Kant: Critique of JudgementPatrick GardinerKant’s third Critique, the Critique of Judgement, was published in 1790and was intended—as he himself put it—to bring his “entire criticalundertaking to a close.” So conceived, it was certainly in part designed tobuild upon and develop ideas that had already been introduced in its twopredecessors but which he had come to regard as requiring furtherelaboration and supplementation. Thus Kant included in its ambitiousscope wide-ranging discussions impinging upon the spheres of scientificenquiry, ethics, and religion, his aim being to approach these apparentlydiverse realms within a perspective distinguishable in significant waysfrom any he had hitherto adopted. At the same time, however, it should berecognized that the book was composed not only in the light of theses hehad advanced in his own previous writings. For it may also be seen asinvolving responses or allusions to positions that had been put forward byother thinkers and which had attracted considerable attention among hiscontemporaries. This was especially true in the case of aesthetics, an areahe had not so far subjected to systematic critical scrutiny; but they arose aswell both from developments in the emergent biological sciences and fromtheoretical studies relating to history and to the nature of social change.Further, and at a more general level, Kant was sharply aware of recentcontributions to the existing climate of opinion that had been made byphilosophers who wished to challenge many of the rationalisticassumptions associated with the eighteenth-century Aufklärung,particularly those felt to threaten or undermine cherished dogmas ofreligious orthodoxy. All in all, German thought in the 1780s can be said tohave been the focus of a variety of competing intellectual preoccupationsand trends. Hence it is hardly surprising that his own treatise, appearing atthe end of an ideologically turbulent decade, bore the imprint of currentcontroversies, some of which had indeed been sparked off by thepublication nine years earlier of the Critique of Pure Reason itself.The outcome of these disparate concerns and influences was a complexand seminal work.It was also, at least in certain respects, an elusive one.The sections into which the Critique of Judgement is divided fall into fourmain groups, each centering round a dominant topic or theme. But althoughthe individual subjects treated are of great intrinsic interest, they are apt tostrike the reader as belonging to markedly different categories; moreover, theactual manner in which some of the constituent sections are suppose to fittogether is not always easy to discern. It may therefore be tempting to regard thebook from one point of view as amounting to a series of somewhat looselyrelated essays rather than as representing a unified enquiry controlled by a singleoverarching objective. Nonetheless, Kant makes it pretty clear at the outset thatthis was not how he himself envisaged the project on which he was engaged.Instead, he presents it as following a course determined by, and closely integratedwith, the overall plan informing his earlier investigations, the assumedconnection deriving from the theory of mental powers or faculties in terms ofwhich he tended to articulate the basic principles governing human thought andconduct. The functions of two of those faculties—namely, understanding andreason—had already been examined and their respective provinces charted.Thus in the Preface he writes that his first Critique was largely devoted toanalyzing the role of the understanding in supplying the a priori principlesessential to our cognitive experience; while in the second he demonstrated howreason—here identified in its practical employment as the source of moralprescriptions—performed a comparable a priori role in legislating at the level ofhuman action and desire. He now maintains that a third faculty remains forconsideration which forms “a middle term” between the other two and whoseclaims as a possible source of independent a priori principles have still to beassessed. The faculty in question is the power of judgment (Urteilskraft), theimportant issues its mediating position raises indicating that a further Critique iscalled for. Accordingly, and with the completion of his system in mind, it is thisthat Kant sets out to provide. Let us see how he proceeds, beginning with thecontents of the formidable Introduction which in effect constitutes thefirst major division of his new work.REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT AND THE CONCEPT OF PURPOSEKant wrote two Introductions to the Critique of Judgement, discarding thefirst as being “disproportionately extensive” and replacing it with theshorter version he decided to publish in its stead. Even in its abbreviatedform, however, it amounts to an involved and demanding piece of work,containing retrospective references to conclusions so far reached in hisphilosophy as well as anticipations of matters he intends to cover in themain body of the text that is to follow. Since it is in terms of the formerconclusions that he offers a preliminary clue to what he conceives to be aguiding concern of the present Critique, it will be best to start with hissomewhat condensed remarks in that connection. For they indicate thathis conception of judgment as playing a mediating role betweenunderstanding and reason was intimately linked to a distinction which wasfundamental to the doctrine of transcendental idealism propounded in hisprevious writings.This was the radical contrast he had drawn between the realm ofempirical phenomena, comprising reality as it appears to us as cognitivesubjects endowed with a certain sensory and intellectual apparatus, and apostulated non-empirical realm of noumena or “things in themselves.” Sofar as the phenomenal sphere was concerned, Kant had argued that ourfamiliar awareness of a spatio-temporal and causally governed world ofperceivable entities and events presupposed a framework of universalforms and categories which was imposed upon the data or raw material ofsensation by the human mind. Such an a priori framework determined thebasic structure of the empirical consciousness, constituting the conditionsupon which all everyday and scientific knowledge depended for itspossibility. At the same time, it must clearly be understood that anyknowledge we might legitimately claim to possess of reality was confinedto the sphere of observable nature, i.e. to what fell within the scope ofsensory experience: it did not extend to the noumenal realm, the latterbeing a supersensible field that was necessarily inaccessible to theoreticalcognition or investigation. However, it did not follow that the notion ofthe supersensible had no substantive part to play in our thought. On thecontrary, Kant regarded it as being crucial to the conception we wereobliged to have of ourselves when considered from a practical and, morespecifically, a moral point of view. For here it was essential that we shouldthink of ourselves as possessing free will and as being thereby able to actin compliance with practical imperatives prescribed by reason as opposedto following the natural promptings of sensuous impulse or inclination.Such a capacity for rational self-determination appeared to be excluded onthe supposition that we belonged solely to the phenomenal domain, sinceon Kant’s own principles everything occurring within that sphere wassubject without exception to the laws of natural causality. On the otherhand, the requirements of morality could be preserved if it were acceptedthat there were two aspects under which people might be viewed, the firstof which involved treating them as items in “the world of sense” and thesecond of which involved regarding them as belonging to the “intelligible”or supersensible sphere which necessarily lay outside the range of thecausal categories that were universally applicable within the empiricalrealm. Thus, while from a theoretical standpoint we were indeed bound toconsider ourselves as governed by natural laws, from the standpoint ofpractical motivation and choice we could at the same time consistentlyconceive of ourselves as exercising freedom and rational autonomy of thekind presupposed by the moral consciousness. Kant was careful to pointout that the latter conception, depending as it did for its possibility uponour membership of the supersensible as well as the natural world, was notcapable of being cognitively established; for nothing whatsoever could beknown by us at the level of noumenai reality. Nonetheless, the “twoworld”doctrine invoked might be said to leave room for the idea ofhuman free will in a way that rendered it compatible with the acceptanceof a fully deterministic account of nature, thereby resolving an antinomycommonly believed to arise between the claims of scientific enquiry andthe presuppositions of ethical thought.Problematic though it has often been felt to be, the above solution tothis apparent conflict was certainly the one that Kant had adopted in histwo preceding Critiques. And it recurs in the Introduction to his thirdinasmuch as he speaks there of theoretical understanding and practicalreason as having “two distinct jurisdictions,” neither of which need bethought of as interfering with the other—“it is possible for us at least tothink without contradiction of both these jurisdictions, and theirappropriate faculties, as coexisting in the same Subject” (Introduction, p.13). However, although in the present context he briefly refers to thisthesis as having been established in the Critique of Pure Reason, at thesame time he indicates here that it leaves in its wake a further issue whosesignificance has still to be faced. For it raises the question of whatconnection, if any, may be presumed to exist between the spheres ofnatural necessity and practical freedom, given their supposedindependence. Kant certainly writes of there being “a great gulf fixed”between the provinces to which the concepts of nature “as the sensible”and of freedom “as the supersensible” respectively apply, the first of thesebeing “powerless” to exercise an influence upon the second. The factremains nonetheless that the two realms cannot be thought of as totallyinsulated from each other, for it is a condition of moral agency that theprinciples and objectives which reason prescribes should be understood tobe realizable in the phenomenal world, achieving expression within theempirical course of events. As he himself goes on to say: “the concept offreedom is meant to actualize in the sensible world the end proposed by itslaws,” and he holds it to follow that nature must be “capable of beingregarded in such a way that in the conformity to law of its form it at leastharmonizes with the possibility of the ends to be effectuated in itaccording to the laws of freedom” (ibid., p. 14). In other words, we shouldbe able, though without violating the principle of natural causality, toconsider the phenomenal domain under an aspect that would allow us toview it as amenable to the behests and aims of morality; at the veryminimum, it would not present itself as being wholly allen to thefulfillment of the latter. Such an aspect is specifically connected by Kantwith the notion of a purposiveness or “finality” in nature which issupplied by the faculty of judgment; and it is in these terms that heenvisages the possibility of judgment’s providing a “mediating concept” orrequisite link between the two modes of thinking—theoretical andpractical—whose spheres of application he has found it essential todistinguish.The implications of this suggestion, which Kant relates somewhatobscurely to his conception of phenomenal nature as itself having a“supersensible substrate” or noumenal ground, only appear at a laterstage of the Critique where it is evaluated in the light of certainqualifications to which it is held to be inevitably subject. Within thecontext of the Introduction, however, its chief importance lies in its beingthe cue for him to initiate a general account of judgment and its functions.It is necessary to speak in the plural of its role, since Kant certainly regardsthe power of judgment as operating at more than one level of our