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The Critique of Judgement: (containing Kant's "Critique of Aesthetic Judgement" and "Critique of Teleological Judgement")

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There's not much point in discussing Kant himself in a review like this. If you're going to pony up the money, and put the time into reading this demanding book, you already know enough about Kant to admire him. If you don't, there are better places to start (like Copleston's History of Phil, or the Critique of Pure Reason).

Pluhar's translation is an ultra of academic fastidiousness, with all the words added for clarity in brackets, copious references to other passages in this or other works that explain the terms (very helpful) and so on. BUT -- every twenty pages or so there is a passage so clumsy in its Anglo-German syntax that I had to read it over five times and then copy-edit it in pencil so I could understand it. I don't know the competing translations, they may be no better. This was better than adequate, but with the noted flaw.

The Critique of the Power of Judgment (the 3rd Critique) is the most important work in Modern philosophical aesthetics. The Guyer and Pluhar editions are to be preferred to that of Bernard, as the first two have more extenisve notes, and better translations, including of the First Introduction.

The 3rd Critique presents a vision of beauty, sublimity, and art that avoids reduction of them to them to the biological, a la Nietzsche or Freud. Instead, Kant describes the *justification* of reflective aesthetic judgments in terms of the conditions for using jugment, stressing the contemplative and harmonious character of the experience of beauty. Beauty is linked to cognitive and moral betterment; sublimity, a secondary subject, is discussed more purely in terms of it connection with morality.

The work is difficult; however, there is no substitute for close reading of the whole work. (Certainly not Schiller, who goes far beyond Kant in claiming beauty and art as foundational for knowledge). The 3rd Critique is still very contemporary in its import, including its theory of disinterestedness, which is compatible with intelligent accounts of affect.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. Kant is one of the major figures in expression theory. What we understand as aesthetics changed only recently. Kant lays this out well in his "Critique of Judgment," which is one of his easier books to comprehend! Science and math development was momentous in re-interpreting how nature is understood, and all this starts in his time. The modern science narrative that says ancient thought erred; caused a split between science and philosophy. Scientific method and math causes nature to be seen in a "mechanistic" way, there are no "value" judgments anymore so this valueless nature by science caused the split because nature can't explain values anymore. Thus, philosophy finds that "values" are in humans, not in nature, we are the "location" of values now. Beauty, which is a value, is an idea in our minds. This expression theory says something about us it is in our minds. Kant agrees with this notion of how modern science operates especially in "Critique of Pure Reason." However, with questions of art he doesn't rely on science.

Kant begins that there is such a thing as an experience of beauty, and that we normally presuppose that it must be compelling rather than just mere opinion unlike taste in food. Then he asks why would there be such a thing? He is now trying to lay out possible answers to that question. In the experience of beauty, the mind gets a special perspective on its own powers. Thus, this special perspective is free of the normal constraints of the things we do in our lives like knowing and worrying. Kant realizes that the aesthetic experience is subjective; it is in the human mind not in reality. He wants to make artistic judgments. Not just interested in individual subjectivity, he looks for a "universal" character of experience of judgment. It is not real useful to just catalogue people's subjective opinions. Kant says inter-subjective principle is part of the human mind as more of a collective. Thus, humans can make judgment. Kant's idea of taste is not to merely have a subjective opinion; people have a kind of competency they have discernment. The difficulty in this notion is, how does one know when they find a universal.

Kant astutely argues that one can't argue towards an aesthetic judgment like in logic, aesthetics is subjective but he wants humans to be able to say; "this painting is beautiful, and not just to me." Important point: is there such a thing as subjective universality? This is his dilemma, although he thinks there is if you can use the principle of "disinterest." The realm of subjectivity is realm of interests. Once one is divorced of all normal interest, one can view art with a "disinterested" view. This notion of disinterest screens out allot but has to be connected to pleasure but not mere opinion universally. The other important element of disinterest has been the continuing idea and even could be something that could be applicable to any area of art. There is something about art that has some relationship to a "pause" from normal relationships. There is something special about artworks that even though there was no such thing as a museum in Greece, Greek statuary and architecture was all part of the cityscape, part of the actual landscape and livingscape of Greece, and therefore part of the city so no such thing as a museum. However, whenever a statue was put up or a temple, or a play was put on, that would seem to be something different from the normal relationships with objects either in terms of using them for some practical purpose and therefore using them up giving the works some special reserve, special status. Disinterest wouldn't require that it have the subjectivism term because you would simply say that the whole point of art could be disengaged normal ways of engaging things, even if it didn't have a subjective theory of expression. According to this notion of "disinterest," the idea of political art would be a contradiction in terms. Art as applied as nothing more than serving political needs. Like how the Soviet Union used art for nothing else but to serve the workers revolution. Kant is saying, the whole idea of engaging beauty is to be divorced from the normal ways of things, and that would include end purposes, goals, and outcomes.

