Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment
By
Martin L. Cowen III
This
essay recapitulates our first two Fellowship of Reason Sunday school
presentations on Immanuel Kant’s third critique, The Critique of Judgment, published in 1790, about aesthetics, the theory
of beauty. More particularly, this essay will: (1) explain why we should
care at all to learn about Kant’s third critique; (2) provide a mini-biography
of Kant; (3) define some important Kantian terms to facilitate our
understanding of the text; and (4) state Kant’s first “moment” of the judgment
of taste. Kant’s four “moments” are simply categories of the theory of beauty.
Let us begin.
Part I: Why Study Kant?
“What
is the beautiful thing to do?” We in the Fellowship of Reason act toward
the beautiful (as do most people). When we get up in the morning, we shower,
brush our teeth, coif our hair (those of us who have it), and dress finely. Our
goal is to beautify ourselves. We drive to work in an orderly fashion, speak,
nod or waive greetings to friends and acquaintances we meet, and sit ourselves
down at our neatly organized work spaces. Our goal is to act beautifully with
others. We execute our work tasks as experts, that is to say, with excellence.
We are (by now) all experts. We work beautifully to create beautiful work
product. We enjoy entertainments provided by great artists on the radio, on TV,
from the Internet, and in person. We enjoy the beautiful. We act, generally,
with order, refinement, and grace. On the whole and for the most part, we act
toward the beautiful. When we enact The Beautiful, we act morally.
This
insight is brought to us by Aristotle via Joe Sachs’ translation of Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics. Professor Sachs
teaches that the Greek phase “to kalon” or “το καλόν” (the Greek spelling),
means The Beautiful. The phrase “to kalon” is repeatedly used by Aristotle, who
says that, for example, the goal of the human excellence/virtue of courage is
to enact the beautiful. The goal of all ethical action is The Beautiful, according
to Aristotle.
Aristotle’s
ethics is different from the dominant ethics of Western Culture. The dominant
ethical systems are utilitarianism
and duty ethics. Utilitarianism asserts
that moral actions are those actions that produce the greatest good for the
greatest number. Duty ethics asserts that moral actions are those that are in accord
with rules decreed by an authority—religious, philosophical, or governmental.
Jeremy Bentham (English, 1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (English 1806-1873)
are utilitarians. Immanuel Kant (German 1724-1804) is a duty ethicist, or a deontologist. Deontology comes from the
classical Greek word “deon” meaning that
which is binding. Deontology is the study of that which is ethically
binding. Religious ethical systems are deontological, that is, “you must obey God
because He says so.” Aristotle’s ethics is sometimes called a virtue ethics. Aristotle
asserts that human beings have a number of “excellences” or virtues (ἀρετή in Greek or arêté in the English spelling). Among human
excellences are courage, temperance, generosity, magnificence, magnanimity,
gentleness, truthfulness, friendliness, and justice. Aristotle’s “excellences”
are found at a “mean” on a scale which has for extremes deficiencies and
excesses. For instance, courage is a mean of action between a deficiency called
cowardice and an excess called rashness. Aristotle’s virtue ethics concerns
itself with human action on a daily and continuous basis. Every human action,
according to Aristotle, is judged for its beauty. Thus, the second paragraph of
this essay describing the quotidian actions of members of the Fellowship of
Reason: We act toward The Beautiful.