thoughtand as being relevant to discriminable philosophical concerns. That,indeed, quickly becomes apparent from the discussion which directlyfollows and which actually forms the centerpiece of this section of hisbook. For there it is issues pertinent to scientific procedure, rather thanquestions arising from reflection on our moral experience, thatimmediately occupy him. Moreover, it is with reference to suchmethodological considerations that he first broaches the problem of whatkind of a priori employment may legitimately be assigned to the mentalfaculty he has in mind.Kant opens his account by making a preliminary distinction betweenwhat he respectively calls the “determinant” and the “reflective”dimensions of judgment. In both it is said to involve relating universalsand particulars, but the manner in which it does so is radically different inthe two cases. Thus judgment is asserted to be determinant when itinvolves applying a “given” universal—that is, a concept or general lawknown or presupposed in advance—to particulars recognized as fallingunder it: it was in this sense that Kant referred to judgment in his firstCritique, where the relevant universals were the formative categories andprinciples of the understanding and where it was simply characterized as“the faculty of subsuming under rules.” He now wishes to compare thatcapacity with another one in which the above process is, so to speak,reversed; here it is the particular, or particulars, that is or are given, thetask of judgment being taken instead to consist in seeking a universalbeneath which the latter can appropriately be brought. Engaging in such atask is the business of reflective judgment, and it is with the operations ofjudgment so understood that Kant is presently concerned.What does this amount to in less abstract terms? As we have seen, itwas central to the standpoint Kant adopted in his critical philosophy thateverything falling within the sphere of empirical reality conformed to anoverall framework whose universal applicability to phenomena wastranscendentally guaranteed. And, since the forms of order embodiedtherein were constitutive of all objective experience, it followed that theymust be taken to hold of whatever occurred within the areas explored bythe empirical or natural sciences. However, it was one thing to recognizethe a priori validity for any experience of such a categorical principle asthat every event must have a determining cause. It was quite another todiscover from experience what particular causal laws or regularitiesactually obtain within a given domain and to try to identify their possibleconnections and interrelations. Neither enquiry can be undertaken withoutrecourse to the findings of empirical observation and scrutiny, but Kantlays especial stress on the second as expressing something that heconsiders to be intrinsic to the very notion of scientific thinking. That isthe idea of system.The claim that “systematic unity is what…raises ordinary knowledge tothe rank of science” had already been emphasized in the first Critique inconnection with what was there called “the logical employment ofreason.” Here Kant takes it up, though with the difference that theexercise of judgment is implicitly substituted for that of theoretical reason.At the level of everyday life there are innumerable generalizations whichreflect the “manifold forms of nature” and which may be said tocontribute to the stock of our ordinary or commonsense knowledge of theworld. Even so, a mere aggregate of such perceived regularities, howevercomprehensive, is never by itself sufficient to qualify as a science. Tosatisfy that description, and to meet theoretical requirements of the kinddeemed essential to scientific understanding, it is necessary that therelevant empirical laws should be seen to constitute an interdependent andhierarchically related system; as Kant puts it, from this point of view it isessential to establish “the unity of all empirical principles under higher,though likewise empirical, principles, and thence the possibility of thesystematic subordination of higher and lower” (Introduction, p. 19). Andthat leads him to formulate what he conceives to be a fundamentalpresupposition of scientific enquiry. For he goes on to maintain that toembark upon such a project is to proceed on the assumption that themultiplicity of naturel laws will be found to exhibit a unitary order whichis intelligible to the human mind, so that it is as if “an understanding(though it be not ours) had supplied them for the benefit of our cognitivefaculties.” Nature, in other words, must be approached as though itsworkings were purposively adapted to our intellectual capacities andpowers of comprehension, this being a conception which he specificallyascribes to reflective judgment. And in so ascribing it he at the same timecontends that it amounts to an a priori principle possessed of anindependent validity in its own right.Kant is insistent that the distinctive status of the principle in question,together with that of subsidiary “maxims of judgement” like those whichattribute economy and continuity to nature’s operations, should be fullyappreciated. In his own terminology, it is not “constitutive”: unlike thetranscendental rules imposed by the understanding, it does not represent anecessary condition of phenomenal reality as such, being prescriptivelyrelated to our modes of empirically investigating nature rather than beingobjectively determinative of the natural realm considered in itself. Nor,Kant holds, does it justify us in affirming the existence of an actualdesigner in the form of a divine or superhuman intelligence responsible forharmonizing the natural world with the needs and capacities of our finiteintellects. Instead it functions purely as a principle of enquiry which, whilea priori in the sense of being something brought to rather than derivedfrom experience, is only “regulative” or heuristic in character.Nevertheless, although we can never justifiably claim to know that natureobjectively conforms to a purposively conceived order of the sortpostulated, we are subjectively obliged even so to pursue ourinvestigations as if it did. For otherwise scientific thought and research,conceived as a quest after system within the prima facie untidyconglomeration of facts and regularities that empirically confronts us,could not be meaningfully undertaken: “were it not for this presuppositionwe should have no order of nature in accordance with empirical laws, and,consequently, no guidingthread…for an investigation of them”(Introduction, p. 25). It appears, therefore, that a view of nature invokingpurposive conceptions—which, as was intimated earlier, might ultimatelybe found to serve judgment as a means of mediating between the spheresof freedom and natural causality—can at least be said to have receivedpositive, if limited, endorsement within the context of scientificmethodology. For here it is taken by Kant to underlie, as an indispensableregulative idea, the general project of comprehending phenomena within aunitary scheme of interconnected laws. It has, moreover, a furtherimplication to which he briefly alludes. For it follows from the account hehas given that, although as scientists we must always conduct ourenquiries on the supposition that nature is adapted to meet oursystematizing ambitions, we cannot in this case—as we can in the case ofits conformity to the categories of the understanding—have any guaranteethat it will necessarily do so; if on a particular occasion it turns out toaccord with our theoretical concerns, that can only be for us a contingentresult. But the attainment of every objective where failure is possible isaccompanied by a feeling of pleasure. Hence whenever the scientific questafter systematic unity is crowned with success, such an achievement isbound to be pleasing: the discovery, Kant notes, “that two or moreempirical heterogeneous laws of nature are allied under one principle thatembraces them both is the ground of a very appreciable pleasure” (ibid., p.27). Thus it emerges that the exercise of judgment can be viewed as beingintimately connected with the experience of a certain kind of pleasurablefeeling, one that has its source in the satisfaction afforded to our facultiesof cognition rather than in the fulfillment of any practical aims or desireswe may happen to entertain.The above concludes what Kant has to say in the Introduction aboutthe part played by reflective judgment in rendering the scientific enterprisepossible. In effect, it constitutes a prelude that leads—admittedlysomewhat obliquely—to the two central sections of his Critique, the firstcomprising a comprehensive analysis of judgment in relation to theaesthetic consciousness and the second a discussion of its role that focuseschiefly on the interpretation of organic phenomena of the sort studied inbiology. At first sight these might seem to represent very dissimilar fieldsof interest. Nevertheless, they are both ones in which Kant again treats theidea of purposiveness as occupying a pivotal position. Furthermore, theintellectually oriented conception of pleasure he associated with the use ofreflective judgment in scientific contexts may be regarded as anticipating,if only in some respects, a notion that lies at the heart of his aesthetictheory.AESTHETIC JUDGMENT AND EXPERIENCEKant’s concern with aesthetics—the subject to which Part I of the Critiqueof Judgement is exclusively devoted—was by no means new. It is true thathis appreciation of art itself was limited in both scope and depth. Thatwas especially so in the case of music, to whose appeal he appears to havebeen largely insensitive; yet even with regard to literature he seems to haveconfined himself to a somewhat narrow diet, while his lifelong residence inthe city of Königsberg meant that he had practically no direct awarenessof what had been achieved in the spheres of painting, sculpture, orarchitecture. All the same, these constraints did not prevent him fromtaking a considerable interest in the nature and sources of aestheticexperience. He had long been familiar with eighteenth-century writing onaesthetic matters, an essay he published in 1764 on the feeling of thebeautiful and sublime suggesting that by that time he was already broadlyacquainted with the contributions made by such British thinkers asHutcheson, Addison, and Burke. He referred, however, to the piece inquestion as having been undertaken “more with the eye of an observerthan a philosopher,” and it was in fact only when he returned to the topicmore than two decades later that he felt able to accord it the type oftheoretical treatment it merited.This was due to the circumstance that during the years immediatelypreceding the composition of the third Critique Kant underwent afundamental change of mind concerning the character of aesthetic claims.Generally speaking, he regarded earlier theorists, who included men likeBaumgarten, Lessing, and Hume, as having tended to favor one or otherof two radically opposed approaches to what these involved. Either theyviewed them as being essentially related to psychological reactions orsentiments which were subject to a purely empirical investigation, or elsethey interpreted them instead as answerable to conceptual criteria or rulesin a way that implicitly assimilated them to the status of cognitiveassertions about objective reality. While he had previously been inclined tosympathize with the first position, Kant was now of the opinion thatneither of them was finally acceptable. Both distorted what was basicallyat issue, each—though in contrasting ways—failing to do justice todistinctive peculiarities of judgments of taste that rendered themproblematic. He therefore concluded that it was necessary to provide afresh analysis of their implications, one that was designed moreover toshow that the possibility of such claims ultimately depended upon thesatisfaction of certain a priori conditions. Given that he had at the sametime come to regard aesthetic appreciation and the pleasure it afforded asrepresenting a specific form in which reflective judgment manifested itself,this was not an unexpected aspiration.Beauty and the problem of