Distinction between subjective universal validity and objective universal validity.
An important argument Kant makes is that all judgments of "taste" and "beauty" are of a singular judgment. If it is unique, it cannot fit in the universal concept of beauty. There are no formulas, principles, or rules for identifying beauty. There is only the "possibility" of aesthetic judgments, so he can't list items of art that conform to his aesthetic judgment. Kant says something about art is different than everything else it doesn't have interest, axioms, rules, can't list things, but it has some positives, it is pleasurable, it draws us, it satisfies us, it isn't pleasure of practical needs or pleasure of knowledge or any interests. It doesn't excite our personal desires, it just gives us a direct experience of pleasure. Thus, Kant gives an intellectual picture of aesthetic taste and he says it is always a species of pleasure. The category of disinterest provides two notions for Kant, one is freedom, and the other is universality. By freedom, he means, freedom from both desire and knowledge, and that is the interesting part.

Another important concept for Kant is that the free play of imagination is one of the features that make up beauty. Free play of imagination of art gives pleasure because the mind is free from normal cognitive needs, logical rules, or empirical findings, practical needs, and therefore it has an element of openness. Thus, imagination is very important here, imagination is the ability to conjure up something that is not a fact in the real world. The free play in the imagination in art gives pleasure, because here the mind can simply enjoy its own cognitive powers independent of the constraints of the other realms, like science, math, logic, and other practical needs. Free play opens the idea that the artist has allot of leeway. The artist is not bound by facts and realities, nor is the audience someone who has to have that attitude either. Therefore, when you are looking at a painting or you are reading a poem or listening to music in this mode you are not bound by other ways of knowing. You are going to be free of that. What does that mean? First of all, all art is going to have a tangible means of presentation through sound or sight or color, texture, structure, so forth. This excites pleasure because art is a less ordered realm than other areas. Kant wouldn't say you could take pleasure in something that was chaotic. Kant says you can't force aesthetic judgment on others, but beauty has a universal claim, that is the tightrope he is walking. It is complicated, beauty is not chaotic, but not private opinion.

Disinterest and free play of mind is two sides of same coin. Imagination is not bound by normal modes of knowing, or normal needs or desires so it is associated with free play. Normally our desires are compelling to us. Imagination is the faculty, which is not bound to any particular object in the world that has to govern what we say. Then he goes to say that pleasure is the other element that has to be; that beauty has to be experienced as pleasure, and the theory does say something that is culturally specific, that pleasure comes from the experience of the harmony of the faculties. The free play of imagination is pleasurable, when within certain principles of harmony and order. This really is a kind of formalism, because it is not bound by the particular aesthetic object. This is one of the fullest senses of expression theory means, the expression of the mind's capacity rather then the direct reading out of the object itself.

So, what is aesthetic beauty, what is aesthetic judgment? Aesthetic judgment has to do with the sensuous form. So it obviously has to do with some kind of sensuous medium, some kind of visual or auditory stuff, which is probably what art is about, a sensuous form producing a harmony of the faculties that are released from normal judgments like science, and hence free to notice and explore structural relations and patterns as such. Not tied to condition or use or even the abstract universality of mere concepts (that is where singularity comes in). The abstract universality of mere concepts is there is a dog; the abstract concept of "dog" is the universal organization of all particular dogs. Here pleasure is excited which would not occur in logical form. So remember there are sensuous pleasures that are different from cognition; thus, scientific cognition has nothing to do with pleasure, it solely has to do with truth. So art is something that is disinterested, so therefore, it is relieved from the normal kinds of pleasures or normal kinds of things, but it is pleasure and in that respect, it is different from logic or reason.

Art is not something useful and you have to pick out what it isn't and say that yes aesthetic judgments can be made and there is such a thing as beauty. However, it doesn't operate the same way as normal reason does, it doesn't operate the way practical reason does, and it is not mere cognition because it has elements of sensuality and pleasure. The universality part of art has to do with disinterest and Kant is filling out the concept a little bit more. Kant argues that disinterest opens the door for the mind to enjoy its faculties independent of the usual ways in which the faculties are applied. The usual ways the faculties are applied are in science, the scientific accounts of nature, practical reasons like, "how do I get this thing done," these are the faculties that reach out towards something to understand. The artwork is obviously something that is out there, but with the power of aesthetic appreciation with artwork is not simply in the artwork but in the mind, the appreciation of the work by way of the mind's faculties and experience of pleasure.

Thus, Kant argues that everyone has there own taste, but the concept of the beautiful is universal. For Kant, the beautiful is a special characteristic. Thus, people can't deny an aesthetic judgment of taste. This sounds like Kant believes in cultural and foundational forms of beauty, which he observed in his Prussian society.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy and philosophy of art.

Kant is by far one of the hardest philosophers to understand. Perhaps the toughest part is that Kant ruminates for several pages on the same subject. If the reader lets go and takes the reading with a trance-like state, then the reading is not so hard to understand. Another suggestion: read the first part of the sentence and skip all the commas, and read the very last part of the sentence; then go back and read the whole sentence including all the phrases in between the main clause. This will open up the eyes to understanding all the tangents Kant tends to take. A must must must read for those who want to understand the philosophical development of "man and nature" and its progressive development to our post-structural times. Enjoy the pleasure ... or pain of reading this wonderful book.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. Kant is one of the major figures in expression theory. What we understand as aesthetics changed only recently. Kant lays this out well in his "Critique of Judgment," which is one of his easier books to comprehend! Science and math development was momentous in re-interpreting how nature is understood, and all this starts in his time. The modern science narrative that says ancient thought erred; caused a split between science and philosophy. Scientific method and math causes nature to be seen in a "mechanistic" way, there are no "value" judgments anymore so this valueless nature by science caused the split because nature can't explain values anymore. Thus, philosophy finds that "values" are in humans, not in nature, we are the "location" of values now. Beauty, which is a value, is an idea in our minds. This expression theory says something about us it is in our minds. Kant agrees with this notion of how modern science operates especially in "Critique of Pure Reason." However, with questions of art he doesn't rely on science.

