A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A POST-HE RMENEUTIC, N E O - K A N T I A N , TRANSUBSTANTIATION OF THE DE-AUTHORIZED POSTMODERN AUTHOR OR HOW I L E A R N E D TO STOP WORRYING AND L O V E THE J A R G O N by A D A M ROBIE B R A D L E Y B .A. , McGill University, 1995 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL F U L F I L M E N T OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF M A S T E R OF ARTS in THE F A C U L T Y OF G R A D U A T E STUDIES Department of Philosophy We accept this thesis a» conforming tcyth^ requ/r^d s/andard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH C O L U M B I A September, 1998 © Adam Robie Bradley, 1998 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date Scpj 10 ffig DE-6 (2/88) A B S T R A C T n This thesis is an interpretation and defense of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment. Several commentators see in Kant's theory of beauty grave philosophical problems that cannot be rectified; consequently, they declare his entire work to be unsalvageable. I disagree with them. Through a careful analysis of his words, I attempt to recreate his arguments in the best possible light, to present them as not only intelligent and defensible in his time but in ours as well. I believe what emerges is a theory of beauty that can withstand the criticisms of radical postmodern thinkers as well as conservative traditionalists. Kant's theory allows for the significance of a work of art to be fluid, constantly changing, without also allowing that the work can mean anything at all. His account of beauty explains not only why we find certain objects beautiful, but why we also believe that others should also find the same objects beautiful. Moreover, it permits us to discuss endlessly the significance of a beautiful object without thereby committing us to there being absolute truths about the object's meaning. iii T A B L E OF C O N T E N T S Abstract ii Table of Contents i i i Acknowledgements iv INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter One - Pleasure 16 Disinterestedness 16 One Pleasure, Different Delights 22 Pleasure and Causality 27 A Pleasurable Harmony 31 Chapter Two - A Certain Harmony 37 The Meaning of Harmony 38 Schematism 41 An Act of Estimation 46 "Houston, We Have a Problem" 52 Chapter Three - Aesthetical Ideas: A Matter of Life and Death 59 Symbols 64 Spirits 67 A Quick Trip to Teleology 68 Genies 69 Chapter Four - Metaphysics???? or The Role of the Supersensible within Kant's Critique of Judgment 76 Aesthetics and Morality 78 Indeterminable Concepts 79 Reconciling the Schism 85 Chapter Five - Hearing Voices in My Head 87 Universality and Necessity 88 Common Sense and a Universal Voice 98 §21 105 The Deduction Itself 110 Chapter Six - Parergon 113 Endnotes 116 Bibliography 122 A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. William Shakespeare, " A Midsummer Night's Dream" V - l , 12-17 Immanuel Kant Was a real pissant Who was very rarely stable. -Monty Python I N T R O D U C T I O N 1 Kant's Critique of Judgment is an extremely misunderstood text. From charges of formalism (levelled by authors such as Paul Guyer1, Dieter Henrich2, and perhaps Kenneth Rogerson3, among others,) to the claim that the judgment of taste is actually an objective judgment (maintained by Theodore Green4 despite the numerous occasions on which Kant specifically denies this (§§1,8, 15, and 38, to name but a few)). From the bewildering and baffling claim made by Mary.McCloskey that "[t]he second major difference which Kant finds to hold between the beauty of natural objects arid worthwhile works of art is that ... the aesthetic worth of works of fine art turns on their being beautiful and on their expressing aesthetical ideas"5 even though Kant quite clearly states that "We may describe beauty in general (whether natural or artificial) as the expression of aesthetical ideas,"(§55, my emphasis,) to the general perception that the Third Critique is a poorly structured, inadequately argued, ill-fitting, and unimportant finale to a magnificent enterprise - with commentaries like these, it is no wonder that misconceptions of this work abound. This present work is an attempt to clear up some of these misconceptions. I believe that Kant's project is not only salvageable, but requires little modification to succeed in its task: to "bring about a transition from the pure faculty of knowledge, the realm of natural concepts, to the realm of the concept of freedom" (III). Kant claims in the introduction to the Third Critique that the First Critique creates a problem for morality: Now even if an immeasurable gulf is fixed between the sensible realm of the concept of nature and the supersensible realm of the concept of freedom, so that no transition is possible from the first to the second (by means of the theoretical use of reason), just as if they were two different worlds of which the first could have no influence upon the second, yet the second is meant to have an influence upon the first. The concept of freedom is meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws, and consequently nature must be so thought that the conformity to law of its form at least harmonizes with the possibility of the purposes to be effected in it according to laws of freedom. There must, therefore, be a ground of the unity of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of nature, with that which the concept of freedom practically contains; (§11) 2 Just as judgment, on the Kantian model, mediates between the understanding and reason, so will the Third Critique mediate between the first two. Before delving too deeply into things Kantian, however, we should take a wider look at aesthetics in general. There are several questions that are commonly raised during any discussion of beauty: "What does the word 'beauty' mean?" "Is it only in the eye of the beholder?" and "What