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Critique of the Power of Judgment (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant)

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The editors list as one of their principles for rendering Kant's difficult German into English: "Our translators try to avoid sacrificing literalness to readability." Their notion of literalness is simply this: if one of Kant's sentences has five subordinate clauses, the English version should have five subordinate clauses. They obtusely fail to consider that German has grammatical markers that English does not have (e.g., gender of nouns and pronouns). Hence while Kant's German sentence might have a pronoun separated from its noun by some distance, gender will indicate the appropriate reference. In English, the referent for a pronoun is usally the noun most proximate--thus their introduction of great ambiguity into the English that does not exist in the German. The translators also presume that the only way to preserve Kant's argumentative structure is by adhering to his complex surface structure. But the logical grammar of Kant's arguments is obscured in English by the sacrifice of readability to their notion of literalness. Werner Pluhar has a better translation.

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.

The placement of the First Introduction at the beginning of the book is very useful, providing a different feel as to the nature of the work as a whole. The relative of lack of [bracketed] comments compared to the Pluhar edition is also a plus.

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.