), is still, as such, not equivalent to genius. Even though a
|
||
man weaves his own thoughts or fancies, instead of merely taking in
|
||
what others have thought, and even though he go so far as to bring
|
||
fresh gains to art and science, this does not afford a valid reason
|
||
for calling such a man of brains, and often great brains, a genius, in
|
||
contradistinction to one who goes by the name of shallow-pate, because
|
||
he can never do more than merely learn and follow a lead. For what
|
||
is accomplished in this way is something that could have been learned.
|
||
Hence it all lies in the natural path of investigation and
|
||
reflection according to rules, and so is not specifically
|
||
distinguishable from what may be acquired as the result of industry
|
||
backed up by imitation. So all that Newton bas set forth in his
|
||
immortal work on the Principles of Natural Philosophy may well be
|
||
learned, however great a mind it took to find it all out, but we
|
||
cannot learn to write in a true poetic vein, no matter how complete
|
||
all the precepts of the poetic art may be, or however excellent its
|
||
models. The reason is that all the steps that Newton had to take
|
||
from the first elements of geometry to his greatest and most
|
||
profound discoveries were such as he could make intuitively evident
|
||
and plain to follow, not only for himself but for every one else. On
|
||
the other hand, no Homer or Wieland can show how his ideas, so rich at
|
||
once in fancy and in thought, enter and assemble themselves in his
|
||
brain, for the good reason that he does not himself know, and so
|
||
cannot teach others. In matters of science, therefore, the greatest
|
||
inventor differs only in degree from the most laborious imitator and
|
||
apprentice, whereas he differs specifically from one endowed by nature
|
||
for fine art. No disparagement, however, of those great men, to whom
|
||
the human race is so deeply indebted, is involved in this comparison
|
||
of them with those who on the score of their talent for fine art are
|
||
the elect of nature. The talent for science is formed for the
|
||
continued advances of greater perfection in knowledge, with all its
|
||
dependent practical advantages, as also for imparting the same to
|
||
others. Hence scientists can boast a ground of considerable
|
||
superiority over those who merit the honour of being called
|
||
geniuses, since genius reaches a point at which art must make a
|
||
halt, as there is a limit imposed upon it which it cannot transcend.
|
||
This limit has in all probability been long since attained. In
|
||
addition, such skill cannot be communicated, but requires to be
|
||
bestowed directly from the hand of nature upon each individual, and so
|
||
with him it dies, awaiting the day when nature once again endows
|
||
another in the same way-one who needs no more than an example to set
|
||
the talent of which he is conscious at work on similar lines.
|
||
Seeing, then, that the natural endowment of art (as fine art) must
|
||
furnish the rule, what kind of rule must this be? It cannot be one set
|
||
down in a formula and serving as a precept-for then the judgement upon
|
||
the beautiful would be determinable according to concepts. Rather must
|
||
the rule be gathered from the performance, i.e., from the product,
|
||
which others may use to put their own talent to the test, so as to let
|
||
it serve as a model, not for imitation, but for following. The
|
||
possibility of this is difficult to explain. The artist's ideas arouse
|
||
like ideas on the part of his pupil, presuming nature to have
|
||
visited him with a like proportion of the mental Powers. For this
|
||
reason, the models of fine art are the only means of handing down this
|
||
art to posterity. This is something which cannot be done by mere
|
||
descriptions (especially not in the line of the arts of speech), and
|
||
in these arts, furthermore, only those models can become classical
|
||
of which the ancient, dead languages, preserved as learned, are the
|
||
medium.
|
||
Despite the marked difference that distinguishes mechanical art,
|
||
as an art merely depending upon industry and learning, from fine
|
||
art, as that of genius, there is still no fine art in which
|
||
something mechanical, capable of being at once comprehended and
|
||
followed in obedience to rules, and consequently something academic,
|
||
does not constitute the essential condition of the art. For the
|
||
thought of something as end must be present, or else its product would
|
||
not be ascribed to an art at all, but would be a mere product of
|
||
chance. But the effectuation of an end necessitates determinate
|
||
rules which we cannot venture to dispense with. Now, seeing that
|
||
originality of talent is one (though not the sole) essential factor
|
||
that goes to make up the character of genius, shallow minds fancy that
|
||
the best evidence they can give of their being full-blown geniuses
|
||
is by emancipating themselves from all academic constraint of rules,
|
||
in the belief that one cuts a finer figure on the back of an
|
||
ill-tempered than of a trained horse. Genius can do no more than
|
||
furnish rich material for products of fine art; its elaboration and
|
||
its form require a talent academically trained, so that it may be
|
||
employed in such a way as to stand the test of judgement. But, for a
|
||
person to hold forth and pass sentence like a genius in matters that
|
||
fall to the province of the most patient rational investigation, is
|
||
ridiculous in the extreme.1 One is at a loss to know whether to
|
||
laugh more at the impostor who envelops himself in such a cloud-in
|
||
which we are given fuller scope to our imagination at the expense of
|
||
all use of our critical faculty-or at the simple-minded public which
|
||
imagines that its inability clearly to cognize and comprehend this
|
||
masterpiece of penetration is due to its being invaded by new truths
|
||
en masse, in comparison with which, detail, due to carefully weighed
|
||
exposition and an academic examination of root principles, seems to it
|
||
only the work of a tyro.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 48. The relation of genius to taste.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 270}
|
||
-
|
||
For estimating beautiful objects, as such, what is required is
|
||
taste; but for fine art, i.e., the production of such objects, one
|
||
needs genius.
|
||
If we consider genius as the talent for fine art (which the proper
|
||
signification of the word imports), and if we would analyse it from
|
||
this point of view into the faculties which must concur to
|
||
constitute such a talent, it is imperative at the outset accurately to
|
||
determine the difference between beauty of nature, which it only
|
||
requires taste to estimate, and beauty of art, which requires genius
|
||
for its possibility (a possibility to which regard must also be paid
|
||
in estimating such an object).
|
||
A beauty of nature is a beautiful thing; beauty of art is a
|
||
beautiful representation of a thing.
|
||
To enable me to estimate a beauty of nature, as such, I do not
|
||
need to be previously possessed of a concept of what sort of a thing
|
||
the object is intended to be, i.e., I am not obliged to know its
|
||
material finality (the end), but, rather, in forming an estimate of it
|
||
apart from any knowledge of the end, the mere form pleases on its
|
||
own account. If, however, the object is presented as a product of art,
|
||
and is as such to be declared beautiful, then, seeing that art
|
||
always presupposes an end in the cause (and its causality), a
|
||
concept of what the thing is intended to be must first of all be
|
||
laid at its basis. And, since the agreement of the manifold in a thing
|
||
with an inner character belonging to it as its end constitutes the
|
||
perfection of the thing, it follows that in estimating beauty of art
|
||
the perfection of the thing must be also taken into account-a matter
|
||
which in estimating a beauty of nature, as beautiful, is quite
|
||
irrevelant. It is true that in forming an estimate, especially of
|
||
animate objects of nature, e.g., of a man or a horse, objective
|
||
finality is also commonly taken into account with a view to
|
||
judgement upon their beauty; but then the judgement also ceases to
|
||
be purely aesthetic, i.e., a mere judgement of taste. Nature is no
|
||
longer estimated as it appears like art, but rather in so far as it
|
||
actually is art, though superhuman art; and the teleological judgement
|
||
serves as a basis and condition of the aesthetic, and one which the
|
||
latter must regard. In such a case, where one says, for example, "That
|
||
is a beautiful woman," what one in fact thinks is only this, that in
|
||
her form nature excellently portrays the ends present in the female
|
||
figure. For one has to extend one's view beyond the mere form to a
|
||
concept, to enable the object to be thought in such manner by means of
|
||
an aesthetic judgement logically conditioned.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 275}
|
||
Where fine art evidences its superiority is in the beautiful
|
||
descriptions it gives of things that in nature would be ugly or
|
||
displeasing. The Furies, diseases, devastations of war, and the
|
||
like, can (as evils) be very beautifully described, nay even
|
||
represented in pictures. One kind of ugliness alone is incapable of
|
||
being represented conformably to nature without destroying all
|
||
aesthetic delight, and consequently artistic beauty, namely, that
|
||
which excites disgust. For, as in this strange sensation, which
|
||
depends purely on the imagination, the object is represented as
|
||
insisting, as it were, upon our enjoying it, while we still set our
|
||
face against it, the artificial representation of the object is no
|
||
longer distinguishable from the nature of the object itself in our
|
||
sensation, and so it cannot possibly be regarded as beautiful. The art
|
||
of sculpture, again, since in its products art is almost confused with
|
||
nature, has excluded from its creations the direct representation of
|
||
ugly objects, and, instead, only sanctions, for example, the
|
||
representation of death (in a beautiful genius), or of the warlike
|
||
spirit (in Mars), by means of an allegory, or attributes which wear
|
||
a pleasant guise, and so only indirectly, through an interpretation on
|
||
the part of reason, and not for the pure aesthetic judgement.
|
||
So much for the beautiful representation of an object, which is
|
||
properly only the form of the presentation of a concept and the
|
||
means by which the latter is universally communicated. To give this
|
||
form, however, to the product of fine art, taste merely is required.
|
||
By this the artist, having practised and corrected his taste by a
|
||
variety of examples from nature or art, controls his work and, after
|
||
many, and often laborious, attempts to satisfy taste, finds the form
|
||
which commends itself to him. Hence this form is not, as it were, a
|
||
matter of inspiration, or of a free swing of the mental powers, but
|
||
rather of a slow and even painful process of improvement, directed
|
||
to making the form adequate to his thought without prejudice to the
|
||
freedom in the play of those powers.
|
||
Taste is, however, merely a critical, not a productive faculty;
|
||
and what conforms to it is not, merely on that account, a work of fine
|
||
art. It may belong to useful and mechanical art, or even to science,
|
||
as a product following definite rules which are capable of being
|
||
learned and which must be closely followed. But the pleasing form
|
||
imparted to the work is only the vehicle of communication and a
|
||
mode, as it were, of execution, in respect of which one remains to a
|
||
certain extent free, notwithstanding being otherwise tied down to a
|
||
definite end. So we demand that table appointments, or even a moral
|
||
dissertation, and, indeed, a sermon, must bear this form of fine
|
||
art, yet without its appearing studied. But one would not call them on
|
||
this account works of fine art. A poem, a musical composition, a
|
||
picture-gallery, and so forth, would, however, be placed under this
|
||
head; and so in a would-be work of fine art we may frequently
|
||
recognize genius without taste, and in another taste without genius.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 49. The faculties of the mind which constitute genius.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 280}
|
||
-
|
||
Of certain products which are expected, partly at least, to stand on
|
||
the footing of fine art, we say they are soulless; and this,
|
||
although we find nothing to censure in them as far as taste goes. A
|
||
poem may be very pretty and elegant, but is soulless. A narrative
|
||
has precision and method, but is soulless. A speech on some festive
|
||
occasion may be good in substance and ornate withal, but may be
|
||
soulless. Conversation frequently is not devoid of entertainment,
|
||
but yet soulless. Even of a woman we may well say, she is pretty,
|
||
affable, and refined, but soulless. Now what do we here mean by
|
||
"soul"?
|
||
Soul (Geist) in an aesthetical sense, signifies the animating
|
||
principle in the mind. But that whereby this principle animates the
|
||
psychic substance (Seele)-the material which it employs for that
|
||
purpose-is that which sets the mental powers into a swing that is
|
||
final, i.e., into a play which is self-maintaining and which
|
||
strengthens those powers for such activity.
|
||
Now my proposition is that this principle is nothing else than the
|
||
faculty of presenting aesthetic ideas. But, by an aesthetic idea I
|
||
mean that representation of the imagination which induces much
|
||
thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever,
|
||
i.e., concept, being adequate to it, and which language, consequently,
|
||
can never get quite on level terms with or render completely
|
||
intelligible. It is easily seen, that an aesthetic idea is the
|
||
counterpart (pendant) of a rational idea, which, conversely, is a
|
||
concept, to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can
|
||
be adequate.
|
||
The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a powerful
|
||
agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material
|
||
supplied to it by actual nature. It affords us entertainment where
|
||
experience proves too commonplace; and we even use it to remodel
|
||
experience, always following, no doubt, laws that are based on
|
||
analogy, but still also following principles which have a higher
|
||
seat in reason (and which are every whit as natural to us as those
|
||
followed by the understanding in laying hold of empirical nature).
|
||
By this means we get a sense of our freedom from the law of
|
||
association' (which attaches to the empirical employment of the
|
||
imagination), with the result that the material can be borrowed by
|
||
us from nature in accordance with that law, but be worked up by us
|
||
into something else-namely, what surpasses nature.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 285}
|
||
Such representations of the imagination may be termed ideas. This is
|
||
partly because they at least strain after something lying out beyond
|
||
the confines of experience, and so seek to approximate to a
|
||
presentation of rational concepts (i.e., intellectual ideas), thus
|
||
giving to these concepts the semblance of an objective reality. But,
|
||
on the other hand, there is this most important reason, that no
|
||
concept can be wholly adequate to them as internal intuitions. The
|
||
poet essays the task of interpreting to sense the rational ideas of
|
||
invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity,
|
||
creation, etc. Or, again, as to things of which examples occur in
|
||
experience, e.g., death, envy, and all vices, as also love, fame,
|
||
and the like, transgressing the limits of experience he attempts
|
||
with the aid of an imagination which emulates the display of reason in
|
||
its attainment of a maximum, to body them forth to sense with a
|
||
completeness. of which: nature affords no parallel; and it is in' fact
|
||
precisely in the poetic art that the faculty of aesthetic ideas can
|
||
show itself to full advantage. This faculty, however, regarded
|
||
solely on its own account, is properly no more than a talent' (of
|
||
the imagination).