Kant begins that there is such a thing as an experience of beauty, and that we normally presuppose that it must be compelling rather than just mere opinion unlike taste in food. Then he asks why would there be such a thing? He is now trying to lay out possible answers to that question. In the experience of beauty, the mind gets a special perspective on its own powers. Thus, this special perspective is free of the normal constraints of the things we do in our lives like knowing and worrying. Kant realizes that the aesthetic experience is subjective; it is in the human mind not in reality. He wants to make artistic judgments. Not just interested in individual subjectivity, he looks for a "universal" character of experience of judgment. It is not real useful to just catalogue people's subjective opinions. Kant says inter-subjective principle is part of the human mind as more of a collective. Thus, humans can make judgment. Kant's idea of taste is not to merely have a subjective opinion; people have a kind of competency they have discernment. The difficulty in this notion is, how does one know when they find a universal.

Kant astutely argues that one can't argue towards an aesthetic judgment like in logic, aesthetics is subjective but he wants humans to be able to say; "this painting is beautiful, and not just to me." Important point: is there such a thing as subjective universality? This is his dilemma, although he thinks there is if you can use the principle of "disinterest." The realm of subjectivity is realm of interests. Once one is divorced of all normal interest, one can view art with a "disinterested" view. This notion of disinterest screens out allot but has to be connected to pleasure but not mere opinion universally. The other important element of disinterest has been the continuing idea and even could be something that could be applicable to any area of art. There is something about art that has some relationship to a "pause" from normal relationships. There is something special about artworks that even though there was no such thing as a museum in Greece, Greek statuary and architecture was all part of the cityscape, part of the actual landscape and livingscape of Greece, and therefore part of the city so no such thing as a museum. However, whenever a statue was put up or a temple, or a play was put on, that would seem to be something different from the normal relationships with objects either in terms of using them for some practical purpose and therefore using them up giving the works some special reserve, special status. Disinterest wouldn't require that it have the subjectivism term because you would simply say that the whole point of art could be disengaged normal ways of engaging things, even if it didn't have a subjective theory of expression. According to this notion of "disinterest," the idea of political art would be a contradiction in terms. Art as applied as nothing more than serving political needs. Like how the Soviet Union used art for nothing else but to serve the workers revolution. Kant is saying, the whole idea of engaging beauty is to be divorced from the normal ways of things, and that would include end purposes, goals, and outcomes.

Distinction between subjective universal validity and objective universal validity.
An important argument Kant makes is that all judgments of "taste" and "beauty" are of a singular judgment. If it is unique, it cannot fit in the universal concept of beauty. There are no formulas, principles, or rules for identifying beauty. There is only the "possibility" of aesthetic judgments, so he can't list items of art that conform to his aesthetic judgment. Kant says something about art is different than everything else it doesn't have interest, axioms, rules, can't list things, but it has some positives, it is pleasurable, it draws us, it satisfies us, it isn't pleasure of practical needs or pleasure of knowledge or any interests. It doesn't excite our personal desires, it just gives us a direct experience of pleasure. Thus, Kant gives an intellectual picture of aesthetic taste and he says it is always a species of pleasure. The category of disinterest provides two notions for Kant, one is freedom, and the other is universality. By freedom, he means, freedom from both desire and knowledge, and that is the interesting part.

Another important concept for Kant is that the free play of imagination is one of the features that make up beauty. Free play of imagination of art gives pleasure because the mind is free from normal cognitive needs, logical rules, or empirical findings, practical needs, and therefore it has an element of openness. Thus, imagination is very important here, imagination is the ability to conjure up something that is not a fact in the real world. The free play in the imagination in art gives pleasure, because here the mind can simply enjoy its own cognitive powers independent of the constraints of the other realms, like science, math, logic, and other practical needs. Free play opens the idea that the artist has allot of leeway. The artist is not bound by facts and realities, nor is the audience someone who has to have that attitude either. Therefore, when you are looking at a painting or you are reading a poem or listening to music in this mode you are not bound by other ways of knowing. You are going to be free of that. What does that mean? First of all, all art is going to have a tangible means of presentation through sound or sight or color, texture, structure, so forth. This excites pleasure because art is a less ordered realm than other areas. Kant wouldn't say you could take pleasure in something that was chaotic. Kant says you can't force aesthetic judgment on others, but beauty has a universal claim, that is the tightrope he is walking. It is complicated, beauty is not chaotic, but not private opinion.