tasteMany of the elements central to Kant’s revised account are set out in thesection that opens this part of the Critique and is called “Analytic of theBeautiful.” As its title indicates, he considers the judgments with which heis dealing to be propositions ascribing beauty to things, subdividing hisdiscussion of them into four “moments”—quality, quantity, relation, andmodality—which purport to elucidate their essential nature underdistinguishable aspects. Although schematically separated, however, thedifferent features thereby identified tend (some-what questionably) to bespoken of as logically interdependent, and Kant also introduces additionalpoints about their import that await clarification or elaboration further onin the book. Thus close attention to the order and detail of his expositionat this stage is liable to encounter obscurities or uncertainties that raisedifficulties of interpretation. Nonetheless, and despite such complications,it is possible to view what he writes as contributing to a developingpattern of argument whose general tenor and purpose become evident ashe proceeds.Right at the beginning of the “Analytic” Kant makes it apparent that hewishes to draw a sharp distinction between aesthetic judgments and onesthat are objectively cognitive; to that extent at least he is in agreementwith previous theorists who adopted a basically subjectivist position.Judgments of taste are not concerned with, nor can their truth bedetermined by reference to, observable properties of phenomena in thesense in which those may be said to underlie claims to knowledge abouthow matters stand in the world. Rather, they crucially have to do with themanner in which particular representations affect us so as to produce a“feeling of pleasure or displeasure,” the latter being something that“denotes nothing in the object.” It follows, Kant thinks, that aestheticjudgments are ones whose “determining ground cannot be other thansubjective,” and he goes on to stress the contrast between, on the onehand, apprehending a building from a strictly cognitive standpoint and, onthe other, being “conscious of this representation with an accompanyingsensation of delight” (Part I, pp. 41–2). Qua subjective feeling, such apleasurable reaction can contribute or add nothing to our knowledge ofthe building considered as an independent object of perception; it is,however, indispensable as forming the basis of a favorable judgment oftaste.It appears, then, that pronouncing something to be beautiful necessarilyimplies finding it to occasion an experience of satisfaction. But satisfactionof what kind? Unlike some of his predecessors, who had also assignedpleasure a central place in their accounts, Kant was not content merely toregard the notion as referring to an isolable mental state, identifiable apartfrom the varying conditions of its occurrence. We have seen that traces ofa different approach were already discernible in the Introduction to theCritique; but it is only here, where Kant emphasizes the need todiscriminate the type of enjoyment intrinsic to the appreciation of beautyfrom the kinds of satisfaction experienced in other contexts, that it isexplicitly formulated and developed. Thus he insists that the delightrelevant to such appreciation must be carefully distinguished frompleasures which are, as he puts it, “allied to an interest” and whichpresuppose the presence of determinate appetites or wants on the part ofthe subject. Pleasures of the latter sort fall into two main groups,respectively categorized as ones that relate to the agreeable and ones thatrelate to the good. So far as the agreeable is concerned, Kant singles outimmediate pleasures of sense, speaking at the same time as if theseinvolved the gratification of particular desires or inclinations. By contrast,pleasure in the good is not a matter of sensuous enjoyment, thesatisfactions in question being determined instead by rationalconsiderations of a characteristically practical nature—we may, forinstance, be pleased by something’s serving a certain purpose or again byits meeting certain standards or requirements we have in mind, includingthose prescribed by morality. Delight in the beautiful, however, stands ona completely different footing from either of the above. It derives from nospecifie interest, whether sensuous or practical, that we may take in theexistence of a given object or state of affairs. On the contrary, ourattention in this case is directed solely to what strikes us as worthy ofcontemplation in its own right, the pleasure afforded being dependentneither upon sensory gratification nor upon a recognized conformity tothe demands of practical rationality or volition. Hence it can be said that,of the triad of delights mentioned, taste in the beautiful constitutes “theone and only disinterested and free delight; for with it, no interest,whether of sense or reason, extorts approval” (Part I, p. 49). It is relatedto “favour,” as opposed to “inclination” or “respect,” and “favour is theonly free liking.”The view that an attitude of disinterested contemplation is essential toaesthetic appreciation is one that has acquired widespread currency sinceKant’s time. He may not have been alone among eight-eenth-centuryphilosophers in subscribing to it, but he was certainly the most explicitand influential of its original proponents. He saw it, moreover, as having asignificant bearing upon a feature of judgments of taste that was vital to aproper interpretation of their meaning. For he thought that, if the delightwe take in a particular object is believed to owe nothing to conditions orpreoccupations peculiar to ourselves, we feel we have reason for claimingthat it should elicit a similar delight from everyone. And it was just such aclaim to general agreement that he held to be necessarily embodied inaesthetic appraisals, a claim which he initially encapsulated in thecontention that “the beautiful is that which, apart from concepts, isrepresented as the object of a universal delight” (Part I, p. 50). Thegrounds and implications of this contention are examined and explored inthe second and fourth “moments” of the “Analytic.”The fact that we are typically prone to speak as if beauty were a qualityof things in the world is pertinent to what Kant has in mind. As one mightexpect, he implies that such a form of words is misleading insofar as itsuggests that aesthetic judgments can legitimately be assimilated toobjective judgments of a cognitive kind. Nevertheless, it is also revealingin pointing to a genuine analogy between the two; for the former, despitebeing subjectively founded on feeling, resemble the latter in that they“may be presupposed to be valid for all men.” This becomes apparent,Kant thinks, if one compares the ways in which we refer to the merelypleasant or agreeable, where what we say is restricted in scope to our ownprivate sensations, with the pronouncements we make about the beautiful,these being understood to have universal import in that they lay claim tothe assent of others. Appealing to ordinary usage, Kant argues that whensomeone says that a particular wine is agreeable he will readily admit thathe is asserting no more than that it is agreeable to him. There is thereforeno contradiction between his judgment and a divergent judgment about itsagreeableness expressed by somebody else, with the consequence thatneither can properly criticize or condemn the taste of the other as“incorrect”: here, as in all cases of what is found personally pleasing toour various senses, the familiar dictum “Everyone has his own taste”holds good. When, on the other hand, we turn to ascriptions of beauty, thesituation markedly changes. A person cannot in the same fashion confinehim-or herself to saying of, for example, a building or a poem, “It isbeautiful for me,” as if that again were just a matter of the pleasure ithappened to give them. For, according to Kant,if it merely pleases him, he must not call it beautiful. Many thingsmay for him possess charm or agreeableness—no one cares aboutthat; but when he puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, hedemands the same delight from others. He judges not merely forhimself, but for all men, and then speaks of beauty as if it were aproperty of things.(Part I, p. 52)Such an implicit call upon the agreement of others, which Kant sharplydistinguishes from a mere empirical conjecture as to how they are likely toreact, explains how it is that divergent judgments of beauty, as distinctfrom ones concerning the agreeable, represent genuine instances ofconflict. For here we express ourselves as if we were entitled to theirassent; in his own words, we “formulate judgements demanding thisagreement in its universality,” and if it is not forthcoming we are apt toregard those who dissent as being mistaken or wrong—we do not shrugoff its absence as simply a difference in individual response. To that extent,then, aesthetic appraisals may justifiably be likened to cognitive judgmentsabout matters of fact, where a similar claim to universal acceptance isimplied and where divergences of opinion give rise to imputations of error.There, however, the apparent resemblance ends. For the validity towhich aesthetic appraisals lay claim is subjective only; as such it in no waydepends upon the use of concepts, whereas these play an essential role inascribing validity to cognitive judgments about items in the world.Judgments of the latter type, in addition to presupposing the formalconditions imposed by the categories, necessarily involve subsuming whatis perceptually presented under determinate empirical concepts whoseapplicability to the given is governed by publicly recognized rules. Thevalidity of a particular cognitive claim is thus objectively decidableaccording to whether what it purports to denote and describe has beencorrectly characterized in a manner that conforms to the relevant rules orcriteria. But it is Kant’s emphatic contention that judgments of tastecannot be understood or assessed in these terms: “in forming an estimateof objects merely from concepts, all representation of beauty goes by theboard,” appeals to specific rules or principles as a means of compellingagreement or resolving disputes in aesthetic contexts being out of place(Part I, p. 56). If that were not so, aesthetic judgments would—as certaintheorists have earnestly hoped—be “capable of being enforced by proofs.”Yet their hopes are vain, disregarding as they do something that is intrinsicto the very notion of aesthetic appraisal and failing which nothing canrightfully qualify as a judgment of the kind in question. For, as Kant hasalready insisted, what is crucial in grounding such a judgment about agiven object is the pleasure we subjectively experience when wecontemplate it; we must “get a look at the object with our own eyes, justas if our delight depended on sensation.” If the requisite delight is lackingwe cannot properly or sincerely pronounce the thing to be beautiful, nor afortiori can agreement that it is be wrung from us by others, howevernumerous they may be and whatever supposed “rules of beauty” laiddown by distinguished critics they may invoke in their support. As he putsit elsewhere, in such circumstances I can only “take my stand on theground that my judgement is to be one of taste, and not one ofunderstanding or reason” (ibid., p. 140). The contrast with the claims tovalidity implicit in cognitive assertions could not, it would appear, be moretrenchantly affirmed.Nevertheless, and as Kant himself was well aware, the position he hadreached raised a considerable problem from a philosophical point of view.If aesthetic appraisals differed from expressions of personal liking inclaiming universal and—as he further maintained—necessary agreement,and if they differed from cognitive judgments in virtue of their essentiallysubjective orientation, the question inevitably arose as to whether, and ifso in what manner, they could be said to be justifiable. It was one thing tooffer an analysis that aimed to exhibit their logical and epistemologicalpeculiarities. It was another to contend that, given such features, we wereactually entitled to make them. In our ordinary practice we might speak