|
||
If, now, we attach to a concept a representation of the
|
||
imagination belonging to its presentation, but inducing solely on
|
||
its own account such a wealth of thought as would never admit of
|
||
comprehension in a definite concept, and, as a consequence, giving
|
||
aesthetically an unbounded expansion to the concept itself, then the
|
||
imagination here displays a creative activity, and it puts the faculty
|
||
of intellectual ideas (reason) into motion-a motion, at the instance
|
||
of a representation, towards an extension of thought, that, while
|
||
germane, no doubt, to the concept of the object, exceeds what can be
|
||
laid hold of in that representation or clearly expressed.
|
||
Those forms which do not constitute the presentation of a given
|
||
concept itself, but which,. as secondary representations of the
|
||
imagination, express the derivatives connected with it, and its
|
||
kinship with other concepts, are called (aesthetic) attributes of an
|
||
object, the concept of Which, as an idea of reason, cannot be
|
||
adequately presented. In this way Jupiter's eagle, with the
|
||
lightning in its claws, is an attribute of the mighty king of
|
||
heaven, and the peacock of its stately queen. They do not, like
|
||
logical (aesthetic) attributes of an object, the concept of the
|
||
sublimity and majesty of creation, but rather something else-something
|
||
that gives the imagination an incentive to spread its flight over a
|
||
whole host of kindred representations that provoke more thought than
|
||
admits of expression in a concept determined by words. They furnish an
|
||
aesthetic idea, which serves the above rational idea as a substitute
|
||
for logical presentation, but with the proper function, however, of
|
||
animating the mind by opening out for it a prospect into a field of
|
||
kindred representations stretching beyond its ken. But it is not alone
|
||
in the arts of painting or sculpture, where the name of attribute is
|
||
customarily employed, that fine art acts in this way; poetry and
|
||
rhetoric also drive the soul that animates their work wholly from
|
||
the aesthetic attributes of the objects-attributes which go hand in
|
||
hand with the logical, and give the imagination an impetus to bring
|
||
more thought into: play in the matter, though in an undeveloped
|
||
manner, than allows of being brought within the embrace of a
|
||
concept, or, therefore, of being definitely formulated in language.
|
||
For the sake of brevity I must confine myself to a few examples
|
||
only. When the great king expresses himself in one of his poems by
|
||
saying:
|
||
-
|
||
Oui, finissons sans trouble, et mourons sans regrets,
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 290}
|
||
En laissant l'Univers comble de nos bienfaits.
|
||
Ainsi l'Astre du jour, au bout de sa carriere,
|
||
Repand sur l'horizon une douce lumiere,
|
||
Et les derniers rayons qu'il darde dans les airs
|
||
Sont les derniers soupirs qu'il donne a l'Univers;
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 295}
|
||
-
|
||
he kindles in this way his rational idea of a cosmopolitan sentiment
|
||
even at the close of life, with help of an attribute which the
|
||
imagination (in remembering all the pleasures of a fair summer's day
|
||
that is over and gone-a memory of which pleasures is suggested by a
|
||
serene evening) annexes to that representation, and which stirs up a
|
||
crowd of sensations and secondary representations for which no
|
||
expression can be found. On the other hand, even an intellectual
|
||
concept may serve, conversely, as attribute for a representation of
|
||
sense, and so animate the latter with the idea of the supersensible;
|
||
but only by the aesthetic factor subjectively attaching to the
|
||
consciousness of the supersensible being employed for the purpose. So,
|
||
for example, a certain poet says in his description of a beautiful
|
||
morning: "The sun arose, as out of virtue rises peace." The
|
||
consciousness of virtue, even where we put ourselves only in thought
|
||
in the position of a virtuous man, diffuses in the mind a multitude of
|
||
sublime and tranquillizing feelings, and gives a boundless outlook
|
||
into a happy future, such as no expression within the compass of a
|
||
definite concept completely attains.*
|
||
-
|
||
*Perhaps there has never been a more sublime utterance, or a thought
|
||
more sublimely expressed, than the well-known inscription upon the
|
||
Temple of Isis (Mother Nature): "I am all that is, and that was, and
|
||
that shall be, and no mortal hath raised the veil from before my
|
||
face." Segner made use of this idea in a suggestive vignette on the
|
||
frontispiece of his Natural Philosophy, in order to inspire his
|
||
pupil at the threshold of that temple into which he was about to
|
||
lead him, with such a holy awe as would dispose his mind to serious
|
||
attention.
|
||
-
|
||
In a word, the aesthetic idea is a representation of the
|
||
imagination, annexed to a given concept, with which, in the free
|
||
employment of imagination, such a multiplicity of partial
|
||
representations are bound up, that no expression indicating a definite
|
||
concept can be found for it one which on that account allows a concept
|
||
to be supplemented in thought by much that is indefinable in words,
|
||
and the feeling of which quickens the cognitive faculties, and with
|
||
language, as a mere thing of the letter, binds up the spirit (soul)
|
||
also.
|
||
The mental powers whose union in a certain relation constitutes
|
||
genius are imagination and understanding. Now, since the
|
||
imagination, in its employment on behalf of cognition, is subjected to
|
||
the constraint of the understanding and the restriction of having to
|
||
be conformable to the concept belonging' thereto, whereas
|
||
aesthetically it is free to furnish of its own accord, over and
|
||
above that agreement with the concept, a wealth of undeveloped
|
||
material for the understanding, to which the latter paid no regard
|
||
in its concept, but which it can make use of, not so much
|
||
objectively for cognition, as subjectively for quickening the
|
||
cognitive faculties, and hence also indirectly for cognitions, it
|
||
may be seen that genius properly consists in the happy relation, which
|
||
science cannot teach nor industry learn, enabling one to find out
|
||
ideas for a given concept, and, besides, to hit upon the expression
|
||
for them-the expression by means of which the subjective mental
|
||
condition induced by the ideas as the concomitant of a concept may
|
||
be communicated to others. This latter talent is properly that which
|
||
is termed soul. For to get an expression for what is indefinable in
|
||
the mental state accompanying a particular representation and to
|
||
make it universally communicable-be the expression in language or
|
||
painting or statuary-is a "thing requiring a faculty for laying hold
|
||
of the rapid and transient play of the imagination, and for unifying
|
||
it in a concept (which for that very reason is original, and reveals a
|
||
new rule which could not have been inferred from any preceding
|
||
principles or examples) that admits of communication without any
|
||
constraint of rules.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 300}
|
||
-
|
||
If, after this analysis, we cast a glance back upon the above
|
||
definition of what is called genius, we find: First, that it is a
|
||
talent for art-not one for science, in which clearly known rules
|
||
must take the lead and determine the procedure. Secondly, being a
|
||
talent in the line of art, it presupposes a definite concept of the
|
||
product-as its end. Hence it presupposes understanding, but, in
|
||
addition, a representation, indefinite though it be, of the
|
||
material, i.e., of the intuition, required for the presentation of
|
||
that concept, and so a relation of the imagination to the
|
||
understanding. Thirdly, it displays itself, not so much in the working
|
||
out of the projected end in the presentation of a definite concept, as
|
||
rather in the portrayal, or expression of aesthetic ideas containing a
|
||
wealth of material for effecting that intention. Consequently the
|
||
imagination is represented by it in its freedom from all guidance of
|
||
rules, but still as final for the presentation of the given concept.
|
||
Fourthly, and lastly, the unsought and undesigned subjective
|
||
finality in the free harmonizing of the imagination with the
|
||
understanding's conformity to law presupposes a proportion and
|
||
accord between these faculties such as cannot be brought about by
|
||
any observance of rules, whether of science or mechanical imitation,
|
||
but can only be produced by the nature of the individual.
|
||
Genius, according to these presuppositions, is the exemplary
|
||
originality of the natural endowments of an individual in the free
|
||
employment of his cognitive faculties. On this showing, the product of
|
||
a genius (in respect of so much in this product as is attributable
|
||
to genius, and not to possible learning or academic instruction) is an
|
||
example, not for imitation (for that would mean the loss of the
|
||
element of genius, and just the very soul of the work), but to be
|
||
followed by another genius-one whom it arouses to a sense of his own
|
||
originality in putting freedom from the constraint of rules so into
|
||
force in his art that for art itself a new rule is won-which is what
|
||
shows a talent to be exemplary. Yet, since the genius is one of
|
||
nature's elect-a type that must be regarded as but a rare
|
||
phenomenon-for other clever minds his example gives rise to a
|
||
school, that is to say a methodical instruction according to rules,
|
||
collected, so far as the circumstances admit, from such products of
|
||
genius and their peculiarities. And, to that extent, fine art is for
|
||
such persons a matter of imitation, for which nature, through the
|
||
medium of a genius gave the rule.
|
||
But this imitation becomes aping when the pupil copies everything
|
||
down to the deformities which the genius only of necessity suffered to
|
||
remain, because they could hardly be removed without loss of force
|
||
to the idea. This courage has merit only in the case of a genius. A
|
||
certain boldness of expression and, in general, many a deviation
|
||
from the common rule becomes him well, but in no sense is it a thing
|
||
worthy of imitation. On the contrary it remains all through
|
||
intrinsically a blemish, which one is bound to try to remove, but
|
||
for which the genius is, as it were, allowed to plead a privilege,
|
||
on the ground that a scrupulous carefulness would spoil what is
|
||
inimitable in the impetuous ardour of his soul. Mannerism is another
|
||
kind of aping-an aping of peculiarity (originality) in general, for
|
||
the sake of removing oneself as far as possible from imitators,
|
||
while the talent requisite to enable one to be at the same time
|
||
exemplary is absent. There are, in fact, two modes (modi) in general
|
||
of arranging one's thoughts for utterance. The one is called a
|
||
manner (modus aestheticus), the other a method (modus logicus). The
|
||
distinction between them is this: the former possesses no standard
|
||
other than the feeling of unity in the presentation, whereas the
|
||
latter here follows definite principles. As a consequence, the
|
||
former is alone admissible for fine art. It is only, however, where
|
||
the manner of carrying the idea into execution in a product of art
|
||
is aimed at singularity, instead of being made appropriate to the
|
||
idea, that mannerism is properly ascribed to such a product. The
|
||
ostentatious (precieux), forced, and affected styles, intended to mark
|
||
one out from the common herd (though soul is wanting), resemble the
|
||
behaviour of a man who, as we say, hears himself talk, or who stands
|
||
and moves about as if he were on a stage to be gaped at-action which
|
||
invariably betrays a tyro.
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 305}
|
||
SS 50. The combination of taste and genius in
|
||
products of fine art.
|
||
-
|
||
To ask whether more stress should be laid in matters of fine art
|
||
upon the presence of genius or upon that of taste, is equivalent to
|
||
asking whether more turns upon imagination or upon judgement. Now,
|
||
imagination rather entitles an art to be called an inspired
|
||
(geistreiche) than a fine art. It is only in respect of judgement that
|
||
the name of fine art is deserved. Hence it follows that judgement,
|
||
being the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non), is at least
|
||
what one must look to as of capital importance in forming an
|
||
estimate of art as fine art. So far as beauty is concerned, to be
|
||
fertile and original in ideas is not such an imperative requirement as
|
||
it is that the imagination in its freedom should be in accordance with
|
||
the understanding's conformity to law. For, in lawless freedom,
|
||
imagination, with all its wealth, produces nothing but nonsense; the
|
||
power of judgement, on the other hand, is the faculty that makes it
|
||
consonant with understanding.
|
||
Taste, like judgement in general, is the discipline (or
|
||
corrective) of genius. It severely clips its wings, and makes it
|
||
orderly or polished; but at the same time it gives it guidance
|
||
directing and controlling its flight, so that it may preserve its
|
||
character of finality. It introduces a clearness and order into the
|
||
plenitude of thought, and in so doing gives stability to the ideas,
|
||
and qualifies them at once for permanent and universal approval, for
|
||
being followed by others, and for a continually progressive culture.
|
||
And so, where the interests of both these qualities clash in a
|
||
product, and there has to be a sacrifice of something, then it
|
||
should rather be on the side of genius; and judgement, which in
|
||
matters of fine art bases its decision on its own proper principles,
|
||
will more readily endure an abatement of the freedom and wealth of the
|
||
imagination than that the understanding should be compromised.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 310}
|
||
The requisites for fine art are, therefore, imagination,
|
||
understanding, soul, and taste.*
|
||
-
|
||
*The first three faculties are first brought into union by means
|
||
of the fourth. Hume, in his history, informs the English that although
|
||
they are second in their works to no other people in the world in
|
||
respect the evidences they afford of the three first qualities
|
||
separately considered, still in what unites them they must yield to
|
||
their neighbours, the French.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 51. The division of the fine arts.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 315}
|
||
-
|
||
Beauty (whether it be of nature or of art) may in general be
|
||
termed the expression of aesthetic ideas. But the provision must be
|
||
added that with beauty of art this idea must be excited through the
|
||
medium of a concept of the object, whereas with beauty of nature the
|
||
bare reflection upon a given intuition, apart from any concept of what
|
||
the object is intended to be, is sufficient for awakening and
|
||
communicating the idea of which that object is regarded as the
|
||
expression.
