Critique of Judgement
Encyclopedia
The Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790), or in the new Cambridge translation Critique of the Power of Judgment, also known as the third critique, is a philosophical
work by Immanuel Kant
. It lays the foundations for modern aesthetics.
Critique of Judgment simultaneously completes his Critical project and lays the foundations for modern aesthetics. The most popular English translation is the one made by James Creed Meredith
, though recently Paul Guyer's translation, part of the new Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation, has gained some ground. Guyer translates the title as the Critique of the Power of Judgment, though this title has not caught on as the standard way of referring to the text. The Guyer and Werner S. Pluhar translations tend to be preferred over the older Meredith and Bernard
editions.
The book is divided into two main sections, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and the Critique of Teleological Judgment, and also includes a large overview of the entirety of the Critical system, arranged in its final form. The so-called First Introduction was not published during Kant's lifetime, for Kant wrote a replacement for publication.
The Critical project, that of exploring the limits and conditions of knowledge, had already spawned the Critique of Pure Reason
, in which Kant argued for a Transcendental Aesthetic, an approach to the problems of perception in which space
and time
are supposed not to be objects but ways in which the observing subject's mind organizes and structures the sensory world. The end result of this inquiry is that there are certain fundamental antinomies in human Reason, most particularly that there is a complete inability to favor on the one hand the argument that all behavior and thought is determined by external causes, and on the other that there is an actual "spontaneous" causal principle at work in human behavior.
The first position, of causal determinism, is adopted, in Kant's view, by empirical scientists of all sorts; moreover, it led to the Idea (perhaps never fully to be realized) of a final science in which all empirical knowledge could be synthesized into a full and complete causal explanation of all events possible to the world.
The second position, of spontaneous causality, is implicitly adopted by all people as they engage in moral behavior; this position is explored more fully in the Critique of Practical Reason
.
The Critique of Judgment constitutes a discussion of the place of Judgment itself, which must overlap both the Understanding (which operates from within a deterministic framework) and Reason (which operates on the grounds of freedom).
, the sublime
, and the good. Kant makes it clear that these are the only four possible reflective judgments, as he relates them to the Table of Judgments from the Critique of Pure Reason
.
"Reflective judgments" differ from determinative judgments (those of the first critique). In reflective judgment we seek to find unknown universals for given particulars; whereas in determinative judgment, we just subsume given particulars under universals that are already known, as Kant puts it:
The agreeable is a purely sensory judgment – judgments in the form of "This steak is good," or "This chair is soft." These are purely subjective judgments, based on inclination alone.
The good is essentially a judgment that something is ethical – the judgment that something conforms with moral law, which, in the Kantian sense, is essentially a claim of modality – a coherence with a fixed and absolute notion of reason. It is in many ways the absolute opposite of the agreeable, in that it is a purely objective judgment – things are either moral or they are not, according to Kant.
The remaining two judgments - the beautiful and the sublime - occupy a space between the agreeable and the good. They are what Kant refers to as "subjective universal" judgments. This apparently oxymoronic term means that, in practice, the judgments are subjective, and are not tied to any absolute and determinate concept. However, the judgment that something is beautiful or sublime is made with the belief that other people ought to agree with this judgment - even though it is known that many will not. The force of this "ought" comes from a reference to a "sensus communis
" - a community of taste. Hannah Arendt
, in her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, suggests the possibility that this sensus communis might be the basis of a political theory that is markedly different from the one that Kant lays out in the Metaphysic of Morals
.
The judgment that something is beautiful is a claim that it possesses the "form of finality" - that is, that it appears to have been designed with a purpose, even though it does not have any apparent practical function. The judgment that something is sublime is a judgment that it is beyond the limits of comprehension - that it is an object of fear. However, Kant makes clear that the object must not actually be threatening - it merely must be recognized as deserving of fear.
Kant's view of the beautiful and the sublime is frequently read as an attempt to resolve one of the problems left following his depiction of moral law in the Critique of Practical Reason
- namely that it is impossible to prove that we have free will
, and thus impossible to prove that we are bound under moral law. The beautiful and the sublime both seem to refer to some external noumenon
order - and thus to the possibility of a noumenal self that possesses free will.
In this section of the critique Kant also establishes faculty of mind that is in many ways the inverse of judgment - the faculty of genius
. Whereas judgment allows one to determine whether something is beautiful or sublime, genius allows one to produce what is beautiful or sublime.
for end) is logically connected to the first discussion at least regarding beauty but suggests a kind of (self-) purposiveness (that is, meaningfulness known by one's self).