asif we were, but with what right? When I say of an object that it is of acertain shape or dimensions, there are determinate criteria to whichreference can be made; granted that its empirically identifiable propertiessatisfy them, I may legitimately require general assent. When, on the otherhand, I call it beautiful, it is intersubjective agreement in response, notagreement in objective description, that is centrally at issue. And here, itseems, I have ultimately to consult and rely upon my own felt reactions tothe thing, “to the exclusion of rules and precepts” and without theavailability of empirical or conceptual proofs. But if so, what validgrounds can I or anyone else possess for purporting to speak with a“universal voice” that lays claim to the concurrence of all? In Kant’s ownsummary formulation of the problem, “how are judgements of tastepossible?” (Part I, pp. 144–5).An early intimation of his approach to the question he posed hadalready appeared when he was discussing the disinterestedness of aestheticpleasure and when he there implied that the absence of personalidiosyncrasies in determining our delight might naturally lead us to regardit as resting on what we “may also presuppose in every other person.” Asoriginally introduced, however, this seems to be presented as a mereconjecture which is uninformative as to the content of the presuppositionreferred to and which in any case stands in need of independentsubstantiation. And much of what Kant wrote in subsequent sections maybe interpreted as being designed to provide such substantiation. Thus hewent on to argue that a careful examination of the inner nature andsources of our pleasure in the beautiful showed it to be due to thesatisfaction of subjective conditions of judgment which must indeed beassumed to be universally present in every human being. Hence if wecould be sure that the pleasure we experienced was produced inaccordance with these conditions, we should in fact be entitled to callupon the agreement of others in the manner distinctive of judgments oftaste. Although his reasoning in support of this conclusion takes anintricate and on occasions bewilderingly circuitous course, the salientpoints covered are not hard to discern.What, then, are the “subjective conditions” to which allusion has beenmade? Kant’s answer derives from his faculty psychology and turns onsomething he calls “the free play of the cognitive powers.” In the accountof perceptual knowledge originally given in the Critique of Pure Reasonand briefly recalled in the present work, such cognition was portrayed asinvolving the operations of both imagination and understanding. Theimagination, as “the faculty of intuitions or representations,” holdstogether and synthesizes items of the sensory manifold so as to allow themto be subsumed by the understanding under appropriate concepts; in thisconnection, therefore, it can be said to be at the service of theunderstanding, “in harness” to the latter in its task of categorizing andconceptualizing the presentations of sense. Now it is Kant’s contentionthat the same two faculties are also operat-ive at the level of aestheticexperience. Here, however, there can be no question of there being aspecifie cognitive purpose which requires the subordination of theimagination to the ends of the understanding; in consequence, the rolesthey respectively perform do not conform to this pattern. Instead theyshould be regarded as engaging or meshing together in a fashion thatenlivens or “quickens” both while setting “irksome” constraints uponneither: in the ideal case, that takes the form of a harmonious accord, amutually satisfying interaction whereby each faculty is proportionatelyattuned to the other in an unconstrained “entertainment of the mentalpowers.” The resultant “feeling of free play” is one of pleasure, and it is ofsuch pleasure that we are conscious when our experience is of anauthentically aesthetic kind.Kant believed that the above account provided the basis for a“deduction,” or justification, of the intersubjective validity to whichjudgments of taste laid claim. For with those the delight involved was notdependent upon merely contingent capacities for sensuous enjoymentwhich notoriously varied from individual to individual. On the contrary, ithad been shown to presuppose the operation of intellectual faculties thatmust be presumed to be identical in all human beings as a prioriconditions if communicable knowledge was to be possible; hence it waspleasure of a type which everybody, in appropriate circumstances andundistracted by irrelevant considerations, could rightfully be expected toshare. Kant indicated, moreover, that the position he had advanced had anadditional consequence to which he attached great importance, aconsequence that concerned the aspects under which an object must strikeus if it was to produce the requisite response. In explaining what thisconsisted in, he introduced the notion of “formal finality” or“purposiveness without a purpose” (Zweckmässigkeit ohne Zweck).How are these curious expressions to be understood? At first sight Kantmight be taken to mean that, in ascribing beauty to products of nature, weare subjectively disposed to think of them as somehow purposivelyadapted to our faculties but without being thereby justified in assertingthis to be actually the case. And that is suggestive of a partial analogy withwhat he wrote in the Introduction about the conception of naturepresupposed by reflective judgment in relation to scientific enquiry. Butwhile in contexts involving natural beauty he is apt to speak in this vein,he also makes it clear that he has something further in mind. For he alsoargues that for pleasure of the relevant kind to be possible our responsemust be occasioned by the perceptual form an object displays, this formbeing experienced as manifesting a self-subsistent coherence or orderwhich is apprehended neither as serving an assignable objective end orutilitarian purpose nor as conforming to some prior notion of what thething is supposed or intended to be. The point is elaborated in a celebrateddistinction drawn between what he respectively calls “pure” or “free”beauty and “dependent” or “adherent” beauty: the first, he writes,“presupposes no concept of what the object should be; the second doespresuppose such a concept and, with it, an answering perfection of theobject” (Part I, p. 72). Thus if we appreciate a natural product in terms ofits suitability to its biological function or a human product in terms of itsmeeting requirements specific to objects of that type, we are assessing itfrom the standpoint of dependent beauty and any pleasure we derivethere-from partakes of what Kant earlier referred to as being pleasure inthe good. In judging something as an instance of free beauty, on the otherhand, we are concerned solely with what “pleases by its form,” the formin question presenting an appearance of design or purposive organizationthat is satisfying on its own account and without any reference toidentifiable objective ends or preassigned specifications. The latter wouldintroduce considerations of a conceptual or cognitive character, whereas itis essential to formal relationships of the sort proper to a “pure” judgmentof taste that they should not be reducible to some “universally applicableformula” and that they should be grasped and enjoyed in a way that isaltogether free from the constraint of determinate rules.In giving examples of objects that impress us with the requisitepleasingness of form, Kant selects as “beauties of nature” certain birds,flowers, and crustaceans; in general, indeed, it is to natural products thathe tends to accord precedence throughout this part of his text. But he alsoillustrates what he has in view by mentioning various human artifacts.Thus abstract “designs à la grecque” and wallpaper patterns are said to be“free beauties” inasmuch as they have “no intrinsic meaning” orrepresentative function—“they represent nothing—no object under adefinite concept”; and he further asserts that art forms such as paintingand sculpture, where “the design is what is essential,” and musical works,where “composition” has an analogous status, are likewise capable ofdisposing the mind to the harmonious interplay of the faculties that isproductive of aesthetic satisfaction. Whether his emphasis on exclusivelyformal features followed from, or was even wholly consistent with, hisoverall account of the character and grounds of judgments of taste may bequestioned. It cannot, however, be denied that his asseverations on thatparticular score have frequently been seen as anticipating certainsubstantive critical doctrines which were to achieve considerableprominence more than a hundred years after he wrote. The conception ofvisual art as pre-eminently a matter of “significant form,” popularizedearly in the twentieth century by British writers like Roger Fry and CliveBell, has often been cited in this connection. It is noteworthy, too, that theAmerican critic and advocate of formalism, Clement Greenberg, laterexplicitly referred to him as a precursor of modernist theory. Suchcomparisons and parallels are understandable enough if viewed in thecontext of some of the claims Kant put forward in the “Analytic of theBeautiful.” Nevertheless, they accord less comfortably with what he hadto say when, in the second of the two main sections into which Part I ofthe Critique of Judgement is divided, he effectively widened the scope ofhis investigation of aesthetic experience.The sublime and fine anBoth the title of this lengthy second section and the manner of itsorganization have—not surprisingly—troubled commentators. Kant calledit “Analytic of the Sublime,” thereby giving the impression that he wouldbe centrally concerned with sublimity considered as a distinguishabledimension of the aesthetic consciousness. But the heading chosen turns outto be misleadingly restrictive. Not only does the implied contrast withbeauty lead him back into picking up and elaborating on mattersregarding the status and justification of judgments of taste that hadalready been alluded to in the preceding section. He also goes on toundertake an extended examination of the nature and value of artisticachievement which reaches far beyond anything suggested by his previous,rather cursory remarks on that topic. And while it is possible to descrysome connection between the treatment of art he is now concerned toprovide and his treatment of the sublime, the links discernible remain atbest tenuous. Following the order of Kant’s own account, we shall beginwith the latter.Kant’s interest in sublimity as a distinctive aesthetic category dates backto his 1764 essay on its relation to beauty which was mentioned earlier on.As in the case of the beautiful, however, his approach to the sublimeunderwent a profound transformation, the setting in which hisobservations were originally framed being replaced by one that eschewed“merely empirical” considerations of the kind adduced by Edmund Burkein his famous study of the subject in favor of a “transcendentalexposition” that involved conceptions deriving from Kant’s mature criticalsystem. In giving such an exposition, he makes it clear that he does notwish to deny the presence of significant similarities in our appreciation ofthe two. Thus he claims at the outset that both are “pleasing on their ownaccount” and without reference to any further end. Moreover, judgmentsof the sublime are like pure judgments of beauty in not presupposing theapplication of any determinate concept and in the fact that, while beingsingular and noncognitive, they nonetheless lay claim to universal validity.Yet, despite these affinities, there are important differences which Kant isat pains to point out. In his eyes, they are sufficiently impressive to makean independent explanation of how sublimity can figure as a recognizableaspect of our aesthetic experience seem an imperative requirement.The need for such an explanation becomes plain when we compare thesatisfaction we take in the beautiful with that aroused by the sublime. Ashas been seen, the former is held to involve the apprehension of a formalor self-subsistent purposiveness in objects