|
||
Accordingly, if we wish to make a division of the fine arts, we
|
||
can choose for that purpose, tentatively at least, no more
|
||
convenient principle than the analogy which art bears to the mode of
|
||
expression of which men avail themselves in speech with a view to
|
||
communicating themselves to one another as completely as possible,
|
||
i.e., not merely in respect of their concepts but in respect of
|
||
their sensations also.* Such expression consists in word, gesture, and
|
||
tone (articulation, gesticulation, and modulation). It is the
|
||
combination of these three modes of expression which alone constitutes
|
||
a complete communication of the speaker. For thought, intuition, and
|
||
sensation are in this way conveyed to others simultaneously and in
|
||
conjunction.
|
||
-
|
||
*The reader is not to consider this scheme for a possible division
|
||
of the fine arts as a deliberate theory. It is only one of the various
|
||
attempts that can and ought to be made.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 320}
|
||
-
|
||
Hence there are only three kinds of fine art: the art of speech,
|
||
formative art, and the art of the play of sensations (as external
|
||
sense impressions). This division might also be arranged as a
|
||
dichotomy, so that fine art would be divided into that of the
|
||
expression of thoughts or intuitions, the latter being subdivided
|
||
according to the distinction between the form and the matter
|
||
(sensation). It would, however, in that case appear too abstract,
|
||
and less in line with popular concepztions.
|
||
(1) The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the
|
||
art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it
|
||
were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a
|
||
free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the
|
||
understanding.
|
||
Thus the orator announces a serious business, and for the purpose of
|
||
entertaining his audience conducts it as if it were a mere play with
|
||
ideas. The poet promises merely an entertaining play with ideas, and
|
||
yet for the understanding there enures as much as if the promotion
|
||
of its business had been his one intention. The combination and
|
||
harmony of the two faculties of cognition, sensibility and
|
||
understanding, which, though doubtless indispensable to one another,
|
||
do not readily permit of being united without compulsion and
|
||
reciprocal abatement, must have the appearance of being undesigned and
|
||
a spontaneous occurrence-otherwise it is not fine art. For this reason
|
||
what is studied and laboured must be here avoided. For fine art must
|
||
be free art in a double sense: i.e., not alone in a sense opposed to
|
||
contract work, as not being a work the magnitude of which may be
|
||
estimated, exacted, or paid for, according to a definite standard, but
|
||
free also in the sense that, while the mind, no doubt, occupies
|
||
itself, still it does so without ulterior regard to any other end, and
|
||
yet with a feeling of satisfaction and stimulation (independent of
|
||
reward).
|
||
The orator, therefore, gives something which he does not promise,
|
||
viz., an entertaining play of the imagination. On the other hand,
|
||
there is something in which he fails to come up to his promise, and
|
||
a thing, too, which is his avowed business, namely, the engagement
|
||
of the understanding to some end. The poet's promise, on the contrary,
|
||
is a modest one, and a mere play with ideas is all he holds out to us,
|
||
but he accomplishes something worthy of being made a serious business,
|
||
namely, the using of play to provide food for the understanding, and
|
||
the giving of life to its concepts by means of the imagination.
|
||
Hence the orator in reality performs less than he promises, the poet
|
||
more.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 325}
|
||
(2) The formative arts, or those for the expression of ideas in
|
||
sensuous intuition (not by means of representations of mere
|
||
imagination that are excited by words) are arts either of sensuous
|
||
truth or of sensuous semblance. The first is called plastic art, the
|
||
second painting. Both use figures in space for the expression of
|
||
ideas: the former makes figures discernible to two senses, sight and
|
||
touch (though, so far as the latter sense is concerned, without regard
|
||
to beauty), the latter makes them so to the former sense alone. The
|
||
aesthetic idea (archetype, original) is the fundamental basis of
|
||
both in the imagination; but the figure which constitutes its
|
||
expression (the ectype, the copy) is given either in its bodily
|
||
extension (the way the object itself exists) or else in accordance
|
||
with the picture which it forms of itself in the eye (according to its
|
||
appearance when projected on a flat surface). Or, whatever the
|
||
archetype is, either the reference to an actual end or only the
|
||
semblance of one may be imposed upon reflection as its condition.
|
||
To plastic art, as the first kind of formative fine art, belong
|
||
sculpture and architecture. The first is that which presents
|
||
concepts of things corporeally, as they might exist in nature
|
||
(though as fine art it directs its attention to aesthetic finality).
|
||
The second is the art of presenting concepts of things which are
|
||
possible only through art, and the determining ground of whose form is
|
||
not nature but an arbitrary end-and of presenting them both with a
|
||
view to this purpose and yet, at the same time, with aesthetic
|
||
finality. In architecture the chief point is a certain use of the
|
||
artistic object to which, as the condition, the aesthetic ideas are
|
||
limited. In sculpture the mere expression of aesthetic ideas is the
|
||
main intention. Thus statues of men, gods, animals, etc., belong to
|
||
sculpture; but temples, splendid buildings for public concourse, or
|
||
even dwelling-houses, triumphal arches, columns, mausoleums, etc.,
|
||
erected as monuments, belong to architecture, and in fact all
|
||
household furniture (the work of cabinetmakers, and so forth-things
|
||
meant to be used) may be added to the list, on the ground that
|
||
adaptation of the product to a particular use is the essential element
|
||
in a work of architecture. On the other hand, a mere piece of
|
||
sculpture, made simply to be looked at and intended to please on its
|
||
own account, is, as a corporeal presentation, a mere imitation of
|
||
nature, though one in which regard is paid to aesthetic ideas, and
|
||
in which, therefore, sensuous truth should not go the length of losing
|
||
the appearance of being an art and a product of the elective will.
|
||
Painting, as the second kind of formative art, which presents the
|
||
sensuous semblance in artful combination with ideas, I would divide
|
||
into that of the beautiful Portrayal of nature, and that of the
|
||
beautiful arrangement of its products. The first is painting proper,
|
||
the second landscape gardening. For the first gives only the semblance
|
||
of bodily extension; whereas the second, giving this, no doubt,
|
||
according to its truth, gives only the semblance of utility and
|
||
employment for ends other than the play of the imagination in the
|
||
contemplation of its forms.* The latter consists in no more than
|
||
decking out the ground with the same manifold variety (grasses,
|
||
flowers, shrubs, and trees, and even water, hills, and dales) as
|
||
that with which nature presents it to our view, only arranged
|
||
differently and in obedience to certain ideas. The beautiful
|
||
arrangement of corporeal things, however, is also a thing for the
|
||
eye only, just like painting-the sense of touch can form no intuitable
|
||
representation of such a form, In addition I would place under the
|
||
head of painting, in the wide sense, the decoration of rooms by
|
||
means of hangings, ornamental accessories, and all beautiful furniture
|
||
the sole function of which is to be looked at; and in the same way the
|
||
art of tasteful dressing (with rings, snuffboxes, etc.). For a
|
||
parterre of various flowers, a room with a variety of ornaments
|
||
(including even the ladies' attire), go to make at a festal
|
||
gathering a sort of picture which, like pictures in the true sense
|
||
of the word (those which are not intended to teach history or
|
||
natural science), has no business beyond appealing to the eye, in
|
||
order to entertain the imagination in free play with ideas, and to
|
||
engage actively the aesthetic judgement independently of any
|
||
definite end. No matter how heterogeneous, on the mechanical side, may
|
||
be the craft involved in all this decoration, and no matter what a
|
||
variety of artists may be required, still the judgement of taste, so
|
||
far as it is one upon what is beautiful in this art, is determined
|
||
in one and the same way: namely, as a judgement only upon the forms
|
||
(without regard to any end) as they present themselves to the eye,
|
||
singly or in combination, according to their effect upon the
|
||
imagination. The justification, however, of bringing formative art (by
|
||
analogy) under a common head with gesture in a speech, lies in the
|
||
fact that through these figures the soul of the artists furnishes a
|
||
bodily expression for the substance and character of his thought,
|
||
and makes the thing itself speak, as it were, in mimic language-a very
|
||
common play of our fancy, that attributes to lifeless things a soul
|
||
suitable to their form, and that uses them as its mouthpiece.
|
||
-
|
||
*It seems strange that landscape gardening may be regarded as a kind
|
||
of painting, notwithstanding that it presents its forms corporeally.
|
||
But, as it takes its forms bodily from nature (the trees, shrubs,
|
||
grasses, and flowers taken, originally at least, from wood and
|
||
field) it is to that extent not an art such as, let us say, plastic
|
||
art. Further, the arrangement which it makes is not conditioned by any
|
||
concept of the object or of its end (as is the case in sculpture), but
|
||
by the mere free play of the imagination in the act of
|
||
contemplation. Hence it bears a degree of resemblance to simple
|
||
aesthetic painting that has no definite theme (but by means of light
|
||
and shade makes a pleasing composition of atmosphere, land, and
|
||
water.)
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 330}
|
||
-
|
||
(3) The art of the beautiful play of sensations (sensations that
|
||
arise from external stimulation), which is a play of sensations that
|
||
has nevertheless to permit of universal communication, can only be
|
||
concerned with the proportion of the different degrees of tension in
|
||
the sense to which the sensation belongs, i.e., with its tone. In this
|
||
comprehensive sense of the word, it may be divided into the artificial
|
||
play of sensations of hearing and of sight, consequently into music
|
||
and the art of colour. It is of note that these two senses, over and
|
||
above such susceptibility for impressions as is required to obtain
|
||
concepts of external objects by means of these impressions, also admit
|
||
of a peculiar associated sensation of which we cannot well determine
|
||
whether it is based on sense or reflection; and that this
|
||
sensibility may at times be wanting, although the sense, in other
|
||
respects, and in what concerns its employment for the cognition of
|
||
objects, is by no means deficient but particularly keen. In other
|
||
words, we cannot confidently assert whether a colour or a tone (sound)
|
||
is merely an agreeable sensation, or whether they are in themselves
|
||
a beautiful play of sensations, and in being estimated
|
||
aesthetically, convey, as such, a delight in their form. If we
|
||
consider the velocity of the vibrations of light, or, in the second
|
||
case, of the air, which in all probability far outstrips any
|
||
capacity on our part for forming an immediate estimate in perception
|
||
of the time interval between them, we should be led to believe that it
|
||
is only the effect of those vibrating movements upon the elastic parts
|
||
of our body, that can be evident to sense, but that the
|
||
time-interval between them is not noticed nor involved in our
|
||
estimate, and that, consequently, all that enters into combination
|
||
with colours and tones is agreeableness, and not beauty, of their
|
||
composition. But, let us consider, on the other hand, first, the
|
||
mathematical character both of the proportion of those vibrations in
|
||
music, and of our judgement upon it, and, as is reasonable, form an
|
||
estimate of colour contrasts on the analogy of the latter. Secondly,
|
||
let us consult the instances, albeit rare, of men who, with the best
|
||
of sight, have failed to distinguish colours, and, with the sharpest
|
||
hearing, to distinguish tones, while for men who have this ability the
|
||
perception of an altered quality (not merely of the degree of the
|
||
sensation) in the case of the different intensities in the scale of
|
||
colours or tones is definite, as is also the number of those which may
|
||
be intelligibly distinguished. Bearing all this in mind, we may feel
|
||
compelled to look upon the sensations afforded by both, not as mere
|
||
sense-impressions, but as the effect of an estimate of form in the
|
||
play of a number of sensations. The difference which the one opinion
|
||
or the other occasions in the estimate of the basis of music would,
|
||
however, only give rise to this much change in its definition, that
|
||
either it is to be interpreted, as we have done, as the beautiful play
|
||
of sensations (through bearing), or else as one of agreeable
|
||
sensations. According to the former interpretation, alone, would music
|
||
be represented out and out as a fine art, whereas according to the
|
||
latter it would be represented as (in part at least) an agreeable art.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 52. The combination of the fine arts in one and
|
||
the same product.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 335}
|
||
-
|
||
Rhetoric may in a drama be combined with a pictorial presentation as
|
||
well of its subjects as of objects; as may poetry with music in a
|
||
song; and this again with a pictorial (theatrical) presentation in
|
||
an opera; and so may the play of sensations in a piece of music with
|
||
the play of figures in a dance, and so on. Even the presentation of
|
||
the sublime, so far as it belongs to fine art, may be brought into
|
||
union with beauty in a tragedy in verse, a didactic poem or an
|
||
oratorio, and in this combination fine art is even more artistic.
|
||
Whether it is also more beautiful (having regard to the multiplicity
|
||
of different kinds of delight which cross one another) may in some
|
||
of these instances be doubted. Still in all fine art the essential
|
||
element consists in the form which is final for observation and for
|
||
estimating. Here the pleasure is at the same time culture, and
|
||
disposes the soul to ideas, making it thus susceptible of such
|
||
pleasure and entertainment in greater abundance. The matter of
|
||
sensation (charm or emotion) is not essential. Here the aim is
|
||
merely enjoyment, which leaves nothing behind it in the idea, and
|
||
renders the soul dull, the object in the course of time distasteful,
|
||
and the mind dissatisfied with itself and ill-humoured, owing to a
|
||
consciousness that in the judgement of reason its disposition is
|
||
perverse.
|
||
Where fine arts are not, either proximately or remotely, brought
|
||
into combination with moral ideas, which alone are attended with a
|
||
selfsufficing delight, the above is the fate that ultimately awaits
|
||
them. They then only serve for a diversion, of which one continually
|
||
feels an increasing need in proportion as one has availed oneself of
|
||
it as a means of dispelling the discontent of one's mind, with the
|
||
result that one makes oneself ever more-and more unprofitable and
|
||
dissatisfied with oneself. With a view to the purpose first named, the
|
||
beauties of nature are in general the most beneficial, if one is early
|
||
habituated to observe, estimate, and admire them.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 53. Comparative estimate of the aesthetic worth
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 340}
|
||
of the fine arts.