Kant writes about the biological as teleological, claiming that there are things, such as living beings, whose parts exist for the sake of their whole and their whole for the sake of their parts. This allows him to open a gap in the physical world: since these "organic" things cannot be brought under the rules that apply to all other appearances, what are we to do with them?
Kant says explicitly that while efficiently causal explanations are always best (x causes y, y is the effect of x), there "will never be a Newton
for a blade of grass", and so the organic must be explained “as if” it were constituted as teleological. This portion of the Critique is, from some modern theories, where Kant is most radical; he posits man as the ultimate end, that is, that all other forms of nature exist for the purpose of their relation to man, directly or not, and that man is left outside of this due to his faculty of reason. Kant claims that culture becomes the expression of this, that it is the highest teleological end, as it is the only expression of human freedom outside of the laws of nature. Man also garners the place as the highest teleological end due to his capacity for morality, or practical reason, which falls in line with the ethical system that Kant proposes in the Critique of Practical Reason and the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals.
) believed that it must be (and often give Kant credit).
Kant’s discussions of schema
and symbol
late in the first half of the Critique of Judgement also raise questions about the way the mind represents its objects to itself, and so are foundational for an understanding of the development of much late 20th century continental philosophy
: Jacques Derrida
is known to have studied the book extensively.
The core of modern Aesthetics
utilized the Kantian critique of judgement as a framework in which aesthetic questions could be debated.
noted that Kant was concerned with the analysis of abstract concepts, rather than with perceived objects.
"…he does not start from the beautiful itself, from the direct, beautiful object of perception, but from the judgement [someone’s statement] concerning the beautiful…."
Kant was strongly interested, in all of his critiques, with the relation between mental operations and external objects.
"His attention is specially aroused by the circumstance that such a judgement is obviously the expression of something occurring in the subject, but is nevertheless as universally valid as if it concerned a quality of the object. It is this that struck him, not the beautiful itself."
The book’s form is the result of concluding that beauty can be explained by examining the concept of suitableness. Schopenhauer stated that “Thus we have the queer combination of the knowledge of the beautiful with that of the suitableness of natural bodies into one faculty of knowledge called power of judgement, and the treatment of the two heterogeneous subjects in one book.”
Kant is inconsistent, according to Schopenhauer, because “…after it had been incessantly repeated in the Critique of Pure Reason
that the understanding is the ability to judge, and after the forms of its judgements are made the foundation–stone of all philosophy, a quite peculiar power of judgement now appears which is entirely different from that ability.”
With regard to teleological judgement, Schopenhauer claimed that Kant tried to say only this: "…although organized bodies necessarily seem to us as though they were constructed according to a conception of purpose which preceded them, this still does not justify us in assuming it to be objectively the case." This is in accordance with Kant's usual concern with the correspondence between subjectivity (the way that we think) and objectivity (the external world). Our minds want to think that natural bodies were made by a purposeful intelligence, like ours.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
work by Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
. It lays the foundations for modern aesthetics.
Foundations
Immanuel Kant'sImmanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
Critique of Judgment simultaneously completes his Critical project and lays the foundations for modern aesthetics. The most popular English translation is the one made by James Creed Meredith
James Creed Meredith
James Creed Meredith K.C., LL.D. was an Irish nationalist of the early 20th century, who upheld Brehon Law. He was President of the Supreme Court of the Irish Republic, Chief Judicial Commissioner of Ireland and a Judge of the High Court and the Supreme Court of Ireland...
, though recently Paul Guyer's translation, part of the new Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation, has gained some ground. Guyer translates the title as the Critique of the Power of Judgment, though this title has not caught on as the standard way of referring to the text. The Guyer and Werner S. Pluhar translations tend to be preferred over the older Meredith and Bernard
John Henry Bernard
The Right Reverend John Henry Bernard PC , was an Irish clergyman.Bernard was born in Raniganj, India. He was Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin from 1902 to 1911, Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin from 1911 to 1915 and Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin from 1915 to 1919.A prolific...
editions.
The book is divided into two main sections, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and the Critique of Teleological Judgment, and also includes a large overview of the entirety of the Critical system, arranged in its final form. The so-called First Introduction was not published during Kant's lifetime, for Kant wrote a replacement for publication.
The Critical project, that of exploring the limits and conditions of knowledge, had already spawned the Critique of Pure Reason
Critique of Pure Reason
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement...