which engages our faculties ofimagination and understanding in harmonious free play. Furthermore, sofar as natural beauty is concerned we are elevated by the thought of natureas being in some sense ideologically ordered to elicit this pleasurableresponse, “a finality in its form making the object appear, as it were,preadapted to our power of judgement” (Part I, p. 91). In the case of thesublime, however, nature confronts us in quite another light. For what isstriking here is the circumstance that we assign sublimity to natural effectswhich present themselves to us as limitlessly vast or chaotic in a way thatmay be totally devoid of form. And this is connected by Kant withadditional points of difference. Whereas what we find beautiful in natureis experienced as being happily attuned to our mental faculties, naturalproducts of the kind typically referred to as sublime are said to“contravene the ends of our power of judgement”; they overwhelm ourcapacity for sensuously taking them in, thereby constituting what he callsan “outrage on the imagination” rather than anything conducive to itsunconstrained accord with the understanding. It follows (Kant thinks) thatsublimity, unlike beauty, is incorrectly ascribed to the phenomenathemselves; for how can what is apprehended as “inherently contra-final”be noted with an expression of approval? Instead, we should properlyattribute it to the sentiments and attitudes of mind they evoke in us, thesebeing essentially associated with the presence of rational ideas that exceedthe bounds of sensory presentation. As he himself puts it: “the sublime, inthe strict sense of the word, cannot be contained in any sensuous form, butrather concerns ideas of reason” (ibid., p. 92).Kant’s stipulations concerning the use of the term, and theaccompanying contrast drawn with beauty, consort somewhat oddly withwhat he says elsewhere about the grounds and subjective orientation ofaesthetic judgments in general. Given that—as he here allows—objects canproperly be called beautiful in virtue of their aptitude for affecting ourfaculties in certain ways, why should not the same considerations apply tothe phenomena we call sublime, even if these are said to affect them in aradically dissimilar manner? In fact, it is his reference to reason and itsideas that is crucial in the present context and that chiefly underlies thedistinction he wishes to make. For, insofar as particular naturalphenomena cause us to entertain conceptions that outrun our powers ofimaginative representation, they arouse us to a consciousness of reason asan independent faculty which leads us “to esteem as small in comparisonwith [its] ideas…everything which for us is great in nature as an object ofsense.” And that, Kant claims, helps to explain the pleasurable exaltationinduced by the sublime, springing as it does from a presentiment of “oursuperiority over nature” that awakens us to our rational vocation andmakes the mind “sensible of the sublimity of the sphere of its own being.”Accurately construed, therefore, sublimity “does not reside in any of thethings of nature, but only in our own mind” (Part I, p. 114).The invocation of reason as a separate “supersensible” faculty, whichaccording to his previous Critiques is capable of both a theoretical and apractical exercise, underpins the account Kant goes on to give of twodifferent modes wherein the above presentiment is held to manifest itselfand which he refers to respectively as the “mathematically” and the“dynamically” sublime. In the case of the first, it is the sheer magnitudeand formlessness of what appears before us that is paramount, conveyinga perceptually intractable impression of unlimited extent and absence ofboundary. But the failure of the imagination to encompass within acomprehensive intuition what is thus intimated to it, and the consequentdissatisfaction we feel in the face of its inadequacy, is counterbalanced bythe fact that we are able to grasp in thought the notion of the infinite as atotality or “absolute whole,” the latter being an indeterminate ideaascribable to reason in its theoretical capacity. Hence the very limitationsdisplayed by the imagination in its fruitless endeavors to measure up tothis idea at the level of sensuous representation serve to highlight bycontrast the supremacy of our rational powers, indicating that we areendowed with “a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense”(Part I, p. 102). A broadly analogous conclusion is reached in Kant’sdiscussion of the dynamically sublime, although here the focus is onreason in its practical employment and what he writes assumes adistinctively ethical character. Whereas in the preceding case it was thevast dimensions of certain phenomena that impressed us, it is now theapparently “irresistible might” exhibited by such natural occurrences asviolent storms and volcanic eruptions. Like Burke before him, Kant insiststhat the aesthetic appreciation of nature under this threatening aspect,which brings home “a recognition of our physical helplessness,” is onlypossible when we view it from a position of safety; on the other hand, hefundamentally diverges from his predecessor in the interpretation he offersof the satisfaction involved. That is not (as Burke had implied) due to themoderation of our sentiments which the absence of personal dangerproduces and which thereby allows us to find pleasantly invigorating andstimulating what would otherwise be experienced as disagreeablyfrightening. On the contrary, Kant holds its actual source to lie once againin a sense of the superiority of our rational powers to those of sensibility.This time, however, it is not a theoretical capacity to surpass in thoughtthe limits of the sensuously oriented imagination that he has in mind.Rather, it is a supposed ability at the level of our practical life to respondto hostile or menacing circumstances in such a manner as to withstand thepressures of sensuous inclination. The dynamically sublime, in otherwords, awakens us to the conception of ourselves as self-determiningmoral agents who can rise above the solicitations of sensuous impulse andmake our conduct conform instead to the principles and ends laid downby practical reason. Thus in experiencing it we are conscious of beingmore than mere creatures of sensibility—here conceived as a susceptibilityto natural desires or fears—and are raised to a presentiment of the preeminenceof our rational stature. This, moreover, is something we mayproperly expect of all human beings in virtue of their assumed capacity formoral feeling. It follows, therefore, that judgments of the sublime, likejudgments of the beautiful, may rightfully command general assent,although they do so on different grounds.The emphasis on pride in the supremacy of reason in Kant’s theory ofthe sublime, together with the prominent place he assigned to moralconsiderations, may not be felt to conform very happily to our intuitiveunderstanding of the concept as applied in aesthetic contexts. In tacklingthe problems it poses, however, he at least showed a novel insight intotheir complexity, as well as demonstrating a salutary readiness to extendthe range of his enquiry beyond the somewhat narrow limits suggested byhis initial analysis of taste. And a similar sensitivity to the variety of formsthat aesthetic experience can take emerges in the passages he specificallydevoted to the importance and value of art. In his earlier treatment ofbeauty he had tended to accord paradigmatic status to natural objects,with the accompanying implication that the aesthetic quality of works ofart was estimable in comparable terms. Here, by contrast, it is thedistinguishing features of the latter that he goes out of his way to stress.One such feature concerns intentionality. Kant does not retract hisoriginal claim that to be beautiful natural objects must convey animpression of formal design, even appearing to us as if they had been“chosen as it were with an eye to our taste” (Part I, p. 217). But that isvery different from appreciating something in the knowledge that it is theproduct of actual deliberation, consciously made with a view to affectingus in a manner that will be found satisfying in its own right. Artistic worksare intentional in this full-blooded sense and realizing them to be so isvital to their appraisal—“a product of fine art must be recognized to beart and not nature.” That is not to suggest that they should lookartificially contrived or “laboured”; rather, they must be “clothed with theaspect of nature” in not seeming to owe their creation to an obtrusiveobservance of constrictive or “mechanical” rules. Thus an unstudied“pleasingness of form,” consonant with the conditions of taste, remains anecessary component of artistic worth. But it is not—Kant now insists—sufficient. Acknowledgment of the intentional dimension of art requires usto take account of a further factor, one that relates to the content of awork or to what it is meant to represent.Reference to the relevance of representational considerations inevaluating artistic achievement certainly constitutes a significant departurefrom the restrictively formalist preoccupations evident in some of Kant’sprevious pronouncements on the subject. Yet it would be wrong toconclude from what he writes about artistic representation that he simplyhad in mind the mimetic reproduction of natural phenomena in anothermedium, however elegantly or harmoniously that might be accomplished.For his discussion of it is integrally connected with the role he ascribed to“genius” in art, this being described as completely opposed to the “spiritof imitation” and as involving capacities additional to merely technicalskills that can be picked up and learned through academic training.Genius, according to Kant, is an esentially original and creative power,exhibiting itself among other things in the portrayal and expression ofwhat he termed “aesthetic ideas”: taste may impart a universally pleasingappearance to art, but it is genius, as the source of and ability tocommunicate such ideas, that animates genuine examples of fine art with“soul” or “spirit.” Thus questions concerning the nature of aesthetic ideasand the manner in which they can be presented by artists in a publiclyaccessible form assume a critical importance in his account. How shouldwhat he says about them be interpreted?In looking for an answer, it is worth noting some remarks Kant makesabout their relation to ones of the kind that figured in his theory of thesublime. Ideas like those of absolute totality or transcendental freedomwere “indemonstrable concepts of reason” to which nothing couldobjectively correspond at the level of possible experience and for which a“commensurate intuition” could therefore never be given. Aestheticideas, it is now suggested, may be appropriately viewed as constitutingthe counterpart of such purely rational conceptions. They resemble thelatter in not belonging to the sphere of objective cognition, but they doso for a diametrically opposite reason. For what are here underconsideration are representations or intuitions of the imagination “forwhich an adequate concept can never be found.” Kant elaborates on thepoint as follows:By an aesthetic idea I mean that representation of the imaginationwhich induces much thought, yet without the possibility of anydefinite thought whatever, i.e. concept, being adequate to it, andwhich language, consequently, can never get quite on level termswith or render completely intelligible.