Disinterest and free play of mind is two sides of same coin. Imagination is not bound by normal modes of knowing, or normal needs or desires so it is associated with free play. Normally our desires are compelling to us. Imagination is the faculty, which is not bound to any particular object in the world that has to govern what we say. Then he goes to say that pleasure is the other element that has to be; that beauty has to be experienced as pleasure, and the theory does say something that is culturally specific, that pleasure comes from the experience of the harmony of the faculties. The free play of imagination is pleasurable, when within certain principles of harmony and order. This really is a kind of formalism, because it is not bound by the particular aesthetic object. This is one of the fullest senses of expression theory means, the expression of the mind's capacity rather then the direct reading out of the object itself.

So, what is aesthetic beauty, what is aesthetic judgment? Aesthetic judgment has to do with the sensuous form. So it obviously has to do with some kind of sensuous medium, some kind of visual or auditory stuff, which is probably what art is about, a sensuous form producing a harmony of the faculties that are released from normal judgments like science, and hence free to notice and explore structural relations and patterns as such. Not tied to condition or use or even the abstract universality of mere concepts (that is where singularity comes in). The abstract universality of mere concepts is there is a dog; the abstract concept of "dog" is the universal organization of all particular dogs. Here pleasure is excited which would not occur in logical form. So remember there are sensuous pleasures that are different from cognition; thus, scientific cognition has nothing to do with pleasure, it solely has to do with truth. So art is something that is disinterested, so therefore, it is relieved from the normal kinds of pleasures or normal kinds of things, but it is pleasure and in that respect, it is different from logic or reason.

Art is not something useful and you have to pick out what it isn't and say that yes aesthetic judgments can be made and there is such a thing as beauty. However, it doesn't operate the same way as normal reason does, it doesn't operate the way practical reason does, and it is not mere cognition because it has elements of sensuality and pleasure. The universality part of art has to do with disinterest and Kant is filling out the concept a little bit more. Kant argues that disinterest opens the door for the mind to enjoy its faculties independent of the usual ways in which the faculties are applied. The usual ways the faculties are applied are in science, the scientific accounts of nature, practical reasons like, "how do I get this thing done," these are the faculties that reach out towards something to understand. The artwork is obviously something that is out there, but with the power of aesthetic appreciation with artwork is not simply in the artwork but in the mind, the appreciation of the work by way of the mind's faculties and experience of pleasure.

Thus, Kant argues that everyone has there own taste, but the concept of the beautiful is universal. For Kant, the beautiful is a special characteristic. Thus, people can't deny an aesthetic judgment of taste. This sounds like Kant believes in cultural and foundational forms of beauty, which he observed in his Prussian society.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy and philosophy of art.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. Kant is one of the major figures in expression theory. What we understand as aesthetics changed only recently. Kant lays this out well in his "Critique of Judgment," which is one of his easier books to comprehend! Science and math development was momentous in re-interpreting how nature is understood, and all this starts in his time. The modern science narrative that says ancient thought erred; caused a split between science and philosophy. Scientific method and math causes nature to be seen in a "mechanistic" way, there are no "value" judgments anymore so this valueless nature by science caused the split because nature can't explain values anymore. Thus, philosophy finds that "values" are in humans, not in nature, we are the "location" of values now. Beauty, which is a value, is an idea in our minds. This expression theory says something about us it is in our minds. Kant agrees with this notion of how modern science operates especially in "Critique of Pure Reason." However, with questions of art he doesn't rely on science.

Kant begins that there is such a thing as an experience of beauty, and that we normally presuppose that it must be compelling rather than just mere opinion unlike taste in food. Then he asks why would there be such a thing? He is now trying to lay out possible answers to that question. In the experience of beauty, the mind gets a special perspective on its own powers. Thus, this special perspective is free of the normal constraints of the things we do in our lives like knowing and worrying. Kant realizes that the aesthetic experience is subjective; it is in the human mind not in reality. He wants to make artistic judgments. Not just interested in individual subjectivity, he looks for a "universal" character of experience of judgment. It is not real useful to just catalogue people's subjective opinions. Kant says inter-subjective principle is part of the human mind as more of a collective. Thus, humans can make judgment. Kant's idea of taste is not to merely have a subjective opinion; people have a kind of competency they have discernment. The difficulty in this notion is, how does one know when they find a universal.

Kant astutely argues that one can't argue towards an aesthetic judgment like in logic, aesthetics is subjective but he wants humans to be able to say; "this painting is beautiful, and not just to me." Important point: is there such a thing as subjective universality? This is his dilemma, although he thinks there is if you can use the principle of "disinterest." The realm of subjectivity is realm of interests. Once one is divorced of all normal interest, one can view art with a "disinterested" view. This notion of disinterest screens out allot but has to be connected to pleasure but not mere opinion universally. The other important element of disinterest has been the continuing idea and even could be something that could be applicable to any area of art. There is something about art that has some relationship to a "pause" from normal relationships. There is something special about artworks that even though there was no such thing as a museum in Greece, Greek statuary and architecture was all part of the cityscape, part of the actual landscape and livingscape of Greece, and therefore part of the city so no such thing as a museum. However, whenever a statue was put up or a temple, or a play was put on, that would seem to be something different from the normal relationships with objects either in terms of using them for some practical purpose and therefore using them up giving the works some special reserve, special status. Disinterest wouldn't require that it have the subjectivism term because you would simply say that the whole point of art could be disengaged normal ways of engaging things, even if it didn't have a subjective theory of expression. According to this notion of "disinterest," the idea of political art would be a contradiction in terms. Art as applied as nothing more than serving political needs. Like how the Soviet Union used art for nothing else but to serve the workers revolution. Kant is saying, the whole idea of engaging beauty is to be divorced from the normal ways of things, and that would include end purposes, goals, and outcomes.