|
||
-
|
||
Poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and is least
|
||
willing to be led by precepts or example) holds the first rank among
|
||
all the arts. It expands the mind by giving freedom to the imagination
|
||
and by offering, from among the boundless multiplicity of possible
|
||
forms accordant with a given concept, to whose bounds it is
|
||
restricted, that one which couples with the presentation of the
|
||
concept a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is
|
||
completely adequate, and by thus rising aesthetically to ideas. It
|
||
invigorates the mind by letting it feel its faculty-free, spontaneous,
|
||
and independent of determination by nature of regarding and estimating
|
||
nature as phenomenon in the light of aspects which nature of itself
|
||
does not afford us in experience, either for sense or understanding,
|
||
and of employing it accordingly in behalf of, and as a sort of
|
||
schema for, the supersensible. It plays with semblance, which it
|
||
produces at will, but not as an instrument of deception; for its
|
||
avowed pursuit is merely one of play, which, however, understanding
|
||
may turn to good account and employ for its own purpose. Rhetoric,
|
||
so far as this is taken to mean the art of persuasion, i.e., the art
|
||
of deluding by means of a fair semblance (as ars oratoria), and not
|
||
merely excellence of speech (eloquence and style), is a dialectic,
|
||
which borrows from poetry only so much as is necessary to win over
|
||
men's minds to the side of the speaker before they have weighed the
|
||
matter, and to rob their verdict of its freedom. Hence it can be
|
||
recommended neither for the bar nor the pulpit. For where civil
|
||
laws, the right of individual persons, or the permanent instruction
|
||
and determination of men's minds to a correct knowledge and a
|
||
conscientious observance of their duty is at stake, then it is below
|
||
the dignity of an undertaking of such moment to exhibit even a trace
|
||
of the exuberance of wit and imagination, and, still more, of the
|
||
art of talking men round and prejudicing them in favour of any one.
|
||
For although such art is capable of being at times directed to ends
|
||
intrinsically legitimate and praiseworthy, still it becomes
|
||
reprehensible on account of the subjective injury done in this way
|
||
to maxims and sentiments, even where objectively the action may be
|
||
lawful. For it is not enough to do what is right, but we should
|
||
practise it solely on the ground of its being right. Further, the
|
||
simple lucid concept of human concerns of this kind, backed up with
|
||
lively illustrations of it, exerts of itself, in the absence of any
|
||
offence against the rules of euphony of speech or of propriety in
|
||
the expression of ideas of reason (all which together make up
|
||
excellence of speech), a sufficient influence upon human minds to
|
||
obviate the necessity of having recourse here to the machinery of
|
||
persuasion, which, being equally available for the purpose of
|
||
putting a fine gloss or a cloak upon vice-and error, fails to rid
|
||
one completely of the lurking suspicion that one is being artfully
|
||
hoodwinked. In poetry everything is straight and above board. It shows
|
||
its hand: it desires to carry on a mere entertaining play with the
|
||
imagination, and one consonant, in respect of form, with the laws of
|
||
understanding, and it does not seek to steal upon and ensnare the
|
||
understanding with a sensuous presentation.*
|
||
-
|
||
*I confess to the pure delight which I have ever been afforded by
|
||
a beautiful poem; whereas the reading of the best speech of a Roman
|
||
forensic orator, a modern parliamentary debater, or a preacher, has
|
||
invariably been mingled with an unpleasant sense of disapproval of
|
||
an insidious art that knows how, in matters of moment, to move men
|
||
like machines to a judgement that must lose all its weight with them
|
||
upon calm reflection. Force and elegance of speech (which together
|
||
constitute rhetoric) belong to fine art; but oratory (ars oratoria),
|
||
being the art of playing for one's own purpose up-the weaknesses of
|
||
men (let this purpose be ever so good in intention or even in fact)
|
||
merits no respect whatever. Besides, both at Athens and at Rome, it
|
||
only attained its greatest height at a time when the state was
|
||
hastening to its decay, and genuine patriotic sentiment was a thing of
|
||
the past. One who sees the issue clearly, and who has a command of
|
||
language in its wealth and its purity, and who is possessed of an
|
||
imagination that is fertile and effective in presenting his ideas, and
|
||
whose heart, withal, turns with lively sympathy to what is truly
|
||
good-he is the vir bonus dicendi peritus, the orator without art,
|
||
but of great impressiveness, Cicero would have him, though he may
|
||
not himself always always remained faithful to this ideal.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 345}
|
||
-
|
||
After poetry, if we take charm and mental stimulation into
|
||
account, I would give the next place to that art which comes nearer to
|
||
it than to any other art of speech, and admits of very natural union
|
||
with it, namely the art of tone. For though it speaks by means of mere
|
||
sensations without concepts, and so does not, like poetry, leave
|
||
behind it any food for reflection, still it moves the mind more
|
||
diversely, and, although with transient, still with intenser effect.
|
||
It is certainly, however, more a matter of enjoyment than of
|
||
culture-the play of thought incidentally excited by it being merely
|
||
the effect of a more or less mechanical association-and it possesses
|
||
less worth in the eyes of reason than any other of the fine arts.
|
||
Hence, like all enjoyment, it calls for constant change, and does
|
||
not stand frequent repetition without inducing weariness. Its charm,
|
||
which admits of such universal communication, appears to rest on the
|
||
following facts. Every expression in language has an associated tone
|
||
suited to its sense. This tone indicates, more or less, a mode in
|
||
which the speaker is affected, and in turn evokes it in the hearer
|
||
also, in whom conversely it then also excites the idea which in
|
||
language is expressed with such a tone. Further, just as modulation
|
||
is, as it were, a universal language of sensations intelligible to
|
||
every man, so the art of tone wields the full force of this language
|
||
wholly on its own account, namely, as a language of the affections,
|
||
and in this way, according to the law of association, universally
|
||
communicates the aesthetic ideas that are naturally combined
|
||
therewith. But, further, inasmuch as those aesthetic ideas are not
|
||
concepts or determinate thoughts, the form of the arrangement of these
|
||
sensations (harmony and melody), taking the place of the place of
|
||
the form of a language, only serves the purpose of giving an
|
||
expression to the aesthetic idea of an integral whole of an
|
||
unutterable wealth of thought that fills the measure of a certain
|
||
theme forming the dominant affection in the piece. This purpose is
|
||
effectuated by means of a proposition in the accord of the
|
||
sensations (an accord which may be brought mathematically under
|
||
certain rules, since it rests, in the case of tones, upon the
|
||
numerical relation of the vibrations of the air in the same time, so
|
||
far as there is a combination of the tones simultaneously or in
|
||
succession). Although this mathematical form is not represented by
|
||
means of determinate concepts, to it alone belongs the delight which
|
||
the mere reflection upon such a number of concomitant or consecutive
|
||
sensations couples with this their play, as the universally valid
|
||
condition of its beauty, and it is with reference to it alone that
|
||
taste can lay claim to a right to anticipate the judgement of every
|
||
man.
|
||
But mathematics, certainly, does not play the smallest part in the
|
||
charm and movement of the mind produced by music. Rather is it only
|
||
the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non) of that proportion
|
||
of the combining as well as changing impressions which makes it
|
||
possible to grasp them all in one and prevent them from destroying one
|
||
another, and to let them, rather, conspire towards the production of a
|
||
continuous movement and quickening of the mind by affections that
|
||
are in unison with it, and thus towards a serene self-enjoyment.
|
||
If, on the other hand, we estimate the worth of the fine arts by the
|
||
culture they supply to the mind, and adopt for our standard the
|
||
expansion of the faculties whose confluence, in judgement, is
|
||
necessary for cognition, music, then, since it plays merely with
|
||
sensations, 'has the lowest place among the fine arts-just as it has
|
||
perhaps the highest among those valued at the same time for their
|
||
agreeableness. Looked at in this light, it is far excelled by the
|
||
formative arts. For, in putting the imagination into a play which is
|
||
at once free and adapted to the understanding, they all the while
|
||
carry on a serious business, since they execute a product which serves
|
||
the Concepts of understanding as a vehicle, permanent and appealing to
|
||
us on its own account, for effectuating their union with
|
||
sensibility, and thus for promoting, as it were, the urbanity of the
|
||
higher powers of cognition. The two kinds of art pursue completely
|
||
different courses. Music advances from sensations to indefinite ideas:
|
||
formative art from definite ideas to sensations. The latter gives a
|
||
lasting impression, the former one that is only fleeting. The former
|
||
sensations imagination can recall and agreeably entertain itself with,
|
||
while the latter either vanish entirely, or else, if involuntarily
|
||
repeated by the imagination, are more annoying to us than agreeable.
|
||
Over and above all this, music has a certain lack of urbanity about
|
||
it. For owing chiefly to the character of its instruments, it scatters
|
||
its influence abroad to an uncalled-for extent (through the
|
||
neighbourhood), and thus, as it were, becomes obtrusive and deprives
|
||
others, outside the musical circle, of their freedom. This is a
|
||
thing that the arts that address themselves to the eye do not do,
|
||
for if one is not disposed to give admittance to their impressions,
|
||
one has only to look the other way. The case is almost on a par with
|
||
the practice of regaling oneself with a perfume that exhales its
|
||
odours far and wide. The man who pulls his perfumed handkerchief
|
||
from his pocket gives a treat to all around whether they like it or
|
||
not, and compels them, if they want to breathe at all, to be parties
|
||
to the enjoyment, and so the habit has gone out of fashion.*
|
||
-
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 350}
|
||
*Those who have recommended the singing of hymns at family prayers
|
||
have forgotten the amount of annoyance which they give to the
|
||
general public by such noisy (and, as a rule, for that very reason,
|
||
pharisaical) worship, for they compel their neighbours either to
|
||
join in the singing or else abandon their meditations.
|
||
-
|
||
Among the formative arts I would give the palm to painting: partly
|
||
because it is the art of design and, as such, the groundwork of all
|
||
the other formative arts; partly because it can penetrate much further
|
||
into the region of ideas, and in conformity with them give a greater
|
||
extension to the field of intuition than it is open to the others to
|
||
do.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 54. Remark.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 355}
|
||
-
|
||
As we have often shown, an essential distinction lies between what
|
||
pleases simply in the estimate formed of it and what gratifies
|
||
(pleases in sensation). The latter is something which, unlike the
|
||
former, we cannot demand from every one. Gratification (no matter
|
||
whether its cause has its seat even in ideas) appears always to
|
||
consist in a feeling of the furtherance of the entire life of the man,
|
||
and hence, also of his bodily well-being, i.e., his health. And so,
|
||
perhaps, Epicurus was not wide of the mark when he said that at bottom
|
||
all gratification is bodily sensation, and only misunderstood
|
||
himself in ranking intellectual and even practical delight under the
|
||
head of gratification. Bearing in mind the latter distinction, it is
|
||
readily explicable how even the gratification a person feels is
|
||
capable of displeasing him (as the joy of a necessitous but
|
||
good-natured individual on being made the heir of an affectionate
|
||
but penurious father), or how deep pain may still give pleasure to the
|
||
sufferer (as the sorrow of a widow over the death of her deserving
|
||
husband), or how there may be pleasure over and above gratification
|
||
(as in scientific pursuits), or how a pain (as, for example, hatred,
|
||
envy, and desire for revenge) may in addition be a source of
|
||
displeasure. Here the delight or aversion depends upon reason, and
|
||
is one with approbation or disapprobation. Gratification and pain,
|
||
on the other hand, can only depend upon feeling, or upon the
|
||
prospect of a possible well-being or the reverse (irrespective of
|
||
source).
|
||
The changing free play of sensations (which do not follow any
|
||
preconceived plan) is always a source of gratification, because it
|
||
promotes the feeling of health; and it is immaterial whether or not we
|
||
experience delight in the object of this play or even in the
|
||
gratification itself when estimated in the light of reason. Also
|
||
this gratification may amount to an affection, although we take no
|
||
interest in the object itself, or none, at least, proportionate to the
|
||
degree of the affection. We may divide the above play into that of
|
||
games of chance (Gluckspiel), harmony (Tonspiel), and wit
|
||
(Gedankenspiel). The first stands in need of an interest, be it of
|
||
vanity or selfseeking, but one which falls far short of that
|
||
centered in the adopted mode of procurement. All that the second
|
||
requires is the change of sensations, each of which has its bearing on
|
||
affection, though without attaining to the degree of an affection, and
|
||
excites aesthetic ideas. The third springs merely from the change of
|
||
the representations in the judgement, which, while unproductive of any
|
||
thought conveying an interest, yet enlivens the mind.
|
||
What a fund of gratification must be afforded by play, without our
|
||
having to fall back upon any consideration of interest, is a matter to
|
||
which all our evening parties bear witness for without play they
|
||
hardly ever escape falling flat. But the affections of hope, fear,
|
||
joy, anger, and derision here engage in play, as every moment they
|
||
change their parts and are so lively that, as by an internal motion,
|
||
the whole vital function of the body seems to be furthered by the
|
||
process-as is proved by a vivacity of the mind produced-although no
|
||
one comes by anything in the way of profit or instruction. But as
|
||
the play of chance is not one that is beautiful, we will here lay it
|
||
aside. Music, on the contrary, and what provokes laughter are two
|
||
kinds of play with aesthetic ideas, or even with representations of
|
||
the understanding, by which, all said and done, nothing is thought. By
|
||
mere force of change they yet are able to afford lively gratification.