Modern
ethical discussions and classes sometimes concern themselves with “lifeboat
situations.” For example, “imagine yourself on a lifeboat, lost at sea for
months, accompanied by a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, and an Atheist....” Blah,
blah, blah. These lifeboat situations are a class of modern ethical problems
epitomized by “the Trolley problem.” Imagine yourself as a by-stander near a
switch of a trolley car system. The trolley car is careening out of control
toward five innocent pedestrians on the tracks who will be killed unless you,
the by-stander, operate the switch control to change the trajectory of the
trolley car to another track on which there is only one innocent pedestrian who
will be killed instead. Do you fail to act and let five die, or do you act and
kill one? There are many variations on the problem. For example, suppose you
are the one who will be killed or suppose the one to be killed is your child, ad nauseam. The problem is simple for a
utilitarian: the utilitarian will save the five and kill the one. The problem
has a theatrical counterpart in episode 18, season 3, of the television series
“24” first broadcast on April 18, 2004. Jack Bauer, the protagonist, is working
with the United States President to thwart a terrorist attack via biological
weapon, a lethal virus. The terrorist demands that the President kill the
Regional Director of CTU (counter terrorism unit), Ryan Chappelle, in exchange
for the terrorist not releasing the virus and killing large numbers of innocent
civilians. The President orders Jack Bauer to kill Agent Chappelle which Jack
Bauer dutifully does. The utilitarian calculates that one man’s murder is worth
less than death by terrorist of some larger number of innocent victims. The
deontologist is just following orders. Clearly, Jack Bauer’s actions are not
beautiful, but rather quite ugly. The entire television series was sullied by
this episode. A virtue ethicist would calculate that Jack Bauer’s murder of a
colleague is ugly/immoral on aesthetic/virtue ethical grounds.
While
“lifeboat situations” are fun parlor games, they miss the main point of ethics
which is “what ought one do with one’s life on a moment by moment basis?”
Aristotle advises: “Act toward The Beautiful.” An objection to the parlor game
is that the players (students of philosophy) assume that somehow the actor within
the problem might survive the problem, both physically and psychologically. Lifeboat
victims sometimes do not survive physically. Lifeboat victims may not survive
psychologically even if the live to get off the lifeboat. In the trolley car
problem, the by-stander is going to be psychologically damaged with either
choice. He will regret killing the one, if he chooses that course. He will
regret allowing the five to die, if he chooses that course. He will have PTSD,
post-traumatic stress disorder, in either case. He might even commit suicide as
some many war veteran PTSD sufferers do these days.
Certainly,
there are many imaginable situations that one will not survive whole or at all,
but, fortunately, those situations are as rare as winning a (negative) lottery.
(What would you do if you won the 100 million dollar lottery prize is also a
fun (positive) parlor game.) “Lifeboat situations” should not be the core of
ethics or of ethical studies.
So
our ethical options are utilitarianism, duty ethics, or virtue ethics. Virtue
ethics addresses, not the fortunately rare survival situations, but rather
daily living. Eudaimonists choose Aristotle over Mill, Bentham, or Kant.
Acting
toward The Beautiful in our daily lives is what we do.
The
subject of Kant’s Critique of Judgment
is, precisely, The Beautiful.
Concluding
the first part of this essay, the reason we are interested in Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Judgment is this: The
subject of Kant’s third Critique is
The Beautiful. The understanding of The Beautiful is crucial in analyzing why
and how we act toward The Beautiful in our daily lives.
Part II: Kant’s mini-biography
We
now proceed to the second part of this essay, a mini-biography of Immanuel
Kant.
Kant
was born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Germany), on April 22, 1724. He died in
Königsberg on February 12, 1804 (Kant is almost 80 years old upon his death).
He was a university professor at the University of Königsberg. His most famous
works are the Critique of Pure Reason
(1781), the Critique of Practical Reason
(1788), and the Critique of Judgment
(1790). Kant lived during a crucial time in the intellectual history of the
West. The American Revolution commences on July 4, 1776 (Kant is 52 years old),
with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The French Revolution
commences on July 14, 1789 (Kant is 65 years old), with the storming of the
Bastille. These two great revolutions have different origins. The American
Revolution is rooted in the Age of Enlightment and thinkers like John Locke
(English philosopher 1632-1704) and Adam Smith (Scottish philosopher 1732-1790).
The French Revolution is rooted in the thinking of Jean Jacques Rousseau (French
philosopher 1712-1778). The “general will” is Rousseau’s contribution to modern
political philosophy and is the foundation of all modern totalitarian states.