, in which Kant argued for a Transcendental Aesthetic, an approach to the problems of perception in which space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
and time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
are supposed not to be objects but ways in which the observing subject's mind organizes and structures the sensory world. The end result of this inquiry is that there are certain fundamental antinomies in human Reason, most particularly that there is a complete inability to favor on the one hand the argument that all behavior and thought is determined by external causes, and on the other that there is an actual "spontaneous" causal principle at work in human behavior.
The first position, of causal determinism, is adopted, in Kant's view, by empirical scientists of all sorts; moreover, it led to the Idea (perhaps never fully to be realized) of a final science in which all empirical knowledge could be synthesized into a full and complete causal explanation of all events possible to the world.
The second position, of spontaneous causality, is implicitly adopted by all people as they engage in moral behavior; this position is explored more fully in the Critique of Practical Reason
Critique of Practical Reason
The Critique of Practical Reason is the second of Immanuel Kant's three critiques, first published in 1788. It follows on from his Critique of Pure Reason and deals with his moral philosophy....
.
The Critique of Judgment constitutes a discussion of the place of Judgment itself, which must overlap both the Understanding (which operates from within a deterministic framework) and Reason (which operates on the grounds of freedom).
Aesthetics
The first part of the book, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, discusses the four possible "reflective judgments": the agreeable, the beautifulBeauty
Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture...
, the sublime
Sublime (philosophy)
In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...
, and the good. Kant makes it clear that these are the only four possible reflective judgments, as he relates them to the Table of Judgments from the Critique of Pure Reason
Critique of Pure Reason
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement...
.
"Reflective judgments" differ from determinative judgments (those of the first critique). In reflective judgment we seek to find unknown universals for given particulars; whereas in determinative judgment, we just subsume given particulars under universals that are already known, as Kant puts it:
The agreeable is a purely sensory judgment – judgments in the form of "This steak is good," or "This chair is soft." These are purely subjective judgments, based on inclination alone.
The good is essentially a judgment that something is ethical – the judgment that something conforms with moral law, which, in the Kantian sense, is essentially a claim of modality – a coherence with a fixed and absolute notion of reason. It is in many ways the absolute opposite of the agreeable, in that it is a purely objective judgment – things are either moral or they are not, according to Kant.
The remaining two judgments - the beautiful and the sublime - occupy a space between the agreeable and the good. They are what Kant refers to as "subjective universal" judgments. This apparently oxymoronic term means that, in practice, the judgments are subjective, and are not tied to any absolute and determinate concept. However, the judgment that something is beautiful or sublime is made with the belief that other people ought to agree with this judgment - even though it is known that many will not. The force of this "ought" comes from a reference to a "sensus communis
Sensus communis
Sensus communis is a philosophical term originally used to refer to the perceptual power of binding the inputs of the individual sense organs into a coherent and intelligible representation. The term originates with Aristotle...
" - a community of taste. Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
, in her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, suggests the possibility that this sensus communis might be the basis of a political theory that is markedly different from the one that Kant lays out in the Metaphysic of Morals
Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals , also known as Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals or Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, is Immanuel Kant's first contribution to moral philosophy. It argues for an a priori basis for morality...
.
The judgment that something is beautiful is a claim that it possesses the "form of finality" - that is, that it appears to have been designed with a purpose, even though it does not have any apparent practical function. The judgment that something is sublime is a judgment that it is beyond the limits of comprehension - that it is an object of fear. However, Kant makes clear that the object must not actually be threatening - it merely must be recognized as deserving of fear.
Kant's view of the beautiful and the sublime is frequently read as an attempt to resolve one of the problems left following his depiction of moral law in the Critique of Practical Reason
Critique of Practical Reason
The Critique of Practical Reason is the second of Immanuel Kant's three critiques, first published in 1788. It follows on from his Critique of Pure Reason and deals with his moral philosophy....
- namely that it is impossible to prove that we have free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
, and thus impossible to prove that we are bound under moral law. The beautiful and the sublime both seem to refer to some external noumenon
Noumenon
The noumenon is a posited object or event that is known without the use of the senses.The term is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to "phenomenon", which refers to anything that appears to, or is an object of, the senses...
order - and thus to the possibility of a noumenal self that possesses free will.
In this section of the critique Kant also establishes faculty of mind that is in many ways the inverse of judgment - the faculty of genius
Genius
Genius is something or someone embodying exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of unprecedented insight....
. Whereas judgment allows one to determine whether something is beautiful or sublime, genius allows one to produce what is beautiful or sublime.