|
||
This furnishes pretty clear evidence that the quickening effect of
|
||
both is physical, despite its being excited by ideas of the mind,
|
||
and that the feeling of health, arising from a movement of the
|
||
intestines answering to that play, makes up that entire
|
||
gratification of an animated gathering upon the spirit and
|
||
refinement of which we set such store. Not any estimate of harmony
|
||
in tones or flashes of wit, which, with its beauty, serves only as a
|
||
necessary vehicle, but rather the stimulated vital functions of the
|
||
body, the affection stirring the intestines and the diaphragm, and, in
|
||
a word, the feeling of health (of which we are only sensible upon some
|
||
such provocation) are what constitute the gratification we
|
||
experience at being able to reach the body through the soul and use
|
||
the latter as the physician of the former.
|
||
In music, the course of this play is from bodily sensation to
|
||
aesthetic ideas (which are the objects for the affections), and then
|
||
from these back again, but with gathered strength, to the body. In
|
||
jest (which just as much as the former deserves to be ranked rather as
|
||
an agreeable than a fine art) the play sets out from thoughts which
|
||
collectively, so far as seeking sensuous expression, engage the
|
||
activity of the body. In this presentation the understanding,
|
||
missing what it expected, suddenly lets go its hold, with the result
|
||
that the effect of this slackening is felt in the body by the
|
||
oscillation of the organs. This favours the restoration of the
|
||
equilibrium of the latter, and exerts a beneficial influence upon
|
||
the health.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 360}
|
||
Something absurd (something in which, therefore, the understanding
|
||
can of itself find no delight) must be present in whatever is to raise
|
||
a hearty convulsive laugh. Laughter is an all action arising from a
|
||
strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing. This very
|
||
reduction, at which certainly understanding cannot rejoice, is still
|
||
indirectly a source of very lively enjoyment for a moment. Its cause
|
||
must consequently lie in the influence of the representation upon
|
||
the body and the reciprocal effect of this upon the mind. This,
|
||
moreover, cannot depend upon the representation being objectively an
|
||
object of gratification (for how can we derive gratification from a
|
||
disappointment?) but must rest solely upon the fact that the reduction
|
||
is a mere play of representations, and, as such, produces an
|
||
equilibrium of the vital forces of the body.
|
||
Suppose that some one tells the following story: An Indian at an
|
||
Englishman's table in Surat saw a bottle of ale opened, and all the
|
||
beer turned into froth and flowing out. The repeated exclamations of
|
||
the Indian showed his great astonishment. "Well, what is so
|
||
wonderful in that?" asked the Englishman. "Oh, I'm not surprised
|
||
myself," said the Indian, "at its getting out, but at how you ever
|
||
managed to get it all in." At this we laugh, and it gives us hearty
|
||
pleasure. This is not because we think ourselves, maybe, more
|
||
quick-witted than this ignorant Indian, or because our understanding
|
||
here brings to our notice any other ground of delight. It is rather
|
||
that the bubble of our expectation was extended to the full and
|
||
suddenly went off into nothing. Or, again, take the case of the heir
|
||
of a wealthy relative being minded to make preparations for having the
|
||
funeral obsequies on a most imposing scale, but complaining that
|
||
things would not go right for him, because (as he said) "the more
|
||
money I give my mourners to look sad, the more pleased they look."
|
||
At this we laugh outright, and the reason lies in the fact that we had
|
||
an expectation which is suddenly reduced to nothing. We must be
|
||
careful to observe that the reduction is not one into the positive
|
||
contrary of an expected object-for that is always something, and may
|
||
frequently pain us-but must be a reduction to nothing. For where a
|
||
person arouses great expectation by recounting some tale, and at the
|
||
close its untruth becomes at once apparent to us, we are displeased at
|
||
it. So it is, for instance, with the tale of people whose hair from
|
||
excess of grief is said to have turned white in a single night. On the
|
||
other hand, if a wag, wishing to cap the story, tells with the
|
||
utmost circumstantiality of a merchant's grief, who, on his return
|
||
journey from India to Europe with all his wealth in merchandise, was
|
||
obliged by stress of storm to throw everything overboard, and
|
||
grieved to such an extent that in the selfsame night his wig turned
|
||
grey, we laugh and enjoy the tale. This is because we keep for a
|
||
time playing on our own mistake about an object otherwise
|
||
indifferent to us, or rather on the idea we ourselves were following
|
||
out, and, beating it to and fro, just as if it were a ball eluding our
|
||
grasp, when all we intend to do is just to get it into our hands and
|
||
hold it tight. Here our. gratification is. not excited by a knave or a
|
||
fool getting a rebuff: for, even on its own account, the latter tale
|
||
told with an air of seriousness would of itself be enough to set a
|
||
whole table into roars of laughter; and the other matter would
|
||
ordinarily not be worth a moment's thought.
|
||
It is observable that in all such cases the joke must have something
|
||
in it capable of momentarily deceiving us. Hence, when the semblance
|
||
vanishes into nothing, the mind looks back in order to try it over
|
||
again, and thus by a rapidly succeeding tension and relaxation it is
|
||
jerked to and fro and put in oscillation. As the snapping of what was,
|
||
as it were, tightening up the string takes place suddenly (not by a
|
||
gradual loosening), the oscillation must bring about a mental movement
|
||
and a sympathetic internal movement of the body. This continues
|
||
involuntarily and produces fatigue, but in so doing it also affords
|
||
recreation (the effects of a motion conducive to health).
|
||
For supposing we assume that some movement in the bodily organs is
|
||
associated sympathetically with all our thoughts, it is readily
|
||
intelligible how the sudden act above referred to, of shifting the
|
||
mind now to one standpoint and now to the other, to enable it to
|
||
contemplate its object, may involve a corresponding and reciprocal
|
||
straining and slackening of the elastic parts of our intestines, which
|
||
communicates itself to the diaphragm (and resembles that felt by
|
||
ticklish people), in the course of which the lungs expel the air
|
||
with rapidly succeeding interruptions, resulting in a movement
|
||
conducive to health. This alone, and not what goes on in the mind,
|
||
is the proper cause of the gratification in a thought that at bottom
|
||
represents nothing. Voltaire said that heaven has given us two
|
||
things to compensate us for the many miseries of life, hope and sleep.
|
||
He might have added laughter to the list-if only the means of exciting
|
||
it in men of intelligence were as ready to hand, and the wit or
|
||
originality of humour which it requires were not just as rare as the
|
||
talent is common for inventing stuff that splits the head, as mystic
|
||
speculators do, or that breaks your neck, as the genius does, or
|
||
that harrows the heart as sentimental novelists do (aye, and moralists
|
||
of the same type).
|
||
We may, therefore as I conceive, make Epicurus a present of the
|
||
point that all gratification, even when occasioned by concepts that
|
||
evoke aesthetic ideas, is animal, i.e., bodily sensation. For from
|
||
this admission the spiritual feeling of respect for moral ideas, which
|
||
is not one of gratification, but a self-esteem (an esteem for humanity
|
||
within us) that raises us above the need of gratification, suffers not
|
||
a whit-no nor even the less noble feeling of taste.
|
||
{SEC1|BK2 ^paragraph 365}
|
||
In naivete we meet with a joint product of both the above. Naivete
|
||
is the breaking forth of the ingenuousness originally natural to
|
||
humanity, in opposition to the art of disguising oneself that has
|
||
become a second nature. We laugh at the simplicity that is as yet a
|
||
stranger to dissimulation, but we rejoice the while over the
|
||
simplicity of nature that thwarts that art. We await the commonplace
|
||
manner of artificial utterance, thoughtfully addressed to a fair show,
|
||
and lo! nature stands before us in unsullied innocence-nature that
|
||
we were quite unprepared to meet, and that he who laid it bare had
|
||
also no intention of revealing. That the outward appearance, fair
|
||
but false, that usually assumes such importance in our judgement, is
|
||
here, at a stroke, turned to a nullity, that, as it were, the rogue in
|
||
us is nakedly exposed, calls forth the movement of the mind, in two
|
||
successive and opposite directions, agitating the body at the same
|
||
time with wholesome motion. But that something infinitely better
|
||
than any accepted code of manners, namely purity of mind (or at
|
||
least a vestige of such purity), has not become wholly extinct in
|
||
human nature, infuses seriousness and reverence into this play of
|
||
judgement. But since it is only a manifestation that obtrudes itself
|
||
for a moment, and the veil of a dissembling art is soon drawn over
|
||
it again, there enters into the above feelings a touch of pity. This
|
||
is an emotion of tenderness, playful in its way, that thus readily
|
||
admits of combination with this sort of genial laughter. And, in fact,
|
||
this emotion is as a rule associated with it, and, at the same time,
|
||
is wont to make amends to the person who provides such food for our
|
||
merriment for his embarrassment at not being wise after the manner
|
||
of men. For that-reason art of being naif is a contradiction. But it
|
||
is quite possible to give a representation of naivete in a
|
||
fictitious personage, and, rare as the art is, it is a fine art.
|
||
With this naivete we must not confuse homely simplicity, which only
|
||
avoids spoiling nature by artificiality, because it has no notion of
|
||
the conventions of good society.
|
||
The humorous manner may also be ranked as a thing which in its
|
||
enlivening influence is clearly allied to the gratification provoked
|
||
by laughter. It belongs to originality of mind (des Geistes), though
|
||
not to the talent for fine art. Humour, in a good sense, means the
|
||
talent for being able to put oneself at will into a certain frame of
|
||
mind in which everything is estimated on lines that go quite off the
|
||
beaten track (a topsy-turvy view of things), and yet on lines that
|
||
follow certain principles, rational in the case of such a mental
|
||
temperament. A person with whom such variations are not a matter of
|
||
choice is said to have humours; but if a person can assume them
|
||
voluntarily and of set purpose (on behalf of a lively presentation
|
||
drawn from a ludicrous contrast), he and his way of speaking are
|
||
termed humorous. This manner belongs, however, to agreeable rather
|
||
than to fine art, because the object of the latter must always have an
|
||
evident intrinsic worth about it, and thus demands a certain
|
||
seriousness in its presentation, as taste does in estimating it.
|
||
-
|
||
|
||
PART1|SEC2
|
||
FIRST PART CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT
|
||
SECTION II. DIALECTIC OF AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 55.
|
||
-
|
||
For a power of judgement to be dialectical it must first of all be
|
||
rationalizing; that is to say, its judgements must lay claim to
|
||
universality,* and do so a priori, for it is in the antithesis of such
|
||
judgements that dialectic consists. Hence there is nothing dialectical
|
||
in the irreconcilability of aesthetic judgements of sense (upon the
|
||
agreeable and disagreeable). And in so far as each person appeals
|
||
merely to his own private taste, even the conflict of judgements of
|
||
taste does not form a dialectic of taste-for no one is proposing to
|
||
make his own judgement into a universal rule. Hence the only concept
|
||
left to us of a dialectic affecting taste is one of a dialectic of the
|
||
critique of taste (not of taste itself) in respect of its
|
||
principles: for, on the question of the ground of the possibility of
|
||
judgements of taste in general, mutually conflicting concepts
|
||
naturally and unavoidably make their appearance. The transcendental
|
||
critique of taste will, therefore, only include a part capable of
|
||
bearing the name of a dialectic of the aesthetic judgement if we
|
||
find an antinomy of the principles of this faculty which throws
|
||
doubt upon its conformity to law, and hence also upon its inner
|
||
possibility.
|
||
-
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 5}
|
||
*Any judgement which sets up to be universal may be termed a
|
||
rationalizing judgement (indicium ratiocinans); for so far as
|
||
universal it may serve as the major premiss of a syllogism. On the
|
||
other hand, only a judgement which is thought as the conclusion of a
|
||
syllogism, and, therefore, as having an a priori foundation, can be
|
||
called rational (indicium ratiocinatum).
|
||
-
|
||
SS 56. Representation of the antinomy of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
The first commonplace of taste is contained in the proposition under
|
||
cover of which every one devoid of taste thinks to shelter himself
|
||
from reproach: every one has his own taste. This is only another way
|
||
of saying that the determining ground of this judgement is merely
|
||
subjective (gratification or pain), and that the judgement has no
|
||
right to the necessary agreement of others.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 10}
|
||
Its second commonplace, to which even those resort who concede the
|
||
right of the judgement of taste to pronounce with validity for every
|
||
one, is: there is no disputing about taste. This amounts to saying
|
||
that, even though the determining ground of a judgement of taste be
|
||
objective, it is not reducible to definite concepts, so that in
|
||
respect of the judgement itself no decision can be reached by
|
||
proofs, although it is quite open to us to contend upon the matter,
|
||
and to contend with right. For though contention and dispute have this
|
||
point in common, that they aim at bringing judgements into
|
||
accordance out of and by means of their mutual opposition; yet they
|
||
differ in the latter hoping to effect this from definite concepts,
|
||
as grounds of proof, and, consequently, adopting objective concepts as
|
||
grounds of the judgement. But where this is considered
|
||
impracticable, dispute is regarded as alike out of the question.
|
||
Between these two commonplaces an intermediate proposition is
|
||
readily seen to be missing. It is one which has certainly not become
|
||
proverbial, but yet it is at the back of every one's mind. It is
|
||
that there may be contention about taste (although not a dispute).
|
||
This proposition, however, involves the contrary of the first one. For
|
||
in a manner in which contention is to be allowed, there must be a:
|
||
hope of coming to terms. Hence one must be able to reckon on grounds
|
||
of judgement that possess more than private Validity and are thus
|
||
not merely subjective. And yet the above principle (Every one has
|
||
his own taste) is directly opposed to this.
|
||
The principle of taste, therefore, exhibits the following antinomy:
|
||
1. Thesis. The judgement of taste is not based upon concepts; for,
|
||
if it were, it would be open to dispute (decision by means of proofs).
|
||
2. Antithesis. The judgement of taste is based on concepts; for
|
||
otherwise, despite diversity of judgement, there could be no room even
|
||
for contention in the matter (a claim to the necessary agreement of
|
||
others with this judgement).