(Part I, pp. 175–6)It appears, then, that insofar as works of art are understood to embodyaesthetic ideas, their inner content can never be finally or exhaustivelyarticulated in alternative terms. The multiplicity of thoughts andassociations conveyed by such works overflows the boundaries ofdeterminate formulation and definition, outrunning the resources ofconceptual or linguistic expression.Kant develops and illustrates this theme in subsequent passages. Hedoes not dispute that, in seeking to give sensuous shape to the ideas thatinspire them, artists are obliged to draw upon material which is furnishedby perception and which is itself susceptible to objective description. Hestresses, however, that they do not do this in a merely imitative spirit, butrather in a fashion that imbues familiar phenomena with an unfamiliarmeaning or symbolic resonance, thereby “animating the mind by openingout for it a prospect of kindred representations stretching beyond its ken.”Far from simply copying nature, art “surpasses” it, seizing upon theelusive intimations and fragmentary aspects of ordinary life andexperience and “bodying them forth to sense with a completeness ofwhich nature affords no parallel.” Thus imagination, regarded in thecontext of artistic activity as a productive rather than a reproductivecapacity, can be affirmed to be “a powerful agent for creating, as it were,a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature” (Part I,p. 176): it does not so much mirror the everyday world as transform it. Itmust be admitted that Kant’s allusions to the imaginative faculty are attimes confusing, and not least in the apparently very different statusaccorded to it here from the one he typically assigned to it in his treatmentof the sublime—he is even prepared to speak of it in its artisticemployment as “emulating the display of reason in its attainment of amaximum.” But notwithstanding such difficulties and obscurities, hissuggestive account of the imaginative potential of aesthetic ideas may beseen in retrospect to have been at once arresting and seminal. Inemphasizing the revelatory though conceptually “inexponible” nature ofspecifically artistic representation, he anticipated in outline approachesfollowed by both Schiller and Hegel, particularly the latter’s detailedportrayal of the various arts as modes of expression in which thought andsensuousness are to be found indissolubly united or fused.The aesthetic and the ethicalIt was indeed Hegel who, referring to Kant’s aesthetic theory as a whole,described him as having spoken “the first rational word” on the subject.Whatever Hegel himself may have meant by this, there can be no questionthat Kant’s overall contribution proved to be of cardinal importance forthe future development of aesthetics as a separate branch of philosophy.Rich in content and comprehensive in scope, it stands out as a historicallandmark in the field, bringing into view considerations whose deepersignificance had eluded the notice of earlier writers and whoseramifications have continued to haunt later ones. Furthermore, byunderlining though not finally resolving problems unique to judgments oftaste, it did much to encourage the notion that the aesthetic consciousnessforms an autonomous or self-contained sphere, irreducible to other areas ofhuman experience and demanding independent investigation in its own right.Yet while Kant’s influence in promoting such an outlook seemsincontrovertible, a certain qualification regarding his own position is inorder. It may be true that he never diverged from his fundamental claimthat aesthetic judgments can no more be assimilated to practical or moraljudgments than they can be to those of cognition or mere sensory liking.However, that did not prevent him from suggesting in a variety of placesand contexts that connections exist between our capacities for aestheticappreciation and broader concerns relating to our lives and conduct. Thiswas clearly evident in his analysis of the dynamically sublime, with itspronounced ethical overtones. But discernible variations on the samegeneral theme occur elsewhere. At one point, for example, he contendsthat the cultivation of taste and the communication of the delights itaffords play a noteworthy role in social development, exerting a civilizingimpact upon human behavior and intercourse. And at others he drawsattention to analogies between the aesthetic and the moral points of view:in both cases we can be said to prescind from a preoccupation withpersonal gratification or advantage, regarding things instead from auniversally shareable perspective; insofar as taste is conducive to such amental state, it makes “the transition from the charm of sense to habitualmoral interest possible without too violent a leap” (Part I, p. 225). Finally,Kant indicates that a concern with the beauty of nature—though not, ittranspires, with that of art—is linked in a special way to our aspirations asmoral beings. His point seems to turn on the often reiterated idea thatnatural beauties strike us as if they were designed to accord with andsatisfy our mental powers in the enjoyment of aesthetic experience,intimations of such an apparent harmony between mind and nature beingsaid to awaken an “interest…akin to the moral” (ibid., p. 160). What hewrites on this score is admittedly condensed and somewhat elusive, buthe can partly be taken to mean that the interest in question derives fromthe notion of nature’s being capable of displaying a comparableaccordance with our ethical ideals and ends. If so, the moral significancehe wishes to attach to the appreciation of natural beauty differsmarkedly from—though without necessarily conflicting with—the moralimport he attributed to our experience of the dynamically sublime. Forthe latter was essentially related to our assumed ability as selfdeterminingrational agents to rise above the promptings of naturalinclination at the level of inward choice and intention. Here, on theother hand, it is the conception of nature’s ultimately harmonizing withthe fulfillment of ethical ideas and projects at the level of external realitythat is relevant. And that may recall what Kant wrote about the facultyof judgment in general when, at the start of the third Critique, hecontemplated its playing a mediating role in relating our moralaspirations to the world. Nor need this seeming echo of his widerpreoccupations surprise us. Although at times only faintly in evidence,they were seldom—if ever—altogether absent from his mind.TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT AND EXPLANATIONIn Part II of the Critique of Judgement Kant takes leave of aesthetics andreturns to topics in the philosophy of science, the notion of purposivenessas “the characteristic concept of the reflective judgement” once againbeing prominent in what he has to say. Even so, he is at pains to point outthat the issues that now occupy him must be distinguished from those hewas dealing with when considering the fundamental presuppositions ofscientific enquiry in the Introduction. Thus it was one thing to ascribepurposiveness to nature in the sense of conceiving the natural sphere toconform to a “logical system” of empirical laws which was adapted to ourcognitive capacities and powers of comprehension. It was another topostulate or assume the applicability of purposive conceptions toparticular types of objects falling within the natural realm. And it is to thespecific question of whether, and if so in what manner, it may be justifiableto interpret from a scientific standpoint certain phenomena in purposiveor ideological terms that the present part of the Critique is to a largeextent directed. As quickly emerges, the particular phenomena Kant has inview are living or organic beings of the sort studied in biology.Internal purposiveness and the concept of an organismGenerally speaking, and given the preconceptions of the age in which Kantwas writing, the belief that organic phenomena presented special problemsfor the development of science is not hard to understand. The adoption ofmechanical principles of explanation, founded upon the notion of “matterin motion” and according to which natural objects and events wereuniversally subject to quantitatively determinable causal regularities,appeared acceptable enough when applied to the inanimate domain; bythe close of the eighteenth century, indeed, the Newtonian framework ofmaterial particles and forces seemed already to have been triumphantlyvindicated through the formulation of experimentally confirmedhypotheses whose explanatory power extended over a very wide range.When, however, it was proposed that the same approach should betransferred to the sphere of the organic the position looked a good dealless straightforward. For living things possessed features that apparentlydistinguished them sharply from inanimate entities and substances. Inparticular, they exhibited a degree of internal organization and complexitywhich made it difficult to regard them as the merely contingent productsof “blind” causal forces or mechanisms and which suggested instead thatit would be more apposite to invoke notions like design and purposivefunction in accounting for their structure. Thus a division tended to openup between those who steadfastly maintained that in the final analysis allphenomena, animate and inanimate alike, were explicable in mechanisticterms and those who claimed that the phenomena of organic life requiredfor their proper interpretation a quite different set of ideas.The broad outlines of this emerging controversy were already clearlyvisible in Kant’s time. Teleological conceptions might have been effectivelyextruded from the sphere of physics, but the belief that they werenonetheless requisite in some form for the understanding of living thingsfound adherents in contemporary biology. Moreover, quasi-Aristotelianways of thinking about nature had been revived at a more general level bythe philosopher J.G.Herder whose principal work, Ideas toward aPhilosophy of the History of Mankind, was severely criticized by Kanthimself on its publication in 1784. That such views impinged cruciallyupon his own position will be evident from what has already been saidabout the epistemological theses he had advanced in his first Critique. Foraccording to these the very possibility of objective experience andknowledge was dependent upon the application of a priori concepts andrules in unifying the data of sense, the latter being held to correspond inessentials to the basic principles of Newtonian science. It appeared tofollow, therefore, that nature was universally subject to regularities thatconformed to the accepted paradigm of scientific explanation: in Kant’swords, “appearances must… be capable of complete causal explanation interms of other appearances in accordance with natural laws” (Critique ofPure Reason, B 574). Claims of this sort, suggestive of an unqualifiedcommitment to the tenets of the Newtonian scheme, might thus lead oneto suppose that he would have ranged himself firmly with those whoargued that organisms, no less than the rest of the natural world, weresusceptible to mechanistic modes of explanation, and that he would haveset his face against any attempt to reintroduce—even within a limited fieldof enquiry—conceptions that apparently harked back to an earlier epochof scientific thinking. In fact, however, he followed another route; theopinions on the subject he eventually arrived at were altogether morecomplex, with reflective judgment being invoked to resolve the matters indispute.At a preliminary stage of his approach to what he calls “objectivefinality in nature,” Kant distinguishes between the notions of “external”and “internal” purposiveness. With reference to the first of these, hepoints out that various natural products may be regarded as beingdesigned either for our own benefit or else for the use and advantage ofother living creatures. For example, grass may be said to exist in order tosupport herbivores like sheep or cattle, and the existence of the latter mayin turn be viewed as answering to the needs of human beings. Butalthough we may be led to look at things in this light if we make certainfurther assumptions, we are in no sense bound to do so. Taken simply bythemselves, we can causally account for and sufficiently explain suchexternally adaptive relationships without recourse to any teleologicalideas.By contrast, understanding the internal structure and development oforganic phenomena seems positively to demand their employment. Thuswe find it not merely natural but necessary to treat a living object like aplant or an animal as being something of which “every part is thought asowing its presence to the agency of all the remaining parts, and also asexisting for the sake of the others and of the whole, that is as aninstrument” (Part II, p. 21). So conceived, an organism can be termed a“natural end” (Naturzweck), an