Teleology
The second half of the Critique discusses teleological judgement. This way of judging things according to their ends (telos: GreekGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
for end) is logically connected to the first discussion at least regarding beauty but suggests a kind of (self-) purposiveness (that is, meaningfulness known by one's self).
Kant writes about the biological as teleological, claiming that there are things, such as living beings, whose parts exist for the sake of their whole and their whole for the sake of their parts. This allows him to open a gap in the physical world: since these "organic" things cannot be brought under the rules that apply to all other appearances, what are we to do with them?
Kant says explicitly that while efficiently causal explanations are always best (x causes y, y is the effect of x), there "will never be a Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
for a blade of grass", and so the organic must be explained “as if” it were constituted as teleological. This portion of the Critique is, from some modern theories, where Kant is most radical; he posits man as the ultimate end, that is, that all other forms of nature exist for the purpose of their relation to man, directly or not, and that man is left outside of this due to his faculty of reason. Kant claims that culture becomes the expression of this, that it is the highest teleological end, as it is the only expression of human freedom outside of the laws of nature. Man also garners the place as the highest teleological end due to his capacity for morality, or practical reason, which falls in line with the ethical system that Kant proposes in the Critique of Practical Reason and the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals.
Influences
Though Kant consistently maintains that the human mind is not an "intuitive understanding"—something that creates the phenomena which it cognizes—several of his readers (starting with Fichte, culminating in SchellingSchelling
Notable people with the last name of Schelling include:* Ernest Schelling, American composer* Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, German philosopher* Thomas Schelling, American economist and Nobel laureate...
) believed that it must be (and often give Kant credit).
Kant’s discussions of schema
Schema (Kant)
In Kantian philosophy, a schema is the procedural rule by which a category or pure, non-empirical concept is associated with a mental image of an object...
and symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
late in the first half of the Critique of Judgement also raise questions about the way the mind represents its objects to itself, and so are foundational for an understanding of the development of much late 20th century continental philosophy
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
: Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
is known to have studied the book extensively.
The core of modern Aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
utilized the Kantian critique of judgement as a framework in which aesthetic questions could be debated.
Schopenhauer’s comments
SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
noted that Kant was concerned with the analysis of abstract concepts, rather than with perceived objects.
"…he does not start from the beautiful itself, from the direct, beautiful object of perception, but from the judgement [someone’s statement] concerning the beautiful…."
Kant was strongly interested, in all of his critiques, with the relation between mental operations and external objects.
"His attention is specially aroused by the circumstance that such a judgement is obviously the expression of something occurring in the subject, but is nevertheless as universally valid as if it concerned a quality of the object. It is this that struck him, not the beautiful itself."
The book’s form is the result of concluding that beauty can be explained by examining the concept of suitableness. Schopenhauer stated that “Thus we have the queer combination of the knowledge of the beautiful with that of the suitableness of natural bodies into one faculty of knowledge called power of judgement, and the treatment of the two heterogeneous subjects in one book.”
Kant is inconsistent, according to Schopenhauer, because “…after it had been incessantly repeated in the Critique of Pure Reason
Critique of Pure Reason
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement...
that the understanding is the ability to judge, and after the forms of its judgements are made the foundation–stone of all philosophy, a quite peculiar power of judgement now appears which is entirely different from that ability.”
With regard to teleological judgement, Schopenhauer claimed that Kant tried to say only this: "…although organized bodies necessarily seem to us as though they were constructed according to a conception of purpose which preceded them, this still does not justify us in assuming it to be objectively the case." This is in accordance with Kant's usual concern with the correspondence between subjectivity (the way that we think) and objectivity (the external world). Our minds want to think that natural bodies were made by a purposeful intelligence, like ours.
See also
- Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant's schemataSchopenhauer's criticism of Kant's schemataSchopenhauer's criticism of Kant's schemata is part of Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy which was published in 1819. In the appendix to the first volume of his main work, Arthur Schopenhauer attempted to assign the psychological cause of Kant's doctrines of the categories and...
- Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophySchopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophySchopenhauer appended a criticism to the first volume of his The World as Will and Representation. He wanted to show Kant's errors so that Kant's merits would be appreciated and his achievements furthered....
External links
- Critique of Judgement, full text of J.H. Bernard translation (1914)
- Kant's Part I of Critique of Judgement, text translated by James Creed Meredith online:
- Immanuel Kant in Italy (in Italian)
- The fourth Critique Italian writings about Kant's "fourth" Critique (in Italian)
- "Kant's System of Judicial Perspectives", Chapter IX of Stephen Palmquist, Kant's System of Perspectives (1993).