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 15}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 57. Solution of the antinomy of taste.
|
||
-
|
||
There is no possibility of removing the conflict of the above
|
||
principles, which underlie every judgement of taste (and which are
|
||
only the two peculiarities of the judgement of taste previously set
|
||
out in the Analytic) except by showing that the concept to which the
|
||
object is to refer in a judgement of this kind is not taken in the
|
||
same sense in both maxims of the aesthetic judgement; that this double
|
||
sense, or point of view, in our estimate, is necessary for our power
|
||
of transcendental judgement; and that nevertheless the false
|
||
appearance arising from the confusion of one with the other is a
|
||
natural illusion, and so unavoidable.
|
||
The judgement of taste must have reference to some concept or other,
|
||
as otherwise it would be absolutely impossible for it to lay claim
|
||
to necessary validity for every one. Yet it need not on that account
|
||
be provable from a concept. For a concept may be either
|
||
determinable, or else at once intrinsically undetermined and
|
||
indeterminable. A concept of the understanding, which is
|
||
determinable by means of predicates borrowed from sensible intuition
|
||
and capable of corresponding to it, is of the first kind. But of the
|
||
second kind is the transcendental rational concept of the
|
||
supersensible, which lies at the basis of all that sensible
|
||
intuition and is, therefore, incapable of being further determined
|
||
theoretically.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 20}
|
||
Now the judgement of taste applies to objects of sense, but not so
|
||
as to determine a concept of them for the understanding; for it is not
|
||
a cognitive judgement. Hence it is a singular representation of
|
||
intuition referable to the feeling of pleasure, and, as such, only a
|
||
private judgement. And to that extent it would be limited in its
|
||
validity to the individual judging: the object is for me an object
|
||
of delight, for others it may be otherwise; every one to his taste.
|
||
For all that, the judgement of taste contains beyond doubt an
|
||
enlarged reference on the part of the representation of the object
|
||
(and at the same time on the part of the subject also), which lays the
|
||
foundation of an extension of judgements of this kind to necessity for
|
||
every one. This must of necessity be founded upon some concept or
|
||
other, but such a concept as does not admit of being determined by
|
||
intuition, and affords no knowledge of anything. Hence, too, it is a
|
||
concept which does not afford proof of the judgement of taste. But the
|
||
mere pure rational concept of the supersensible lying at the basis
|
||
of the object (and of the judging subject for that matter) as object
|
||
of sense, and thus as phenomenon, is just such a concept. For unless
|
||
such a point of view were adopted there would be no means of saving
|
||
the claim of the judgement of taste to universal validity. And if
|
||
the concept forming the required basis were a concept of
|
||
understanding, though a mere confused one, as, let us say, of
|
||
perfection, answering to which the sensible intuition of the beautiful
|
||
might be adduced, then it would be at least intrinsically possible
|
||
to found the judgement of taste upon proofs, which contradicts the
|
||
thesis.
|
||
All contradiction disappears, however, if I say: The judgement of
|
||
taste does depend upon a concept (of a general ground of the
|
||
subjective finality of nature for the power of judgement), but one
|
||
from which nothing can be cognized in respect of the object, and
|
||
nothing proved, because it is in itself indeterminable and useless for
|
||
knowledge. Yet, by means of this very concept, it acquires at the same
|
||
time validity for every one (but with each individual, no doubt, as
|
||
a singular judgement immediately accompanying his intuition):
|
||
because its determining ground lies, perhaps, in the concept of what
|
||
may be regarded as the supersensible substrate of humanity.
|
||
The solution of an antinomy turns solely on the possibility of two
|
||
apparently conflicting propositions not being in fact contradictory,
|
||
but rather being capable of consisting together, although the
|
||
explanation of the possibility of their concept transcends our
|
||
faculties of cognition. That this illusion is also natural and for
|
||
human reason unavoidable, as well as why it is so, and remains so,
|
||
although upon the solution of the apparent contradiction it no
|
||
longer misleads us, may be made intelligible from the above
|
||
considerations.
|
||
For the concept, which the universal validity of a judgement must
|
||
have for its basis, is taken in the same sense in both the conflicting
|
||
judgements, yet two opposite predicates are asserted of it. The thesis
|
||
should therefore read: The judgement of taste is not based on
|
||
determinate concepts; but the antithesis: The judgement of taste
|
||
does rest upon a concept, although an indeterminate one (that, namely,
|
||
of the supersensible substrate of phenomena); and then there would
|
||
be no conflict between them.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 25}
|
||
Beyond removing this conflict between the claims and
|
||
counter-claims of taste we can do nothing. To supply a determinate
|
||
objective principle of taste in accordance with which its judgements
|
||
might be derived, tested, and proved, is an absolute impossibility,
|
||
for then it would not be a judgement of taste. The subjective
|
||
principle-that is to say, the indeterminate idea of the
|
||
supersensible within us -can only be indicated as the unique key to
|
||
the riddle of this faculty, itself concealed from us in its sources;
|
||
and there is no means of making it any more intelligible.
|
||
The antinomy here exhibited and resolved rests upon the proper
|
||
concept of taste as a merely reflective aesthetic judgement, and the
|
||
two seemingly conflicting principles are reconciled on the ground that
|
||
they may both be true, and this is sufficient. If, on the other
|
||
hand, owing to the fact that the representation lying at the basis
|
||
of the judgement of taste is singular, the determining ground of taste
|
||
is taken, as by some it is, to be agreeableness, or, as others,
|
||
looking to its universal validity, would have it, the principle of
|
||
perfection, and if the definition of taste is framed accordingly,
|
||
the result is an antinomy which is absolutely irresolvable unless we
|
||
show the falsity of both propositions as contraries (not as simple
|
||
contradictories). This would force the conclusion that the concept
|
||
upon which each is founded is self-contradictory. Thus it is evident
|
||
that the removal of the antinomy of the aesthetic judgement pursues
|
||
a course similar to that followed by the Critique in the solution of
|
||
the antinomies of pure theoretical reason; and that the antinomies,
|
||
both here and in the Critique of Practical Reason, compel us,
|
||
whether we like it or not, to look beyond the horizon of the sensible,
|
||
and to seek in the supersensible the point of union of all our
|
||
faculties a priori: for we are left with no other expedient to bring
|
||
reason into harmony with itself.
|
||
-
|
||
REMARK 1.
|
||
-
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 30}
|
||
We find such frequent occasion in transcendental philosophy for
|
||
distinguishing ideas from concepts of the understanding that it may be
|
||
of use to introduce technical terms answering to the distinction
|
||
between them. I think that no objection will be raised to my proposing
|
||
some. Ideas, in the most comprehensive sense of the word, are
|
||
representations referred to an object according to a certain principle
|
||
(subjective or objective), in so far as they can still never become
|
||
a cognition of it. They are either referred to an intuition, in
|
||
accordance with a merely subjective principle of the harmony of the
|
||
cognitive faculties (imagination and understanding), and are then
|
||
called aesthetic; or else they are referred to a concept according
|
||
to an objective principle and yet are incapable of ever furnishing a
|
||
cognition of the object, and are called rational ideas. In the
|
||
latter case, the concept is a transcendent concept, and, as such,
|
||
differs from a concept of understanding, for which an adequately
|
||
answering experience may always be supplied, and which, on that
|
||
account, is called immanent.
|
||
An aesthetic idea cannot become a cognition, because it is an
|
||
intuition (of the imagination) for which an adequate concept can never
|
||
be found. A rational idea can never become a cognition, because it
|
||
involves a concept (of the supersensible), for which a commensurate
|
||
intuition can never be given.
|
||
Now the aesthetic idea might, I think, be called an inexponible
|
||
representation of the imagination, the rational idea, on the other
|
||
hand, an indemonstrable concept of reason. The production of both is
|
||
presupposed to be not altogether groundless, but rather (following the
|
||
above explanation of an idea in general) to take place in obedience to
|
||
certain principles of the cognitive faculties to which they belong
|
||
(subjective principles in the case of the former and objective in that
|
||
of the latter).
|
||
Concepts of the understanding must, as such, always be
|
||
demonstrable (if, as in anatomy, demonstration is understood in the
|
||
sense merely of presentation). In other words, the object answering to
|
||
such concepts must always be capable of being given an intuition (pure
|
||
or empirical); for only in this way can they become cognitions. The
|
||
concept of magnitude may be given a priori in the intuition of
|
||
space, e.g., of the right line, etc.; the concept of cause in
|
||
impenetrability, in the impact of bodies, etc. Consequently both may
|
||
be verified by means of an empirical intuition, i.e., the thought of
|
||
them may be indicated (demonstrated, exhibited) in an example; and
|
||
this it must be possible to do: for otherwise there would be no
|
||
certainty of the thought not being empty, i.e., having no object.
|
||
In logic the expressions demonstrable or indemonstrable are
|
||
ordinarily employed only in respect of propositions. A better
|
||
designation would be to call the former propositions only mediately,
|
||
and the latter, propositions immediately, certain. For pure
|
||
philosophy, too, has propositions of both these kinds-meaning
|
||
thereby true propositions which are in the one case capable, and in
|
||
the other incapable, of proof. But, in its character of philosophy,
|
||
while it can, no doubt, prove on a priori grounds, it cannot
|
||
demonstrate-unless we wish to give the complete go-by to the meaning
|
||
of the word which makes demonstrate (ostendere, exhibere) equivalent
|
||
to giving an accompanying presentation of the concept in intuition (be
|
||
it in a proof or in a definition). Where the intuition is a priori
|
||
this is called its construction, but when even the intuition is
|
||
empirical, we have still got the illustration of the object, by
|
||
which means objective reality is assured to the concept. Thus an
|
||
anatomist is said to demonstrate the human eye when he renders the
|
||
concept, of which he has previously given a discursive exposition,
|
||
intuitable by means of the dissection of that organ.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 35}
|
||
It follows from the above that the rational concept of the
|
||
supersensible substrate of all phenomena generally, or even of that
|
||
which must be laid at the basis of our elective will in respect of
|
||
moral laws, i.e., the rational concept of transcendental freedom, is
|
||
at once specifically an indemonstrable-concept, and a rational idea,
|
||
whereas virtue is so in a measure. For nothing can be given which in
|
||
itself qualitatively answers in experience to the rational concept
|
||
of the former, while in the case of virtue no empirical product of the
|
||
above causality attains the degree that the rational idea prescribes
|
||
as the rule.
|
||
Just as the imagination, in the case of a rational idea, fails
|
||
with its intuitions to attain to the given concept, so
|
||
understanding, in the case of an aesthetic idea, fails with its
|
||
concepts ever to attain to the completeness of the internal
|
||
intuition which imagination conjoins with a given representation.
|
||
Now since the reduction of a representation of the imagination to
|
||
concepts is equivalent to giving its exponents, the aesthetic idea may
|
||
be called on inexponible representation of the imagination (in its
|
||
free play). I shall have an opportunity hereafter of dealing more
|
||
fully with ideas of this kind. At present I confine myself to the
|
||
remark, that both kinds of ideas, aesthetic ideas as well as rational,
|
||
are bound to have their principles, and that the seat of these
|
||
principles must in both cases be reason-the latter depending upon
|
||
the objective, the former upon the subjective, principles of its
|
||
employment.
|
||
Consonantly with this, GENIUS may also be defined as the faculty
|
||
of aesthetic ideas. This serves at the same time to point out the
|
||
reason why it is nature (the nature of the individual) and not a set
|
||
purpose, that in products of genius gives the rule to art (as the
|
||
production of the beautiful). For the beautiful must not be
|
||
estimated according to concepts, but by the final mode in which the
|
||
imagination is attuned so as to accord with the faculty of concepts
|
||
generally; and so rule and precept are incapable of serving as the
|
||
requisite subjective standard for that aesthetic and unconditioned
|
||
finality in fine art which has to make a warranted claim to being
|
||
bound to please every one. Rather must such a standard be sought in
|
||
the element of mere nature in the subject, which cannot be
|
||
comprehended under rules or concepts, that is to say, the
|
||
supersensible substrate of all the subject's faculties (unattainable
|
||
by any concept of understanding), and consequently in that which forms
|
||
the point of reference for the harmonious accord of all our
|
||
faculties of cognition-the production of which accord is the
|
||
ultimate end set by the intelligible basis of our nature. Thus alone
|
||
is it possible for a subjective and yet universally valid principle
|
||
a priori to lie at the basis of that finality for which no objective
|
||
principle can be prescribed.
|
||
-
|
||
REMARK 2.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 40}
|
||
-
|
||
The following important observation here naturally presents
|
||
itself: There are three kinds of antinomies of pure reason, which,
|
||
however, all agree in forcing reason to abandon the otherwise very
|
||
natural assumption which takes the objects of sense for
|
||
things-in-themselves, and to regard them, instead, merely as
|
||
phenomena, and to lay at their basis an intelligible substrate
|
||
(something supersensible, the concept of which is only an idea and
|
||
affords no proper knowledge). Apart from some such antinomy, reason
|
||
could never bring itself to take such a step as-to adopt a principle
|
||
so severely restricting the field of its speculation, and to submit to
|
||
sacrifices involving the complete dissipation of so many otherwise
|
||
brilliant hopes. For even now that it is recompensed for this loss
|
||
by the prospect of a proportionately wider scope of action from a
|
||
practical point of view, it is not without a pang of regret that it
|
||
appears to part company with those hopes, and to break away from the
|
||
old ties.