The “general will” cannot, according to Rousseau, err. The “general will” unleashed
itself in France in the form of The Terror (1793-1794) during which over 16,000
people were executed by guillotine in France and another 25,000 people
summarily executed (without the formality of the guillotine). Rousseau’s
conception of the “General Will” is fully operative in Western Culture today
and especially in America, viz.: the
infallibility of the electorate and our enthusiasm for polls. The contrasting
view is the doctrine of Individual Rights which often opposes the “General
Will,” a/k/a (also known as) the lynch mob. Individual Rights is a conception
of the Age of Enlightenment.
Immanuel
Kant was a chief spokesman for the Age of Enlightment and among his works is a
famous, and relativity easy-to-read, essay entitled: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (1784). The
defining phase of the Age of Enlightenment was, according to Kant, “dare to be
wise.”
As
an aside, discussing Kant is risky for two reasons. Reason one, Kant is
difficult to read (he writes poorly) and to understand (his insights are highly
abstract). Reason two, some of my readers are students of Ayn Rand and, as one
writer puts it, Kant is Ayn Rand’s Moriarty (Professor James Moriarty, the
nemesis of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s (1859-1930) Sherlock Holmes). Ayn Rand
wrote: “On every fundamental issue, Kant’s philosophy is the exact opposite of
Objectivism.” The Objectivist,
September 1971. Au contraire! The
second formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative is this: “Act in such a way
that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any
other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the time as an end.” To
treat other individuals always as ends and never merely as means is a glorious
statement of individualism. Understanding Objectivism as I do, Kant’s second
formulation of the Categorical Imperative is consistent therewith. So, prima facie, Ayn Rand is incorrect in
her assessment of Kant, at least in this grand detail. Granted that Ayn Rand
was a genius, nevertheless, we will want to see for ourselves whether Kant is
worth studying. As Kant says: Sapere aude,
“Dare to be wise.”
Part III: Defining terms
We
now proceed to the third part of this essay, defining some important Kantian
terms to assist our understanding of Kant’s Critique
of Judgment.
Terms 1: The chart
Part
of the problem with reading Kant is his use (and the use by his translators) of
terms that do not translate well from 18th Century German to the 21st
Century English. Many will have experienced this type of problem when reading
Shakespeare (1564-1616) written in 16th Century English! There are
useful books rendering Shakespeare’s plays on facing pages with the original text
on the left page and the “translation” on the right. The purpose of this part
of the present essay is to provide a “translation” of the translations of some
Kantian terms.
Kant’s
“Introduction” to The Critique of
Judgment, divided into nine short sections, provides much needed guidance.
The last entry in his “Introduction” is a useful table, reproduced below.
All the
faculties of the mind
|
||
Cognitive
faculties
|
Feeling
of pleasure and pain
|
Faculties
of desire
|
Cognitive
faculties
|
||
Understanding
|
Judgement
(sic)
|
Reason
|
A priori
principles
|
||
Conformity
to law
|
Purposiveness
|
Final
Purpose
|
Application to
|
||
Nature
|
Art
|
Freedom
|
The
chart is rendered without amendment from the translation of Kant’s Critique of Judgement (sic) by J. H. Bernard (2nd
ed. revised) (London: Macmillian, 1914)
An
example of poor writing is evident in this table by the use of “Cognitive
faculties” as one of the three instances of “All the faculties of mind”
and its use again as a separate category subsuming three “Cognitive
faculties” which are “Understanding,” “Judgement,” and “Reason.” The first use
of the phrase “Cognitive faculties” might be better rendered by the phrase
“thinking faculties.” The related “faculties of the mind” are, as you see in
the table, “Feeling of pleasure and pain” and “Faculties of desire.” We might
consent, by introspection, that our mental “furniture” does in fact consist in
these three categories: thinking, feeling, and desiring. Are there others? Kant
thinks not.