Distinction between subjective universal validity and objective universal validity.
An important argument Kant makes is that all judgments of "taste" and "beauty" are of a singular judgment. If it is unique, it cannot fit in the universal concept of beauty. There are no formulas, principles, or rules for identifying beauty. There is only the "possibility" of aesthetic judgments, so he can't list items of art that conform to his aesthetic judgment. Kant says something about art is different than everything else it doesn't have interest, axioms, rules, can't list things, but it has some positives, it is pleasurable, it draws us, it satisfies us, it isn't pleasure of practical needs or pleasure of knowledge or any interests. It doesn't excite our personal desires, it just gives us a direct experience of pleasure. Thus, Kant gives an intellectual picture of aesthetic taste and he says it is always a species of pleasure. The category of disinterest provides two notions for Kant, one is freedom, and the other is universality. By freedom, he means, freedom from both desire and knowledge, and that is the interesting part.

Another important concept for Kant is that the free play of imagination is one of the features that make up beauty. Free play of imagination of art gives pleasure because the mind is free from normal cognitive needs, logical rules, or empirical findings, practical needs, and therefore it has an element of openness. Thus, imagination is very important here, imagination is the ability to conjure up something that is not a fact in the real world. The free play in the imagination in art gives pleasure, because here the mind can simply enjoy its own cognitive powers independent of the constraints of the other realms, like science, math, logic, and other practical needs. Free play opens the idea that the artist has allot of leeway. The artist is not bound by facts and realities, nor is the audience someone who has to have that attitude either. Therefore, when you are looking at a painting or you are reading a poem or listening to music in this mode you are not bound by other ways of knowing. You are going to be free of that. What does that mean? First of all, all art is going to have a tangible means of presentation through sound or sight or color, texture, structure, so forth. This excites pleasure because art is a less ordered realm than other areas. Kant wouldn't say you could take pleasure in something that was chaotic. Kant says you can't force aesthetic judgment on others, but beauty has a universal claim, that is the tightrope he is walking. It is complicated, beauty is not chaotic, but not private opinion.

Disinterest and free play of mind is two sides of same coin. Imagination is not bound by normal modes of knowing, or normal needs or desires so it is associated with free play. Normally our desires are compelling to us. Imagination is the faculty, which is not bound to any particular object in the world that has to govern what we say. Then he goes to say that pleasure is the other element that has to be; that beauty has to be experienced as pleasure, and the theory does say something that is culturally specific, that pleasure comes from the experience of the harmony of the faculties. The free play of imagination is pleasurable, when within certain principles of harmony and order. This really is a kind of formalism, because it is not bound by the particular aesthetic object. This is one of the fullest senses of expression theory means, the expression of the mind's capacity rather then the direct reading out of the object itself.

So, what is aesthetic beauty, what is aesthetic judgment? Aesthetic judgment has to do with the sensuous form. So it obviously has to do with some kind of sensuous medium, some kind of visual or auditory stuff, which is probably what art is about, a sensuous form producing a harmony of the faculties that are released from normal judgments like science, and hence free to notice and explore structural relations and patterns as such. Not tied to condition or use or even the abstract universality of mere concepts (that is where singularity comes in). The abstract universality of mere concepts is there is a dog; the abstract concept of "dog" is the universal organization of all particular dogs. Here pleasure is excited which would not occur in logical form. So remember there are sensuous pleasures that are different from cognition; thus, scientific cognition has nothing to do with pleasure, it solely has to do with truth. So art is something that is disinterested, so therefore, it is relieved from the normal kinds of pleasures or normal kinds of things, but it is pleasure and in that respect, it is different from logic or reason.

Art is not something useful and you have to pick out what it isn't and say that yes aesthetic judgments can be made and there is such a thing as beauty. However, it doesn't operate the same way as normal reason does, it doesn't operate the way practical reason does, and it is not mere cognition because it has elements of sensuality and pleasure. The universality part of art has to do with disinterest and Kant is filling out the concept a little bit more. Kant argues that disinterest opens the door for the mind to enjoy its faculties independent of the usual ways in which the faculties are applied. The usual ways the faculties are applied are in science, the scientific accounts of nature, practical reasons like, "how do I get this thing done," these are the faculties that reach out towards something to understand. The artwork is obviously something that is out there, but with the power of aesthetic appreciation with artwork is not simply in the artwork but in the mind, the appreciation of the work by way of the mind's faculties and experience of pleasure.

Thus, Kant argues that everyone has there own taste, but the concept of the beautiful is universal. For Kant, the beautiful is a special characteristic. Thus, people can't deny an aesthetic judgment of taste. This sounds like Kant believes in cultural and foundational forms of beauty, which he observed in his Prussian society.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy and philosophy of art.