|
||
The reason for there being three kinds of antinomies is to be
|
||
found in the fact that there are three faculties of cognition,
|
||
understanding, judgement, and reason, each of which, being a higher
|
||
faculty of cognition, must have its a priori principles. For, so far
|
||
as reason passes judgement upon these principles themselves and
|
||
their employment, it inexorably requires the unconditioned for the
|
||
given conditioned in respect of them all. This can never be found
|
||
unless the sensible, instead of being regarded as inherently
|
||
appurtenant to things-in-themselves, is treated as a mere
|
||
phenomenon, and, as such, being made to rest upon something
|
||
supersensible (the intelligible substrate of external and internal
|
||
nature) as the thing-in-itself. There is then (1) for the cognitive
|
||
faculty an antinomy of reason in respect of the theoretical employment
|
||
of understanding carried to the point of the unconditioned; (2) for
|
||
the feeling of pleasure and displeasure an antinomy of reason in
|
||
respect of the aesthetic employment of judgement; (3) for the
|
||
faculty Of desire an antinomy in respect of the practical employment
|
||
of self-legislative reason. For all these faculties have their
|
||
fundamental a priori principles, and, following an imperative demand
|
||
of reason, must be able to judge and to determine their object
|
||
unconditionally in accordance with these principles.
|
||
As to two of the antinomies of these higher cognitive faculties,
|
||
those, namely, of their theoretical and of their practical employment,
|
||
we have already shown elsewhere both that they are inevitable, if no
|
||
cognisance is taken in such judgements of a supersensible substrate of
|
||
the given objects as phenomena, and, on the other hand, that they
|
||
can be solved the moment this is done. Now, as to the antinomy
|
||
incident to the employment of judgement in conformity with the
|
||
demand of reason, and the solution of it here given, we may say that
|
||
to avoid facing it there are but the following alternatives. It is
|
||
open to us to deny that any a priori principle lies at the basis of
|
||
the aesthetic judgement of taste, with the result that all claim to
|
||
the necessity of a universal consensus of opinion is an idle and empty
|
||
delusion, and that a judgement of taste only deserves to be considered
|
||
to this extent correct, that it so happens that a number share the
|
||
same opinion, and even this, not, in truth, because an a priori
|
||
principle is presumed to lie at the back of this agreement, but rather
|
||
(as with the taste of the palate) because of the contingently
|
||
resembling organization of the individuals. Or else, in the
|
||
alternative, we should have to suppose that the judgement of taste
|
||
is in fact a disguised judgement of reason on the perfection
|
||
discovered in a thing and the reference of the manifold in it to an
|
||
end, and that it is consequently only called aesthetic on account of
|
||
the confusion that here besets our reflection, although
|
||
fundamentally it is teleological. In this latter case the solution
|
||
of the antinomy with the assistance of transcendental ideas might be
|
||
declared otiose and nugatory, and the above laws of taste thus
|
||
reconciled with the objects of sense, not as mere phenomena, but
|
||
even as things-in-themselves. How unsatisfactory both of those
|
||
alternatives alike are as a means of escape has been shown in
|
||
several places in our exposition of judgements of taste.
|
||
If, however, our deduction is at least credited with having been
|
||
worked out on correct lines, even though it may not have been
|
||
sufficiently clear in all its details, three ideas then stand out in
|
||
evidence. Firstly, there is the supersensible in general, without
|
||
further determination, as substrate of nature; secondly, this same
|
||
supersensible as principle of the subjective finality of nature for
|
||
our cognitive faculties; thirdly, the same supersensible again, as
|
||
principle of the ends of freedom, and principle of the common accord
|
||
of these ends with freedom in the moral sphere.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 45}
|
||
-
|
||
SS 58. The idealism of the finality alike of nature
|
||
and of art, as the unique principle of the
|
||
aesthetic judgement.
|
||
-
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 50}
|
||
The principle of taste may, to begin with, be placed on either of
|
||
two footings. For taste may be said invariably to judge on empirical
|
||
grounds of determination and such, therefore, as are only given a
|
||
posteriori through sense, or else it may be allowed to judge on an a
|
||
priori ground. The former would be the empiricism of the critique of
|
||
taste, the latter its rationalism. The first would obliterate the
|
||
distinction that marks off the object of our delight from the
|
||
agreeable; the second, supposing the judgement rested upon determinate
|
||
concepts, would obliterate its distinction from the good. In this
|
||
way beauty would have its locus standi in the world completely denied,
|
||
and nothing but the dignity of a separate name, betokening, maybe, a
|
||
certain blend of both the above-named kinds of delight, would be
|
||
left in its stead. But we have shown the existence of grounds of
|
||
delight which are a priori, and which therefore, can consist with
|
||
the principle of rationalism, and which are yet incapable of being
|
||
grasped by definite concepts.
|
||
As against the above, we may say that the rationalism of the
|
||
principle of taste may take the form either of the realism of finality
|
||
or of its idealism. Now, as a judgement of taste is not a cognitive
|
||
judgement, and as beauty is not a property of the object considered in
|
||
its own account, the rationalism of the principle of taste can never
|
||
be placed in the fact that the finality in this judgement is
|
||
regarded in thought as objective. In other words, the judgement is not
|
||
directed theoretically, nor, therefore, logically, either (no matter
|
||
if only in a confused estimate), to the perfection of the object,
|
||
but only aesthetically to the harmonizing of its representation in the
|
||
imagination with the essential principles of judgement generally in
|
||
the subject. For this reason the judgement of taste, and the
|
||
distinction between its realism and its idealism, can only, even on
|
||
the principle of rationalism, depend upon its subjective finality
|
||
interpreted in one or other of two ways. Either such subjective
|
||
finality is, in the first case, a harmony with our judgement pursued
|
||
as an actual (intentional) end of nature (or of art), or else, in
|
||
the second case, it is only a supervening final harmony with the needs
|
||
of our faculty of judgement in its relation to nature and the forms
|
||
which nature produces in accordance with particular laws, and one that
|
||
is independent of an end, spontaneous and contingent.
|
||
The beautiful forms displayed in the organic world all plead
|
||
eloquently on the side of the realism of the aesthetic finality of
|
||
nature in support of the plausible assumption that beneath the
|
||
production of the beautiful there must lie a preconceived idea in
|
||
the producing cause-that is to say an end acting in the interest of
|
||
our imagination. Flowers, blossoms, even the shapes of plants as a
|
||
whole, the elegance of animal formations of all kinds, unnecessary for
|
||
the discharge of any function on their part, but chosen as it were
|
||
with an eye to our taste; and, beyond all else, the variety and
|
||
harmony in the array of colours (in the pheasant, in crustacea, in
|
||
insects, down even to the meanest flowers), so pleasing and charming
|
||
to the eyes, but which, inasmuch as they touch the bare surf ace,
|
||
and do not even here in any way all act the structure, of these
|
||
creatures-a matter which might have a necessary bearing on their
|
||
internal ends-seem to be planned entirely with a view to outward
|
||
appearance: all these lend great weight to the mode of explanation
|
||
which assumes actual ends of nature in favour of our aesthetic
|
||
judgement.
|
||
On the other hand, not alone does reason, with its maxims
|
||
enjoining upon us in all cases to avoid, as far as possible, any
|
||
unnecessary multiplication of principles, set itself against this
|
||
assumption, but we have nature in its free formations displaying on
|
||
all sides extensive mechanical proclivity to producing forms seemingly
|
||
made, as it were, for the aesthetic employment of our judgement,
|
||
without affording the least support to the supposition of a need for
|
||
anything over and above its mechanism, as mere nature, to enable
|
||
them to be final for our judgement apart from their being grounded
|
||
upon any idea. The above expression, "free formations" of nature,
|
||
is, however, here used to denote such as are originally set up in a
|
||
fluid at rest where the volatilization or separation of some
|
||
constituent (sometimes merely of caloric) leaves the residue on
|
||
solidification to assume a definite shape or structure (figure or
|
||
texture) which differs with specific differences of the matter, but
|
||
for the same matter is invariable. Here, however, it is taken for
|
||
granted that, as the true meaning of a fluid requires, the matter in
|
||
the fluid is completely dissolved and not a mere admixture of solid
|
||
particles simply held there in suspension.
|
||
The formation, then, takes place by a concursion, i.e., by a
|
||
sudden solidification- not by a gradual transition from the fluid to
|
||
the solid state, but, as it were, by a leap. This transition is termed
|
||
crystallization. Freezing water offers the most familiar instance of a
|
||
formation of this kind. There the process begins by straight threads
|
||
of ice forming. These unite at angles of 60", whilst others
|
||
similarly attach themselves to them at every point until the whole has
|
||
turned into ice. But while this is going on, the water between the
|
||
threads of ice does not keep getting gradually more viscous, but
|
||
remains as thoroughly fluid as it would be at a much higher
|
||
temperature, although it is perfectly ice-cold. The matter that
|
||
frees itself that makes its sudden escape at the moment of
|
||
solidification-is a considerable quantum of caloric. As this was
|
||
merely required to preserve fluidity, its disappearance leaves the
|
||
existing ice not a whit colder than the water which but a moment
|
||
before was there as fluid.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 55}
|
||
There are many salts and also stones of a crystalline figure which
|
||
owe their origin in like manner to some earthly substance being
|
||
dissolved in water under the influence of agencies little
|
||
understood. The drusy configurations of many minerals, of the
|
||
cubical sulphide of lead, of the red silver ore, etc., are
|
||
presumably also similarly formed in water, and by the concursion of
|
||
their particles, on their being forced by some cause or other to
|
||
relinquish this vehicle and to unite among themselves in definite
|
||
external shapes.
|
||
But, further, all substances rendered fluid by heat, which have
|
||
become solid as the result of cooling, give, when broken, internal
|
||
evidences of a definite texture, thus suggesting the inference that
|
||
only for the interference of their own weight or the disturbance of
|
||
the air, the exterior would also have exhibited their proper
|
||
specific shape. This has been observed in the case of some metals
|
||
where the exterior of a molten mass has hardened, but the interior
|
||
remained fluid, and then. owing to the withdrawal of the still fluid
|
||
portion in the interior, there has been an undisturbed concursion of
|
||
the remaining parts on the inside. A number of such mineral
|
||
crystallizations, such as spars, hematite, aragonite, frequently
|
||
present extremely beautiful shapes such as it might take art all its
|
||
time to devise; and the halo in the grotto of Antiparos is merely
|
||
the work of water percolating through strata of gypsum.
|
||
The fluid state is, to all appearance, on the whole older than the
|
||
solid, and plants as well as animal bodies are built up out of fluid
|
||
nutritive substance, so far as this takes form undisturbed-in the case
|
||
of the latter, admittedly, in obedience, primarily, to a certain
|
||
original bent of nature directed to ends (which, as will be shown in
|
||
Part II, must not be judged aesthetically, but teleologically by the
|
||
principle of realism); but still all the while, perhaps, also
|
||
following the universal law of the affinity of substances in the way
|
||
they shoot together and form in freedom. In the same way, again, where
|
||
an atmosphere, which is a composite of different kinds of gas, is
|
||
charged with watery fluids, and these separate from it owing to a
|
||
reduction of the temperature, they produce snow-figures of shapes
|
||
differing with the actual composition of the atmosphere. These are
|
||
frequently of very artistic appearance and of extreme beauty. So
|
||
without at all derogating from the teleological principle by which
|
||
an organization is judged, it is readily conceivable how with beauty
|
||
of flowers, of the plumage of birds, of crustacea, both as to their
|
||
shape and their colour, we have only what may be ascribed to nature
|
||
and its capacity for originating in free activity aesthetically
|
||
final forms, independently of any particular guiding ends, according
|
||
to chemical laws, by means of the chemical integration of the
|
||
substance requisite for the organization.
|
||
But what shows plainly that the principle of the ideality of the
|
||
finality in the beauty of nature is the one upon which we ourselves
|
||
invariably take our stand in our aesthetic judgements, forbidding us
|
||
to have recourse to any realism of a natural end in favour of our
|
||
faculty of representation as a principle of explanation, is that in
|
||
our general estimate of beauty we seek its standard a priori in
|
||
ourselves, and, that the aesthetic faculty is itself legislative in
|
||
respect of the judgement whether anything is beautiful or not. This
|
||
could not be so on the assumption of a realism of the finality of
|
||
nature; because in that case we should have to go to nature for
|
||
instruction as to what we should deem beautiful, and the judgement
|
||
of taste would be subject to empirical principles. For in such an
|
||
estimate the question does not turn on what nature is, or even on what
|
||
it is for us in the way of an end, but on how we receive it. For
|
||
nature to have fashioned its forms for our delight would inevitably
|
||
imply an objective finality on the part of nature, instead of a
|
||
subjective finality resting on the play of imagination in its freedom,
|
||
where it is we who receive nature with favour, and not nature that
|
||
does us a favour. That nature affords us an opportunity for perceiving
|
||
the inner finality in the relation of our mental powers engaged in the
|
||
estimate of certain of its products, and, indeed, such a finality as
|
||
arising from a supersensible basis is to be pronounced necessary and
|
||
of universal validity, is a property of nature which cannot belong
|
||
to it as its end, or rather, cannot be estimated by us to be such an
|
||
end. For otherwise the judgement that would be determined by reference
|
||
to such an end would found upon heteronomy, instead of founding upon
|
||
autonomy and being free, as befits a judgement of taste.