We
might reorder the chart, simply by inverting it from top to bottom, and
“translating” the row headings as follows:
Three Great Domains
|
||
Nature
|
Art
|
Freedom
|
Defining characteristic
|
||
Conformity
to law
|
Purposiveness
|
Final
Purpose
|
Name of mental faculty
|
||
Understanding
|
Judgment
|
Reason
|
Related function
|
||
Thinking
|
Feelings
of pleasure and pain
|
Desire
|
These
three great domains are appealing because they conform to standard American
values. Most Americans believe that there is “Nature” that conforms to the laws
of physics, like Newton’s laws and Einstein’s laws. Most Americans believe that
there is the domain of “Freedom,” that is to say, the domain of morality that
is not governed by the laws of physics. “We have free will.” Among some philosopher/science
types (there are such types among us) this viewpoint is controverted. Some of
us are determinists, believing that all existents (inanimate and animate) are
determine by physical laws and that if we knew the correct formulas we could
predict with certainty all outcomes inanimate and animate. But this is not the
common American viewpoint. Without Freedom, there is no Morality and Ethics is
pointless. According to Kant, there is a third domain and that is the domain of
Art in which questions of The Beautiful and The Sublime are pertinent. So,
there are three great domains: Thinking, Freedom, and Art.
The
domain of Nature is characterized by “conformity to law,” that is, the laws of
Newton and Einstein. (Note that Newton and Einstein are only two examples of
many sources of scientific laws of nature.) The name of the mental faculty that
ponders “Nature” is, according to Kant, the “Understanding.” The task of the
“Understanding” is simply to determine what is out there. The name of the
function of the mental faculty is “thinking,” in our “translation” of the
translation. (Recall that Kant’s lame phrase is “cognitive faculties.”) Kant’s
famous writing on this subject is his Critique
of Pure Reason (1781). Kant’s subject is how the human mind thinks about Nature
which is governed by scientific laws. This is Kant’s “Natural Philosophy.”
The
domain of Freedom is characterized by “Final Purpose.” We always act morally
toward goals. For Eudaimonists our “Final Purpose” is well-being, or as
translators of Aristotle have it, “happiness.” The name of the mental faculty
that ponders “Freedom,” that is, moral questions, is “Reason.” Thus, we have
the Fellowship of Reason. The name of the function of the mental faculty is
“Desire.” Kant’s famous writing on this subject is his Critique of Practical Reason (1788). Kant’s subject is how the
human mind reasons to goals of action, thus practical
reason, or reason for practice/action. This is Kant’s “Moral Philosophy.”
The
domain of Art is characterized by “Purposiveness.” The name of the mental
faculty is “Judgment.” The name of the function of the mental faculty is
“Feeling of pleasure and pain.” We hope to understand the domain of Art in the
course of Fellowship of Reason Sunday school. Kant’s famous writing on this
subject is his Critique of Judgment
(1790). Kant’s subject is The Beautiful and The Sublime. This is Kant’s
“Aesthetics.”
Thus,
we can see that Kant claims to have covered the entire domain of human thought
with his “Transcendental Philosophy.” Here is another Kantian term,
“Transcendental Philosophy,” that is difficult for modern Americans to
understand. Our modern definition of “transcendental” is “of or pertaining to a
spiritual or non-material realm.” That is not Kant’s 17th Century
meaning. He means, simply, a philosophy about thinking, feeling, and desiring,
or thinking about thinking. What are
the contents of consciousness? How do we know stuff? What are the categories of
thought, e.g. thinking, feeling,
desiring. Kant’s philosophy is not, as the modern connotation would have us
infer, about spiritual or mystical matters. As we have seen above, Modern
Philosophy is about whether that by-stander should throw the Trolley switch.
Boring!
Kant
has another book that we are not presently studying entitled Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful
and Sublime (1764), published 26 years before The Critique of Judgment (1790). In this book Observations Kant introspects and discovers and categorizes feelings
of enjoyment. Kant finds two types of feeling (among others), the feeling of The
Sublime and the feeling of The Beautiful. There are several sub-categories.
While a study of this book would doubtless be rewarding, the point in
referencing the work now is to suggest that Kant’s work on The Beautiful and
The Sublime stretched across many decades. Few of us can claim a minute (much
less decades) of introspection for the purpose of identifying the contents our
consciousness, much less, the contents of our consciousness in the specific area
of feelings related to The Beautiful and The Sublime. Most of us have never
considered the subject at all.