entity whose inner constitution appearsto be governed by an idea of what it is meant to be or become and whosecomponent elements variously contribute to this purpose in a fashionsuggestive of the operations of a constructive intelligence; indeed, the verynotion of living things as “organized beings” may be felt to carry thisimplication. Moreover, in the case of internal as opposed to externalpurposiveness, Kant insists that objects which exemplify it are such thatwe are unable to imagine how their nature and production could beaccounted for in terms of “mechanical principles” alone. It is impossiblefor human reason to hope to understand the generation of even “a bladeof grass” from merely mechanical causes: “such insight,” he roundlydeclares, “we must absolutely deny to mankind” (ibid., p. 54).Pronouncements of the above kind strongly suggest that it is primarilyto teleological modes of thought rather than to ones presupposing theoperations of physical causality that we should look when investigatingorganic phenomena—a proposal encapsulated in Kant’s dictum that anorganism is a natural product in which “nothing is in vain, without anend, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature” (Part II, p. 25).Hence we may gain the impression that he was prepared after all, anddespite expectations to the contrary, to side with the antimechanist campin biology. And on the face of it this would seem to entail his accepting adualism regarding our understanding of the empirical world which washard, if not impossible, to reconcile with his own stated epistemologicalcommitments. It turns out, however, that he only subscribed to it in a formthat imposed important restrictions upon both the significance and theactual implications of the teleological principles involved.Teleology and empirical scienceIn the first place, Kant was concerned to emphasize that similaritiesdiscernible between natural organisms and purposively constructed humanartifacts must not be allowed to obscure no less striking differences. Anartificial contrivance such as a watch fulfills its function because the partsof which it is composed interact by moving one another in ways that havebeen independently determined by its maker. Living phenomena, bycontrast, are apprehended as “self-organizing” entities, endowed with a“formative power” (bildende Kraft) which remains for us basicallymysterious in its workings and for which no close analogue exists amongthe products of human art or technique. The various components of anorganism are interrelated in a distinctively intimate and reciprocal manner,both “producing” and “sustaining” one another: for example, if anessential part of a tree is damaged or destroyed, the deficiency is apt to berepaired or made good “by the aid of the rest” so as to preserve the life ofthe whole to which they severally belong. Thus in considering the role ofthe concepts of design and purpose in biology it is necessary to recognizethe constraints that govern their meaningful use in that context.Second, Kant indicates that in any event teleological principles of thesort employed in the interpretation of biological processes ultimatelypossess no more than a regulative status. In this view, to be sure, they areindispensable to our thought about these, affording modes ofunderstanding and suggesting fruitful lines of enquiry at a point where theresources of explanation in terms of efficient causality seem to fail us. Andthat, indeed, may also encourage us to enlarge the field of their applicationto nature as a whole, adopting a perspective on reality wherein it isassumed that “everything in the world is good for something or other;nothing in it is in vain” (Part II, p. 28). In conformity with the reservationshe has already expressed about attributions of “external” purposiveness,however, Kant is careful not to ascribe to such an extended employment ofteleological conceptions the indispensability he thinks these have for uswithin the more limited sphere of organic phenomena; we are not obligedto contemplate nature in general in this way. Nevertheless he holds that,even in the case of the organic sphere, to say that we find it subjectivelynecessary to bring purposive notions to its interpretation is not to say thatthese can be accredited with objective validity. It is one thing to assert thatwe are intellectually so constituted that we cannot render organicphenomena intelligible to ourselves other than by treating them as if theywere—in some admittedly mysterious sense—designed or organized toaccord with a preconceived idea or intention regarding their final form. Itis another to assert this to be so as a matter of objective fact, theirpossibility being dependent upon the agency of a nonhuman intelligence orcreative mind. The latter, according to Kant, is something we could neverjustify or prove: strictly speaking, “we do not observe the ends in natureas designed” but “only read this conception into the facts as a guide tojudgement in its reflection upon the products of nature” (ibid., p. 53).Here as elsewhere, in other words, we occupy the standpoint of reflectivejudgment, operating with heuristic concepts and principles that play avital role in directing our thought about nature but without being in aposition to affirm the actual existence of a supernatural designer or“author of the world.”In effect, and whatever concessions he may have made to the opponentsof mechanism in biology, Kant did not abandon the conviction thatexplanation of a cognitively acceptable kind must conform to themechanical paradigm. It is noteworthy, for instance, that he consistentlyspeaks of our “estimating” (beurteilen) organic processes throughteleological conceptions, not of our explaining them thereby. Moreover, hereiterates the point that we should always press the search for mechanicalcauses as far as we can, since if we do not follow this procedure there canbe “no knowledge of nature in the true sense at all.” And while heundoubtedly asserts, quite categorically, that we can never hope to arriveat purely physical explanations of organic phenomena, he stresses that itwould even so be “presumptuous” dogmatically to conclude that some“mechanism of nature,” sufficient to account for them, does not in factexist. That is something which we have simply no means of knowing; themost that can reasonably be affirmed is that such a possibility lies beyondthe limits of human comprehension.Despite its considerable ingenuity, Kant’s attempt to do justice to therival claims of mechanism and teleology is not free from difficulty. It istrue that at one point he writes as if the “antinomy” to which theseapproaches may be said to give rise can be surmounted by understandingeach of them to be endorsing a particular methodological “maxim” for theinvestigation of nature rather than a principle purportively constitutive ofits objective character. Thus a rule enjoining us invariably to seek causalexplanations as far as we are able is not inconsistent with a rulelegitimizing a resort to purposive interpretations when “a properoccasion” presents itself: to that extent the two standpoints can bereconciled. One trouble with this proposal, however, is that the causalprinciple was originally portrayed by Kant as being constitutive; to treat itnow as having no more than the regulative status he has ascribed to itsteleological counterpart would represent an apparent departure from thatposition. Furthermore, it is one thing to assert of certain phenomena,which at a given stage of enquiry seem to resist physical or mechanicalexplanation, that they may be accounted for instead along teleologicallines. It is a different and more questionable matter to say of them that acomplete causal explanation must forever be beyond our reach; indeed,the subsequent history of the biological sciences makes such a contentionlook somewhat bizarre. Even so, Kant certainly implied that, insofar as wefound ourselves obliged to understand the functional structure oforganisms in purposive terms, it was impossible for us to regard them asthe mere products of what he himself called “blind efficient causes”; norwas he alone among his contemporaries in feeling that the twoconceptions prima facie excluded one another in their application.Consequently, and notwithstanding the qualifications he introduced, heappears to have been committed to holding that we were precluded fromfully assimilating organic phenomena to the framework within which allobjective knowledge and genuinely scientific explanation are set. And itwas perhaps partly a recognition of the problems this ostensibly presentsthat led him to entertain the notion of a possible understanding, “higherthan the human,” which would comprehend the mechanical andteleological principles as cohering within a single uniting principle thattranscended them: “if this were not so,” he writes, “they could not bothenter consistently into the same survey of nature” (Part II, p. 70). Heargues, however, that such a principle can only be referred to what, as thesupersensible or noumenal ground of the phenomenal realm, lies outsidethe range of empirical representation. Thus so far as we ourselves areconcerned it must be one of which, from a theoretical point of view, weare unable to form “the slightest positive determinate conception.”TELEOLOGY, MORALITY, AND GODKant’s contention that the supersensible constitutes a realm necessarilyinaccessible to human knowledge and understanding of a theoretical kindis one that recurs in the Appendix which forms the long concluding sectionof the Critique of Judgement. This comprises a careful and wide-rangingdiscussion of the conceivable relevance of teleological interpretations ofthe natural world to the claims of theology. It is true that the question ofwhether the apparent evidence of purposiveness in nature could beinvoked in support of such claims had already been broached in theCritique of Pure Reason, where it was examined along with otherattempts that had classically been made to establish the existence andcharacter of God from a speculative standpoint. Kant clearly felt, however,that the comprehensive investigation he had now undertaken of thegeneral status and limitations of teleological judgment in relation tonatural science warranted his embarking upon a more extended analysisthan hitherto of the issues which the so-called “argument from design”involved. Furthermore, such an analysis seemed especially called for in thelight of what he had written in his second Critique concerning thepossibility of justifying belief in God from a moral or practical point ofview as opposed to a theoretical one.As has been seen, Kant specifically denied the legitimacy of derivingtheological conclusions from the fact that we find ourselves subjectivelyobliged to interpret certain natural products in teleological terms. It maybe that the best sense we can make of such apparently purposivephenomena as organisms is by thinking of them as the creations of “asupreme intelligence”; he implies, indeed, that this is the case. But at thesame time he reiterates the point that such an hypothesis is devoid ofobjective authority and that its import must instead be comprehendedheuristically; it can never do more thanpoint to this cause in the interests of the reflective judgementengaged in surveying nature, its purpose being to guide our estimateof the things in the world by means of the idea of such a ground, asa regulative principle, in a manner adapted to our humanunderstanding.