|
||
The principle of the idealism of finality is still more clearly
|
||
apparent in fine art. For the point that sensations do not enable us
|
||
to adopt an aesthetic realism of finality (which would make art merely
|
||
agreeable instead of beautiful) is one which it enjoys in common
|
||
with beautiful nature. But the further point that the delight
|
||
arising from aesthetic ideas must not be made dependent upon the
|
||
successful attainment of determinate ends (as an art mechanically
|
||
directed to results), and that, consequently, even in the case of
|
||
the rationalism of the principle, an ideality of the ends and not
|
||
their reality is fundamental, is brought home to us by the fact that
|
||
fine art, as such, must not be regarded as a product of
|
||
understanding and science, but of genius, and must, therefore,
|
||
derive its rule from aesthetic ideas, which are essentially
|
||
different from rational ideas of determinate ends.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 60}
|
||
Just as the ideality of objects of sense as phenomena is the only
|
||
way of explaining the possibility of their forms admitting of a priori
|
||
determination, so, also, the idealism of the finality in estimating
|
||
the beautiful in nature and in art is the only hypothesis upon which a
|
||
critique can explain the possibility of a judgement of taste that
|
||
demands a priori validity for every one (yet without basing the
|
||
finality represented in the object upon concepts).
|
||
-
|
||
SS 59. Beauty as the symbol of morality.
|
||
-
|
||
Intuitions are always required to verify the reality of our concepts.
|
||
If the concepts are empirical, the intuitions are called examples:
|
||
if they are pure concepts of the understanding, the intuitions go by
|
||
the name of schemata. But to call for a verification of the
|
||
objective reality of rational concepts, i.e., of ideas, and, what is
|
||
more, on behalf of the theoretical cognition of such a reality, is
|
||
to demand an impossibility, because absolutely no intuition adequate
|
||
to them can be given.
|
||
All hypotyposis (presentation, subjectio sub adspectum) as a
|
||
rendering in terms of sense, is twofold. Either it is schematic, as
|
||
where the intuition corresponding to a concept comprehended by the
|
||
understanding is given a priori, or else it is symbolic, as where
|
||
the concept is one which only reason can think, and to which no
|
||
sensible intuition can be adequate. In the latter case the concept
|
||
is supplied with an intuition such that the procedure of judgement
|
||
in dealing with it is merely analogous to that which it observes in
|
||
schematism. In other words, what agrees with the concept is merely the
|
||
rule of this procedure, and not the intuition itself. Hence the
|
||
agreement is merely in the form of reflection, and not in the content.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 65}
|
||
Notwithstanding the adoption of the word symbolic by modern
|
||
logicians in a sense opposed to an intuitive mode of representation,
|
||
it is a wrong use of the word and subversive of its true meaning;
|
||
for the symbolic is only a mode of any intrinsic connection with the
|
||
intuition of sentation is, in fact, divisible into the schematic
|
||
and the symbolic. Both are hypotyposes, i.e., presentations
|
||
(exhibitiones), not mere marks. Marks are merely designations of
|
||
concepts by the aid of accompanying sensible signs devoid of any
|
||
intrinsic connection with the intuition of the object. Their sole
|
||
function is to afford a means of reinvoking the concepts according
|
||
to the imagination's law of association-a purely subjective role. Such
|
||
marks are either words or visible (algebraic or even mimetic) signs,
|
||
simply as expressions for concepts.*
|
||
-
|
||
*The intuitive mode of knowledge must be contrasted with the
|
||
discursive mode (not with the symbolic). The former is either
|
||
schematic, by mean demonstration, symbolic, as a representation
|
||
following a mere analogy.
|
||
-
|
||
All intuitions by which a priori concepts are given a foothold
|
||
are, therefore, either schemata or symbols. Schemata contain direct,
|
||
symbols indirect, presentations of the concept. Schemata effect this
|
||
presentation demonstratively, symbols by the aid of an analogy (for
|
||
which recourse is had even to empirical intuitions), in which
|
||
analogy judgement performs a double function: first in applying the
|
||
concept to the object of a sensible intuition, and then, secondly,
|
||
in applying the mere rule of its reflection upon that intuition to
|
||
quite another object, of which the former is but the symbol. In this
|
||
way, a monarchical state is represented as a living body when it is
|
||
governed by constitutional laws, but as a mere machine (like a
|
||
handmill) when it is governed by an individual absolute will; but in
|
||
both cases the representation is merely symbolic. For there is
|
||
certainly no likeness between a despotic state and a handmill, whereas
|
||
there surely is between the rules of reflection upon both and their
|
||
causality. Hitherto this function has been but little analysed, worthy
|
||
as it is of a deeper study. Still this is not the place to dwell
|
||
upon it. In language we have many such indirect presentations modelled
|
||
upon an analogy enabling the expression in question to contain, not
|
||
the proper schema for the concept, but merely a symbol for reflection.
|
||
Thus the words ground (support, basis), to depend (to be held up
|
||
from above), to flow from (instead of to follow), substance (as
|
||
Locke puts it: the support of accidents), and numberless others, are
|
||
not schematic, but rather symbolic hypotyposes, and express concepts
|
||
without employing a direct intuition for the purpose, but only drawing
|
||
upon an analogy with one, i.e., transferring the reflection upon an
|
||
object of intuition to quite a new concept, and one with which perhaps
|
||
no intuition could ever directly correspond. Supposing the name of
|
||
knowledge may be given to what only amounts to a mere mode of
|
||
representation (which is quite permissible where this is not a
|
||
principle of the theoretical determination of the object in respect of
|
||
what it is in itself, but of the practical determination of what the
|
||
idea of it ought to be for us and for its final employment), then
|
||
all our knowledge of God is merely symbolic; and one who takes it,
|
||
with the properties of understanding, will, and so forth, which only
|
||
evidence their objective reality in beings of this world, to be
|
||
schematic, falls into anthropomorphism, just as, if he abandons
|
||
every intuitive element, he falls into Deism which furnishes no
|
||
knowledge whatsoever-not even from a practical point of view.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 70}
|
||
Now, I say, the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good, and
|
||
only in this light (a point of view natural to every one, and one
|
||
which every one exacts from others as a duty) does it give us pleasure
|
||
with an attendant claim to the agreement of every one else,
|
||
whereupon the mind becomes conscious of a certain ennoblement and
|
||
elevation above mere sensibility to pleasure from impressions of
|
||
sense, and also appraises the worth of others on the score of a like
|
||
maxim of their judgement. This is that intelligible to which taste, as
|
||
noticed in the preceding paragraph, extends its view. It is, that is
|
||
to say, what brings even our higher cognitive faculties into common
|
||
accord, and is that apart from which sheer contradiction would arise
|
||
between their nature and the claims put forward by taste. In this
|
||
faculty, judgement does not find itself subjected to a heteronomy of
|
||
laws of experience as it does in the empirical estimate of things-in
|
||
respect of the objects of such a pure delight it gives the law to
|
||
itself, just as reason does in respect of the faculty of desire. Here,
|
||
too, both on account of this inner possibility in the subject, and
|
||
on account of the external possibility of a nature harmonizing
|
||
therewith, it finds a reference in itself to something in the
|
||
subject itself and outside it, and which is not nature, nor yet
|
||
freedom, but still is connected with the ground of the latter, i.e.,
|
||
the supersensible-a something in which the theoretical faculty gets
|
||
bound up into unity with the practical in an intimate and obscure
|
||
manner. We shall bring out a few points of this analogy, while
|
||
taking care, at the same time, not to let the points of difference
|
||
escape us.
|
||
(1) The beautiful pleases immediately (but only in reflective
|
||
intuition, not, like morality, in its concept). (2) It pleases apart
|
||
from all interest (pleasure in the morally good is no doubt
|
||
necessarily bound up with an interest, but not with one of the kind
|
||
that are antecedent to the judgement upon the delight, but with one
|
||
that judgement itself for the first time calls into existence). (3)
|
||
The freedom of the imagination (consequently of our faculty in respect
|
||
of its sensibility) is, in estimating the beautiful, represented as in
|
||
accord with the understanding's conformity to law (in moral judgements
|
||
the freedom of the will is thought as the harmony of the latter with
|
||
itself according to universal laws of Reason). (4) The subjective
|
||
principles of the estimate of the beautiful is represented as
|
||
universal, i.e., valid for every man, but as incognizable by means
|
||
of any universal concept (the objective principle of morality is set
|
||
forth as also universal, i.e., for all individuals, and, at the same
|
||
time, for all actions of the same individual, and, besides, as
|
||
cognizable by means of a universal concept). For this reason the moral
|
||
judgement not alone admits of definite constitutive principles, but is
|
||
only possible by adopting these principles and their universality as
|
||
the ground of its maxims.
|
||
Even common understanding is wont to pay regard to this analogy; and
|
||
we frequently apply to beautiful objects of nature or of art names
|
||
that seem to rely upon the basis of a moral estimate. We call
|
||
buildings or trees majestic and stately, or plains laughing and gay;
|
||
even colours are called innocent, modest, soft, because they excite
|
||
sensations containing something analogous to the consciousness of
|
||
the state of mind produced by moral judgements. Taste makes, as it
|
||
were, the transition from the charm of sense to habitual moral
|
||
interest possible without too violent a leap, for it represents the
|
||
imagination, even in its freedom, as amenable to a final determination
|
||
for understanding, and teaches us to find, even in sensuous objects, a
|
||
free delight apart from any charm of sense.
|
||
-
|
||
SS 60. APPENDIX. The methodology of taste.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 75}
|
||
-
|
||
The division of a critique into elementology and methodology-a
|
||
division which is introductory to science-is one inapplicable to the
|
||
critique of taste. For there neither is, nor can be, a science of
|
||
the beautiful, and the judgement of taste is not determinable by
|
||
principles. For, as to the element of science in every art -a matter
|
||
which turns upon truth in the presentation of the object of the
|
||
art-while this is, no doubt, the indispensable condition (conditio
|
||
sine qua non) of fine art, it is not itself fine art. Fine art,
|
||
therefore, has only got a manner (modus), and not a method of teaching
|
||
(methodus). The master must illustrate what the pupil is to achieve
|
||
and how achievement is to be attained, and the proper function of
|
||
the universal rules to which he ultimately reduces his treatment is
|
||
rather that of supplying a convenient text for recalling its chief
|
||
moments to the pupil's mind, than of prescribing them to him. Yet,
|
||
in all this, due regard must be paid to a certain ideal which art must
|
||
keep in view, even though complete success ever eludes its happiest
|
||
efforts. Only by exciting the pupil's imagination to conformity with a
|
||
given concept, by pointing out how the expression falls short of the
|
||
idea to which, as aesthetic, the concept itself fails to attain, and
|
||
by means of severe criticism, is it possible to prevent his promptly
|
||
looking upon the examples set before him as the prototypes of
|
||
excellence, and as models for him to imitate, without submission to
|
||
any higher standard or to his own critical judgement. This would
|
||
result in genius being stifled, and, with it, also the freedom of
|
||
the imagination in its very conformity to law-a freedom without
|
||
which a fine art is not possible, nor even as much as a correct
|
||
taste of one's own for estimating it.
|
||
The propaedeutic to all fine art, so far as the highest degree of
|
||
its perfection is what is in view, appears to lie, not in precepts,
|
||
but in the culture of the mental powers produced by a sound
|
||
preparatory education in what are called the humaniora-so called,
|
||
presumably, because humanity signifies, on the one hand, the universal
|
||
feeling of sympathy, and, on the other, the faculty of being able to
|
||
communicate universally one's inmost self-properties constituting in
|
||
conjunction the befitting social spirit of mankind, in
|
||
contradistinction to the narrow life of the lower animals. There was
|
||
an age and there were nations in which the active impulse towards a
|
||
social life regulated by laws-what converts a people into a
|
||
permanent community-grappled with the huge difficulties presented by
|
||
the trying problem of bringing freedom (and therefore equality also)
|
||
into union with constraining force (more that of respect and dutiful
|
||
submission than of fear). And such must have been the age, and such
|
||
the nation, that first discovered the art of reciprocal
|
||
communication of ideas between the more cultured and ruder sections of
|
||
the community, and how to bridge the difference between the
|
||
amplitude and refinement of the former and the natural simplicity
|
||
and originality of the latter-in this way hitting upon that mean
|
||
between higher culture and the modest worth of nature, that forms
|
||
for taste also, as a sense common to all mankind, that true standard
|
||
which no universal rules can supply.
|
||
Hardly will a later age dispense with those models. For nature
|
||
will ever recede farther into the background, so that eventually, with
|
||
no permanent example retained from the past, a future age would scarce
|
||
be in a position to form a concept of the happy union, in one and
|
||
the same people, of the law-directed constraint belonging to the
|
||
highest culture, with the force and truth of a free nature sensible of
|
||
its proper worth.
|
||
However, taste is, in the ultimate analysis, a critical faculty that
|
||
judges of the rendering of moral ideas in terms of sense (through
|
||
the intervention of a certain analogy in our reflection on both);
|
||
and it is this rendering also, and the increased sensibility,
|
||
founded upon it, for the feeling which these ideas evoke (termed moral
|
||
sense), that are the origin of that pleasure which taste declares
|
||
valid for mankind in general and not merely for the private feeling of
|
||
each individual. This makes it clear that the true propaedeutic for
|
||
laying the foundations of taste is the development of moral ideas
|
||
and the culture of the moral feeling. For only when sensibility is
|
||
brought into harmony with moral feeling can genuine taste assume a
|
||
definite unchangeable form.
|
||
{PART1|SEC2 ^paragraph 80}
|
||
-
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Electronically Enhanced Text (C) Copyright 1991, 1992, World Library, Inc.
|
||
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|
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|
||
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