Terms 2: A priori and a posteriori
A priori (Latin: from
what comes before) and a posteriori
(Latin: from what comes later) are two famous Kantian terms. A priori means, simply, from the
beginning and without reference to experience. Kant uses the term to express
knowledge that is known without experience. A
posteriori means, simply, after the fact or after receiving evidence. Kant
uses the term to express knowledge that is known after experience or after
receiving evidence.
Terms 3: Understanding, feeling, desiring
An
explanation of the interaction of Kant’s mental faculties is provided by our
translator, J. H. Bernard, in his “Editor’s Introduction.” The “Understanding”
assimilates the general principles of nature. Our “Judgment” “sees” that a
particular is an instance of the general. Our “Reason” reaches a conclusion.
Bernard observes that we perceive and know (come to understand) the object
(this is thinking), we feel about it (pleasure or pain), we desire (or not) the
object.
Terms 4: The Thing in Itself and the Phenomenon
Kant
makes a distinction between “phenomenon” and “the thing in itself.” According
to Kant, we can only experience the “phenomenon” and not “the thing in itself.”
We are only presented with those aspects of an existent that our senses or understanding
can detect. A beautiful example of this occurs in the movie Avatar (2009). When the marine Jack
Sully (the Englishman John Smith of the Pocahontas tale) first goes to the
planet Pandora (Jamestown, Virginia of the Pocahontas tale), he is separated
from his companions and night falls. He takes his flashlight in order to see
his way around in the dark and great difficulties follow. When Neytiri (the
alien Pocahontas) saves him she destroys his flashlight and slowly the night
world about him comes into view. All is luminescent and beautiful without the
flashlight. Jack Sully’s first experience with the flashlight of night on
Pandora was the world as “phenomenon.” Without the flashlight he experiences
the world more towards “the thing in itself.” In the case of each “phenomenon,”
which according to Kant is all we can know, we assume that aspects of the thing
in itself remain unknown and perhaps unknowable to us.
Terms 5: The Will
The
“Will,” according to Kant, is the faculty of desire and is “one of the many
natural causes in the world.” Eureka!
(Ayn Rand makes this statement: “Volition is not an exception to the Law of
Causality; it is a type of causation.” Ayn Rand either (1) learned this from
Kant; or (2) identified it herself independently. I vote for option 1. So much
for Ayn Rand’s claim that Kant is “Satan!”)
The “Will” according to Kant, is “that cause which acts in accordance with
concepts.”
Terms 6: The Sensible Realm vs. the Supersensible
Realm
Kant
identifies the sensible realm of Nature. The domain of Nature is characterized
by conformity to law. Another Kantian domain is the supersensible (beyond the
senses) realm of Freedom. The domain of Freedom is characterized by
purposiveness. Kant entertains the idea that there might be no connection
between the sensible realm and the supersensible realm. Stated in modern terms,
how is it that an idea (something mental) can cause an effect in the physical
world (something physical)? What is the connection between consciousness and
the outside world? What is the connection between the mental and the physical? Kant
says: “The [supersensible realm] is meant
to have an influence upon the [sensible realm].” Emphasis in the original. And,
of course, it does in the common experience of every human being. Determinist
must struggle to avoid this experiential reality, by calling the apparent relationship
between thinking and acting an illusion. Kant says: “The concept of freedom is
meant to actualize in the world of sense [the natural world] the purpose
proposed by its [Freedom’s] laws, and consequently nature must be so thought
that the conformity to law of its [Nature’s] form, at least harmonizes with the
possibility of the purposes to be effected in according to laws of freedom.” In
modern English, there must be some way that thinking expresses itself in
reality. One plans to build a guitar. A guitar appears. How does this happen?
How does thought create real objects? Kant claims for his Critique of Judgment the task of uniting the sensible (nature) and
supersensible (freedom) realms.