(Part II, pp. 75–6)The latter claim certainly accords with his critical objections to anytheoretical attempt to transcend the limits of possible experience. Yet hethinks that, even if his strictures on that score were disregarded, otherimportant difficulties would remain. By no means all natural phenomenaimpress us as bearing the marks of design; nor is it true that everythingthat occurs in the empirical world is prima facie easy to reconcile with thethought that nature in general has issued from the hand of a wise andbeneficent creator. It would seem, in fact, that the most we couldreasonably hope to establish by following this path would be theformative operations of a suprahuman “artistic understanding”(Kunstverstand) sufficient to account for “miscel-laneous ends” of the sortnatural organisms exemplify. But that is a far cry from being entitled toinfer that the world as a whole is the product of a presiding moral divinitywith an overarching end or purpose in view. And if we confine ourselves tothe theoretical contemplation of nature alone it is unclear how such aninference could conceivably be justified. There is nothing in the naturalorder when considered solely by itself which can properly be held toqualify as an unconditioned or final end of creation capable of endowingit with meaning and value in our eyes.The various weaknesses of the argument from design, referred to byKant himself as “physico-theology,” do not however require us to supposethat no such ultimate end can be identified. This becomes apparent if weturn aside from theoretical considerations and approach the matter fromthe standpoint of practical reason as exhibited in our moral experience.When looked at in that perspective it is evident that man emerges as theonly possible candidate—“without man…the whole of creation would bea mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final end” (Part II, p. 108).In our capacity as moral agents we are aware of having a status which setsus apart from the rest of the natural order and which uniquely assigns toour existence intrinsic worth. For it is a presupposition of the moralconsciousness that, regarded as rational beings possessing freedom ofchoice and volition, we are able to act under laws and pursue objectivesthat originate, not in nature, but in ourselves. In Kant’s words:Only in man, and only in him as the individual being to whom themoral law applies, do we find unconditional legislation in respect ofends. This legislation, therefore, is what alone qualifies him to be afinal end to which entire nature is ideologically subordinated.(Ibid., p. 100)How is this supposed to be relevant to the issue that physico-theology triesbut fails to resolve—the existence of God as “the supreme cause of natureand its attributes”? It is Kant’s contention that, while a theoretical appealto our experience of nature cannot legitimize theological claims, there is asense in which a recognition of what is essentially involved in our vocationas moral agents may be said to do so. Following the line of thoughtarticulated in his second Critique, he argues that practical reason setsbefore us as an a priori obligation the project of promoting what he callsthe summum bonum, “the highest good in the world possible throughfreedom” (Part II, p. 118). Such a goal is held to constitute an ideal stateof affairs wherein human happiness would be appropriately proportionedto moral desert, a condition that manifestly does not obtain in life as weknow it but which we are nonetheless called upon to help to realize.Granted, however, that this is something morality obliges us to pursue as aduty, it follows that we must believe it to be ultimately attainable; and thatconsideration, when taken in conjunction with the limitations to which weare inescapably subject as finite and imperfect members of the world,requires us to assume the existence of a “moral author” of nature capableof ensuring that our efforts will not turn out to be finally vain. Kant thinksthat someone who, though in general righteously disposed, does notassume this will inevitably be “circumscribed in his endeavour,” eventuallyabandoning any attempt to further the project in question on the groundof its impracticability. If, on the other hand, such a person resolves to befaithful to the call of their “inner moral vocation” and acts accordingly,they thereby show themselves to be committed to “the existence of amoral author of the world, that is, of a God” (ibid., p. 121). Such anassumption, in other words, is essential if we are to “think in a mannerconsistent with morality”; to employ the terminology of the secondCritique, it represents a “postulate” of pure practical reason. Admittedly,and as Kant points out in an important footnote, this argument still doesnot amount to an “objectively valid proof” of God; on critical principlesthat remains forever impossible. But it is nonetheless “sufficientsubjectively and for moral persons” (ibid., p. 119). And given thenecessary primacy for us of the moral law, he implies that it is all that wecan properly ask for or need.The priority that Kant assigns to what he calls “the moral proof” in thelast part of the Critique of Judgement raises the question of whatsignificance, if any, he is prepared to attribute to ideological conceptionsof nature from a theological point of view. He certainly concedes that thetraditional argument from design is worthy of respect; unlike otherspeculative arguments, it has appeared as persuasive to the understandingof the ordinary “man in the street” as it has to that of the “subtlestthinker.” He implies, though, that this tends to be due to an unnoticedconfusion between an ostensible reliance upon purely empirical factorsand the underlying influence of “moral considerations to which everyonein the depth of his heart assents.” When these two strands are carefullydistinguished, it becomes clear that it is the second that actually producesconviction, any presumed dependence of the conclusion reached upon the“physico-teleological evidence” being in fact illusory. And he drives thepoint home by claiming that, even if as rational beings we inhabited auniverse in which nature showed no trace of features suggestive ofphysical teleology, the asseverations of practical reason regarding theexistence of God would still retain their force. Yet all the same, andnotwithstanding his insistence that “physico-theology is physical teleologymisunderstood” (Part II, p. 108), he does not go so far as to declare thatsuch a teleology is wholly irrelevant or otiose in the present context.Considered as affording the premises for a theoretical demonstration it iscertainly useless to the theologian. But it does not follow that it has nosubsidiary role to play.Kant indicates, for instance, that it may at least function “as apreparation or propaedeutic,” disposing the mind to entertain the idea ofthere being an “intelligent” source of nature and thereby rendering it“more susceptible to the influence of the moral proof.” Furthermore, healso goes on to suggest that the abundance of material for teleologicaljudgment which the actual world supplies can be said to serve us “as adesirable confirmation of the moral argument, so far as nature can adduceanything analogous to the ideas of reason (moral ideas in this case)” (PartII, p. 155). In trying to interpret this rather cryptic remark, it will beworth recalling again the notion—initially advanced in the Introduction tothe Critique—of judgment’s affording a mediating link between practicalreason as the supersensible source of moral requirements and nature asconstituting the sensible sphere wherein they are to be given effect andrealized. Now according to Kant’s moral proof we must believe that thepre-eminent objective reason sets before us is an attainable one, this beliefinvolving as an indispensable condition our acceptance of the existence ofGod. But it is not easy from a human standpoint to give content to thatidea without envisaging nature to be designed in a manner that makes theattainment of such an end possible. Thus the fact that innumerable naturalphenomena seem to demand for their intelligibility the employment ofteleological concepts may be welcomed as lending some reinforcement tothe thought of nature’s being purposively adapted to the practicablefulfillment of what the moral consciousness enjoins; for as Kant puts it:“the conception of a supreme cause that possesses intelligence… acquiresby that means such reality as is sufficient for reflective judgement” (ibid.).Even so, the problem of ultimately reconciling teleological andmechanistic interpretations of the natural world remains; and while Kanthas allowed that a transcendent principle capable of subsuming oraccommodating both might conceivably obtain at the level of a higherunderstanding, he at the same time reiterates the point that, so far ashuman knowledge is concerned, the conception of nature as a product ofintelligent design can never be theoretically established or proved.Reflective judgment may perform a salutary service in supplementingassumptions to which, as a matter of moral necessity, we find ourselvescommitted by practical reason. As, however, he has consistentlymaintained throughout the third Critique, in none of its formscan judgment itself be accredited with cognitive insight into what lies beyondthe bounds of the phenomenal sphere. Such assurance as we have on thelatter score can never be other than a moral assurance, one that holdsgood for us “from a purely practical point of view” (Part II, pp. 143–4).SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHYOriginal language editions4.1 Kant, I. Kritik der Urteilskraft, Berlin, 1790.4.2 Kants gesammelte Schriften, 29 vols, ed. Deutschen (formerly KöniglichPreussische) Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin: de Gruyter (andpredecessors), 1902–, Vol. V.English translations4.3 Kant’s Critique of Judgement, trans. J.C.Meredith, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1952: all references in the text are to this translation.4.4 Kant’s First Introduction to the Critique of Judgement, trans. J.Haden, NewYork: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.Bibliographies4.5 Cohen, T., and Guyer, P. (eds) Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics, Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 308–23.4.6 Guyer, P. (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992, pp. 467–9.Influences4.7 Addison, J. “On the Pleasures of the Imagination,” The Spectator (1712);trans. into German 1745; in Addison, J. The Spectator, 5 vols, ed.with introduction and notes by D.F.Bond, Oxford: Clarendon Press,1965, pp. 535–82.4.8 Burke, E. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of theSublime and Beautiful (1757), ed. with introduction and notes byJ.T.Boulton, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958.4.9 Hume, D. Essays Moral, Political and Literary (1693), Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1963.General surveys4.10 Cassirer, E. Kant’s Life and Thought (1918), trans. J.Haden, New Haven andLondon: Yale University Press, 1981.Specific topics4.11 Cassirer, H.W. A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Judgement, London:Methuen, 1938.4.12 Caygill, H. Art of Judgement, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.4.13 Cohen, T., and Guyer, P. (eds) Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics, Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1982.4.14 Crawford, D. Kant’s Aesthetic Theory, Madison: University of WisconsinPress, 1974.4.15 Crowther, P. The Kantian Sublime, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.4.16 Guyer, P. Kant and the Claims of Taste, London and Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1979.4.17 Kernel, S. Kant and Fine Art, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.4.18 McCloskey, M. Kant’s Aesthetics, London: Macmillan, 1986.4.19 McFarland, J.D. Kant’s Concept of Teleology, Edinburgh: EdinburghUniversity Press, 1970.4.20 McLaughlin, P. Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation,Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990.4.21 Mothersill, M. Beauty Restored, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.4.22 Podro, M. The Manifold of Perception: Theories of Art from Kant toHildebrand, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.4.23 Savile, A. Aesthetic Reconstructions: The Seminal Writings of Lessing, Kantand Schiller, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.4.24 Schaper, E. Studies in Kant’s Aesthetics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 1979.4.25 Walsh, W.H. “Kant’s Moral Theology,” Proceedings of the British Academy,49 (1963):263–89.4.26 Wood, A. Kant’s Rational Theology, Ithaca and London: Cornell UniversityPress, 1978.4.27 Yovel, Y. Kant and the Philosophy of History, Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1980.