One of the tests of true genius in a writer/philosopher is the degree of interest that he caused both in his day and in ours. On this count alone, Immanuel Kant qualifies based on the impact of his theories on his contemporaries and on future theorists who saw in his books a justification for their own ranging from reader-response to Post-Structuralism to feminism. Kant's lasting claim to fame hinges on a trio of books in which he examines the relation between objects in the material world and how human beings perceive and internalize their significance. In the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON (1781), Kant initiated a "Copernican Revolution," testing how human beings could apprehend knowledge of the external world even as they admitted that this knowledge was of the a priori variety (not based on experience). In the CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON (1788), he defined practical reason as a variation of human morality that required each person to refrain from acts that he would not wish to see everyone else similarly engage in. Kant very likely saw that the first book's focus on the sensible world created a void between that realm of sensibility and the supersensible (nonmaterial) realm of the second. Kant's third book, the CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT (1790) was his attempt to reconnect the confined state of man as described in the first with the liberated state as noted in the second.

Reading Kant is an exercise in taxed patience and cumulative frustration. His prose style is totally abstract with most sentences having multiple clauses. CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT is no exception; however, the diligent reader will find that multiple readings combined with underlining and outlining will usually unravel the point.

In CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT, Kant returns to the earlier dichotomies of sense and understanding and necessity and freedom that he raised then conveniently ignored in his previous Critiques. How is it possible, he argues, to harmonize the sensible world of the understanding grounded in his phenomena with the realm of morality of reason equally grounded in his noumena? Kant suggests that this harmonization may be accomplished using judgment as the mediating link. Part of the problem of grasping the many nuances of Immanuel Kant is his excessive use of definition and abstract example. For judgment to come into play, one must use that judgment to assume that nature is not simply a seething mass of unconnected chaos. Rather, judgment allows one to contemplate an underlying order within nature, thus permitting one to reflect on nature in a manner consistent with coherence. For Kant, "coherence" is a precursor to the harmony called "purposiveness," which judgment uses to unify the divergent worlds of the phenomenal realm of nature with the noumenal realm of reason. Kant postulates that when one can discern this underlying pattern of order in nature, the result is pleasure. And as long as one can enjoy that pleasure without even thinking of its purpose or utility, then--and only then--can one term that object as beautiful." For the person who can see the beauty of an object solely in terms of its form and not its purpose, such a person has "taste."

Much of Kant's oeuvre is replete with dilemmas and paradoxes, both of which add to the already high level of opaque prose. The judgment of this book's title is defined in a way that limits its use to subjectivity. If the observer thinks that an object is beautiful, and that belief is subjective, then how can that observer convince others to agree? The answer, Kant notes, is that it is possible to convince others if the observer's opinion is totally unprejudiced and disinterested. All rational human beings share a sensus communis (common sense) and as long as one person can honestly claim that his opinion of an object's beauty is based only on the perception of beauty and not on any favored pre-conception of its worth, value, or purpose, then--and this is the truly controversial part--that person has the right to expect another observer to agree with him. Kant hedges by suggesting that the second observer should agree with the first, rather than having to do so.

Kant often plays with variations of a word, using both in one sentence, usually to the reader's consternation. He writes that nature has"purposiveness without purpose." This seeming paradox is perfectly rational if one first thinks of "purpose," which he defines as the desired outcome of one's forceful will. Nature, by contrast, has no such overt will. However, Kant had earlier written that we find it convenient to assume that nature is driven and organized by causality, leading to design and purpose. Thus, thanks to his verbal legerdemain, nature has purposiveness without purpose.

Kant plays similar word games with his extended treatment of beauty and the sublime. The observer notes that beauty has form, which implies fixed boundaries. The sublime, by contrast, is formless, lacking beauty's requisite traits of charm and the play of the imagination. Beauty attracts the observer due to this charm and free play. The sublime raises an odd push--pull sentiment. The observer feels attracted then repelled. Where beauty engenders restful contemplation in the mind of the observer, the sublime irritates the mind in coarse agitation.

Today, critics and theorists of various stripes still argue over Kant's use of the sublime and his sensus communis as storehouses of a "universal community of mankind." Others rant against his assertion that any work of art must be seen under the light that excludes any mention of that work's social, historical, or political background. What a New Critic hails a New Historicist damns. In any case, Kant is worth the aggravation of reading, re-reading, outlining, and cross-referencing. To understand where theory is today requires no less.

Once one becomes familiar with Kant's special terminology, Kant's aesthetics unfold in amazing way. It's probably best to start with an overview such as Copleston's "History of Philosophy".

The one criticism I would offer is that Kant, however brilliantly insightful, clearly was not an artist. His insistence on there being no rules for beauty may seem true for the average non-artist person and create mediation between supersensibles (and give rise to much bad art in the process). But at the very least, there are really big hints as to how we perceive beauty, gestalt psychology being an example. Otherwise, as art history has proven, there is no universal validity to beauty.