Terms 7: Purposiveness of Nature
According
to Kant, judgment is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under
the Universal. Now this is a simple idea. We modern Americans can easily
comprehend this activity. My three year old son beheld an object far from a
perfect triangle and recognized within the perception the presence of the
three-side geometrical shape, the triangle. My son made a “judgment” that this
object was like the Universal triangle. The ability to recognize patterns in a complex
whole is an exercise of Judgment in the Kantian sense.
Important
for our purposes and illustrative of the complexity and depth of Kant’s
thinking, Kant identifies two types of Judgment, determinant and reflective. A
determinant Judgment is one where the universal (rule, principle, law) is known
and the judgment subsumes the particular under the universal, e.g. the case of my son and his triangle
above. A reflective Judgment is a case where only the particular is given and
the universal is yet to be found. “There must be a principle to this thing!
What is it?” Kant observes that “the forms of nature are so manifold.” Kant simply
means that there are many forms in nature. Kant supposes that this “manifold”
or many faceted nature has a “unity.” Kant supposes that this “unity” can or
might be understood by the Understanding and rendered into Universal rules,
principles or laws. This feature of reality, our assumption that everything can
be subsumed under some universal rule, principle, or law, is what Kant calls
“the purposiveness of nature in its manifoldness.” Kant says: “The
purposiveness of nature is therefore a particular concept, a priori, which has its origin solely in the reflective Judgment.” “A priori” means here that we did not
learn this by experienced, rather, we noodled it out. In modern American
English: We have an intuition that the things in the world are governed by
scientific laws, even if in a particular case we do not yet know those laws.
This is a Western banality. “It’s obvious.”
So
“purposiveness” is simply this idea that things in the world have some
scientific explanation, even if we do not get it yet. Someday we will?
Reflective Judgment “sees” such things.
Terms 8: Taste
Taste
is the faculty of judging the beautiful.
Terms 9: Imagination
Imagination
is the faculty of mind that converts sensory inputs into objects or percepts or
“representations” in Kant’s terminology. A sensory input is a light or movement
or blur or a mush of color (visual) or sound (auditory) or taste (gustatory) or
odor (olfactory) or feeling of touch (tactile). Undifferentiated sensory inputs
are integrated by the mind into a percept. Ayn Rand uses the word “percepts”
and Kant uses the word “representations” for the same phenomenon. Percepts are
cognized (according to Kant) or abstracted (according to Ayn Rand) into
concepts (names) according to both Kant and Ayn Rand.
Part IV: The First Moment
Now
we turn in this final section of the essay which discusses the assigned text.
We have not assigned, perhaps to the student’s disadvantage, Kant’s “Preface”
or his “Introduction” to The Critique of
Judgment (1790), which precede the assigned reading. The reading assignment
is the ten pages of the First Division (Analytic of the Aesthetical Judgment),
First Book (Analytic of the Beautiful), First Moment (of the Judgment of Taste
according to Quality)
§ 1. The judgement (sic) of taste is aesthetical.
Moment
simply means “category.” We will learn that there are four “moments.”
According
to Kant the Object under consideration is referred not to the Understanding for
cognition, but to the viewer’s feeling of pleasure or pain. The judgment of
taste is not a cognition or an abstraction for the purpose of converting the
Object into concepts and it is not logical, that is, it is not subjected to
logical analysis. The judgment of taste is aesthetical, says Kant, and is
therefore subjective. Subjective
means that the estimate is completely internal to the viewer and cannot be seen
by an outsider, another person. Subjective also means that the effect is not
present in the Object, unlike the observation that a ball is spherical. That a
ball is spherical is objective in the sense that the feature is there in the
real world to be seen by all. If the Object gives rise to a sensation of
satisfaction, then this feeling is what we call subjective, being only in the
viewer, only in us.
§ 2. The satisfaction which determines the
judgment of taste is disinterested
If
we see an object of our affection, say a boy/girlfriend or a spouse, and we
experience satisfaction because the existence of that boy/girlfriend or spouse,
Kant calls this satisfaction “interest.” This satisfaction has reference to the
faculty of desire (as opposed to the thinking faculty or the pleasure/pain
faculty). In judging whether a thing is beautiful, satisfaction in the
existence of the thing is not a proper question. Therefore, a person is
disqualified from judging that his/her beloved spouse is beautiful. Kant give a
rare and appreciated example of what he is talking about by referring to a
palace. Whether the palace is beautiful is a different question from questions
about whether one approves of palaces on political grounds or on the grounds of
housing needs. Kant says: “Every one (sic)
must admit that a judgement (sic)
about beauty, in which the least interest mingles, is very partial and is not a
pure judgement (sic) of taste.”