Edit: One month, two readings and the binding has already failed.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. Kant is one of the major figures in expression theory. What we understand as aesthetics changed only recently. Kant lays this out well in his "Critique of Judgment," which is one of his easier books to comprehend! Science and math development was momentous in re-interpreting how nature is understood, and all this starts in his time. The modern science narrative that says ancient thought erred; caused a split between science and philosophy. Scientific method and math causes nature to be seen in a "mechanistic" way, there are no "value" judgments anymore so this valueless nature by science caused the split because nature can't explain values anymore. Thus, philosophy finds that "values" are in humans, not in nature, we are the "location" of values now. Beauty, which is a value, is an idea in our minds. This expression theory says something about us it is in our minds. Kant agrees with this notion of how modern science operates especially in "Critique of Pure Reason." However, with questions of art he doesn't rely on science.

Kant begins that there is such a thing as an experience of beauty, and that we normally presuppose that it must be compelling rather than just mere opinion unlike taste in food. Then he asks why would there be such a thing? He is now trying to lay out possible answers to that question. In the experience of beauty, the mind gets a special perspective on its own powers. Thus, this special perspective is free of the normal constraints of the things we do in our lives like knowing and worrying. Kant realizes that the aesthetic experience is subjective; it is in the human mind not in reality. He wants to make artistic judgments. Not just interested in individual subjectivity, he looks for a "universal" character of experience of judgment. It is not real useful to just catalogue people's subjective opinions. Kant says inter-subjective principle is part of the human mind as more of a collective. Thus, humans can make judgment. Kant's idea of taste is not to merely have a subjective opinion; people have a kind of competency they have discernment. The difficulty in this notion is, how does one know when they find a universal.

Kant astutely argues that one can't argue towards an aesthetic judgment like in logic, aesthetics is subjective but he wants humans to be able to say; "this painting is beautiful, and not just to me." Important point: is there such a thing as subjective universality? This is his dilemma, although he thinks there is if you can use the principle of "disinterest." The realm of subjectivity is realm of interests. Once one is divorced of all normal interest, one can view art with a "disinterested" view. This notion of disinterest screens out allot but has to be connected to pleasure but not mere opinion universally. The other important element of disinterest has been the continuing idea and even could be something that could be applicable to any area of art. There is something about art that has some relationship to a "pause" from normal relationships. There is something special about artworks that even though there was no such thing as a museum in Greece, Greek statuary and architecture was all part of the cityscape, part of the actual landscape and livingscape of Greece, and therefore part of the city so no such thing as a museum. However, whenever a statue was put up or a temple, or a play was put on, that would seem to be something different from the normal relationships with objects either in terms of using them for some practical purpose and therefore using them up giving the works some special reserve, special status. Disinterest wouldn't require that it have the subjectivism term because you would simply say that the whole point of art could be disengaged normal ways of engaging things, even if it didn't have a subjective theory of expression. According to this notion of "disinterest," the idea of political art would be a contradiction in terms. Art as applied as nothing more than serving political needs. Like how the Soviet Union used art for nothing else but to serve the workers revolution. Kant is saying, the whole idea of engaging beauty is to be divorced from the normal ways of things, and that would include end purposes, goals, and outcomes.

Distinction between subjective universal validity and objective universal validity.
An important argument Kant makes is that all judgments of "taste" and "beauty" are of a singular judgment. If it is unique, it cannot fit in the universal concept of beauty. There are no formulas, principles, or rules for identifying beauty. There is only the "possibility" of aesthetic judgments, so he can't list items of art that conform to his aesthetic judgment. Kant says something about art is different than everything else it doesn't have interest, axioms, rules, can't list things, but it has some positives, it is pleasurable, it draws us, it satisfies us, it isn't pleasure of practical needs or pleasure of knowledge or any interests. It doesn't excite our personal desires, it just gives us a direct experience of pleasure. Thus, Kant gives an intellectual picture of aesthetic taste and he says it is always a species of pleasure. The category of disinterest provides two notions for Kant, one is freedom, and the other is universality. By freedom, he means, freedom from both desire and knowledge, and that is the interesting part.

Another important concept for Kant is that the free play of imagination is one of the features that make up beauty. Free play of imagination of art gives pleasure because the mind is free from normal cognitive needs, logical rules, or empirical findings, practical needs, and therefore it has an element of openness. Thus, imagination is very important here, imagination is the ability to conjure up something that is not a fact in the real world. The free play in the imagination in art gives pleasure, because here the mind can simply enjoy its own cognitive powers independent of the constraints of the other realms, like science, math, logic, and other practical needs. Free play opens the idea that the artist has allot of leeway. The artist is not bound by facts and realities, nor is the audience someone who has to have that attitude either. Therefore, when you are looking at a painting or you are reading a poem or listening to music in this mode you are not bound by other ways of knowing. You are going to be free of that. What does that mean? First of all, all art is going to have a tangible means of presentation through sound or sight or color, texture, structure, so forth. This excites pleasure because art is a less ordered realm than other areas. Kant wouldn't say you could take pleasure in something that was chaotic. Kant says you can't force aesthetic judgment on others, but beauty has a universal claim, that is the tightrope he is walking. It is complicated, beauty is not chaotic, but not private opinion.