§ 3. The satisfaction in the PLEASANT is bound up
with interest
Kant
in §§ 3, 4, and 5 proceeds to differential three types of satisfaction, to-wit:
the Pleasant, the Good, and The Beautiful.
The
taste of peanut butter (for those who love it) pleases and it gratifies. We are
drawn to eat peanut butter again.
§ 4. The satisfaction in the GOOD is bound up with
interest
Kant
says that a good thing can either be good for
something (the useful) or good in
itself. In either case, the idea of purpose is present with the good and,
therefore, an interest. Recall that an interest
disqualifies or sullies a proposed judgment that something is Beautiful.
Kant
provides another rare and appreciated example to distinguish the Good from the
Pleasant. Kant calls attention to a spicy dish (say chili) and suggest that
while it may be Pleasant, it may not be, considering the after effects
(indigestion), Good.
Kant
provides another example that has modern political implications. One might
think that having all the pleasantness of life is the highest good. Kant says,
though, that Reason is opposed to this. The means are important: “whether it is
obtained passively by the bounty of nature [or the welfare state or via
inheritance] or by our own activity and work.” Ayn Rand, are you listening?
“Work is good,” says Kant.
Both
the Pleasant and the Good are bound up with an interest and are therefore
different from the judgment of taste require to pronounce something Beautiful.
§ 5. Comparison of the three specifically
different kinds of satisfaction
According
to Kant both the pleasant and the good please because the Object exists. “On
the other hand the judgement (sic) of
taste is merely contemplative.” The
viewer is indifferent to the existence of the Object. “That which GRATIFIES a
man is called pleasant; that which
merely PLEASES him is beautiful; that
to which is ESTEEMED [or approved] by
him, i.e. that to which he accords an objective worth, is good.”
Kant
concludes:
“EXPLANATION
OF THE BEAUTIFUL RESULTING FROM THE FIRST MOMENT”
“Taste is the faculty of judging of an
object or a method of representing it by an entirely
disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The object of such
satisfaction is called beautiful.”
Emphasis in the original.
Conclusion
Thank
you for reading to the end. Kant is quite difficult to understand and many
philosophy professors have spent their entire careers trying to understand Kant’s
philosophy. Our goal is more modest than that of those hearty Kantian scholars.
We simply want to enhance our understanding of The Beautiful in order that we
might ourselves act more beautifully in our daily lives.
One
way to think about what we have just learned—a judgment of taste should be disinterested—is to consider a court of
law. We expect our judges to come to our cases without an interest in the
outcome. An owner of Coca-Cola® stock should not be judging a patent dispute
between Coke® and Pepsi®. The best friend of a divorcing woman should not act
as the trial judge in her alimony claim against her soon-to-be ex-husband.
We
have not quite seen this yet, but the satisfaction in the presence of The
Beautiful is, according to Kant, precisely the capacity of the reflective
Judgment to “see” in the instance of the Object under scrutiny the suggestion
of a Universal rule, principle or law, as yet unknown. We have, in judging The
Beautiful, the suggestion of a glimpse beyond the “phenomenon” to the “thing in
itself.” It is Marine Jack Sully’s discovery of the luminescent night on
Pandora. It is hearing “the song within the silence.” It is seeing “the beauty
when there’s nothing there.” From the song December
Prayer by sung and written by Idina Menzel from her album Holiday Wishes.” Many artist are fully
acquainted with The Beautiful. Now it is our turn.
Saint
Thomas Aquinas reduced The Beautiful to: wholeness,
harmony, radiance. In the case of The Beautiful, there is something … just there…. We will learn to “see” it, too.