Disinterest and free play of mind is two sides of same coin. Imagination is not bound by normal modes of knowing, or normal needs or desires so it is associated with free play. Normally our desires are compelling to us. Imagination is the faculty, which is not bound to any particular object in the world that has to govern what we say. Then he goes to say that pleasure is the other element that has to be; that beauty has to be experienced as pleasure, and the theory does say something that is culturally specific, that pleasure comes from the experience of the harmony of the faculties. The free play of imagination is pleasurable, when within certain principles of harmony and order. This really is a kind of formalism, because it is not bound by the particular aesthetic object. This is one of the fullest senses of expression theory means, the expression of the mind's capacity rather then the direct reading out of the object itself.

So, what is aesthetic beauty, what is aesthetic judgment? Aesthetic judgment has to do with the sensuous form. So it obviously has to do with some kind of sensuous medium, some kind of visual or auditory stuff, which is probably what art is about, a sensuous form producing a harmony of the faculties that are released from normal judgments like science, and hence free to notice and explore structural relations and patterns as such. Not tied to condition or use or even the abstract universality of mere concepts (that is where singularity comes in). The abstract universality of mere concepts is there is a dog; the abstract concept of "dog" is the universal organization of all particular dogs. Here pleasure is excited which would not occur in logical form. So remember there are sensuous pleasures that are different from cognition; thus, scientific cognition has nothing to do with pleasure, it solely has to do with truth. So art is something that is disinterested, so therefore, it is relieved from the normal kinds of pleasures or normal kinds of things, but it is pleasure and in that respect, it is different from logic or reason.

Art is not something useful and you have to pick out what it isn't and say that yes aesthetic judgments can be made and there is such a thing as beauty. However, it doesn't operate the same way as normal reason does, it doesn't operate the way practical reason does, and it is not mere cognition because it has elements of sensuality and pleasure. The universality part of art has to do with disinterest and Kant is filling out the concept a little bit more. Kant argues that disinterest opens the door for the mind to enjoy its faculties independent of the usual ways in which the faculties are applied. The usual ways the faculties are applied are in science, the scientific accounts of nature, practical reasons like, "how do I get this thing done," these are the faculties that reach out towards something to understand. The artwork is obviously something that is out there, but with the power of aesthetic appreciation with artwork is not simply in the artwork but in the mind, the appreciation of the work by way of the mind's faculties and experience of pleasure.

Thus, Kant argues that everyone has there own taste, but the concept of the beautiful is universal. For Kant, the beautiful is a special characteristic. Thus, people can't deny an aesthetic judgment of taste. This sounds like Kant believes in cultural and foundational forms of beauty, which he observed in his Prussian society.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy and philosophy of art.

This book, the 'Critique of Judgement', is the third volume in Immanuel Kant's Critique project, which began with 'Critique of Pure Reason' and continued in 'Critique of Practical Reason'. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is considered one of the giants of philosophy, of his age or any other. It is largely this book that provides the foundation of this assessment. Whether one loves Kant or hates him (philosophically, that is), one cannot really ignore him; even when one isn't directly dealing with Kantian ideas, chances are great that Kant is made an impact.

Kant was a professor of philosophy in the German city of Konigsberg, where he spent his entire life and career. Kant had a very organised and clockwork life - his habits were so regular that it was considered that the people of Konigsberg could set their clocks by his walks. The same regularity was part of his publication history, until 1770, when Kant had a ten-year hiatus in publishing. This was largely because he was working on this book, the 'Critique of Pure Reason'.

Kant as a professor of philosophy was familiar with the Rationalists, such as Descartes, who founded the Enlightenment and in many ways started the phenomenon of modern philosophy. He was also familiar with the Empiricist school (John Locke and David Hume are perhaps the best known names in this), which challenged the rationalist framework. Between Leibniz' monads and Hume's development of Empiricism to its logical (and self-destructive) conclusion, coupled with the Romantic ideals typified by Rousseau, the philosophical edifice of the Enlightenment seemed about to topple.

This book is divided into two major sections, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, and the Critique of Teleological Judgement. In the part on Aesthetics, Kant sets up for possible judgements - agreeable, good, sublime and beautiful. This relates back to the 'Critique of Pure Reason' (and scholar J.H. Bernard indicates that this framework is sometimes a bit of a shackle placed on Kant). Those things that are agreeable are wholly sensory in character, whereas those things that are good are ethical in nature. Kant argues that those things that are beautiful and sublime fall between the two poles of 'agreeable' and 'good'. Beauty is involved in purpose (teleology), whereas sublimity is that which goes beyond comprehension (and can be an object of fear). This also involves an idea of mind that allows for genius and creative activity.

In the section on teleology, this is a way of looking at things based on their ends (telos), and links to aesthetics in terms of beauty (which has a sense of finality of form) as well as links to scientific purposes - Kant particularly is concerned to explore biology and the telos of the natural world. This also involves physics and logical principles, bringing Kant full circle back to some of the ideas from the 'Critique of Pure Reason'.

This is one of Kant's master works, and while there is much that modern philosophers disagree with, there is also the sense in which no subsequent philosophy can ignore the developments and implications of Kant's Critique project.