properties (if any) are we ascribing to an object when we say that it is beautiful?" Many of these questions lead sensibly into questions about the nature of beauty, and of the humans who profess to judge it: "Is beauty subjective or objective?" "Who has the right to determine whether an object is beautiful?" Close inspection will reveal that most of these questions are, if not the same, then at least revolving around the same theme. If beauty is subjective, then it is in the eye of the beholder -everyone can judge of it, and no one's judgment can overrule anyone else's. In this instance, 'beautiful' actually says very little about the object, for the judgment is grounded solely on the judging subject. If, on the other hand, aesthetic judgments are objective; then there are truths about beauty, and there are (or could be) people whose expertise grants them authority over judgments of beauty. Al l of these questions find a place in Kant's Critique of Judgment. What is asserted of an object when we say that it is beautiful? See the Third Moment. How can we legitimately judge an object's beauty? See the Deduction. Is beauty subjective or objective? See the Dialectic. There are also other questions (and answers) that only emerge upon a close reading of the Third Critique, questions that may not have been intended by Kant: is there a gap between subjectivity and objectivity? It seems as if the objectivity involved in aesthetic judgments is an odd sort of objectivity and the subjectivity an odd sort of subjectivity. Could this be hinting at a space between these two concepts? And although Kant is reticent on this issue, what is the difference between a work of art and a work of nature? And what is the nature of both of these types of objects? To what extent can an author determine the meaning of her work of art? 3 In Kant's Third Critique can be found answers to many of these questions, answers which seem more modern (or even post-modern) than one might have expected. It cuts a path between the two extremes of absolutism and relativism, allowing for multiple (indeed, infinite) interpretations of a beautiful object without also permitting everything to be said. Kant's theory explains not only why we take pleasure in beautiful objects, but why we think that such pleasure should be shared by others (and why we censure them when they fail to feel such pleasure), without committing us to the existence of absolute proofs for an object's beauty. His account manages to preserve the flexibility present in much modern-day thought but manages to avoid its excesses (i.e. its relativism). The main question (at least according to Kant) to be resolved by the Third Critique, however, is as follows: how is it possible for freedom to have an effect upon the phenomenal world? What are the conditions of the possibility of freedom, not as a priori necessary for morality, but as an effective source of impetus and change in the empirical world? The answer lies in Kant's account of beauty: when contemplating a beautiful object, we feel pleasure - this pleasure indicates that our cognitive faculties are in harmonious interaction. This harmony is dependent upon two things: for the object, on its expressing an aesthetical idea; for us, on our participation in the supersensible (i.e., our mental faculties which, as the conditions of the phenomenal world, can be known a priori to transcend it). These topics, all interconnected, and all equally necessary for understanding how Kant intends to bridge the gap between the First and Second Critiques, provide the basis for the first four chapters of this present thesis. The final chapter concerns the Deduction, which grounds the entire undertaking by ensuring the intersubjective validity of Kant's theory. The first subject is pleasure, because according to Kant's theory, pleasure is the first indication we have that an object at which we are looking is beautiful. Unfortunately, Kant's insistence that this pleasure be 'disinterested' has generated no end of controversy. What Kant means by 'interest', how it is possible for something to be disinterested, and whether this actually succeeds 4 in doing what Kant needs it to are all subjects which scholars have attacked with great zeal. The issue, however, is extremely important, for distinguishing whether our pleasure in an object is interested or not is the first stage in justifying a judgment of taste. It is my contention that much of the debate surrounding disinterestedness is mere hair-splitting, and that Kant's own account is robust enough to withstand all challengers. If we are able to determine that our pleasure in an object is disinterested, we may make the claim that our pleasure is due to a harmony occurring between our cognitive faculties (the subject of the third chapter). But the exact nature of this connection between pleasure and this harmony is also a subject of much debate. This is clearly an important topic, for if Kant's account is untenable, then it would be possible, as some have alleged, for us to feel no pleasure in response to a beautiful object, or for us necessarily to feel pleasure in response to any object of sense-perception. Several reconstructions of this connection are offered, ranging from a strictly causal relationship in which the harmony of the cognitive faculties causes pleasure, to a normative relationship which states that we ought to take pleasure in the harmony of the cognitive faculties. As I will show, however, all of these interpretations are flawed, and could not do the necessary work even if they were sound. There is, however, an alternative that is overlooked by all commentators, which is not only tenable, but which renders Kant's theory a great deal more comprehensible than do its competitors. This discussion of the connection between pleasure and the harmony of the cognitive faculties leads us quite naturally into the third chapter, which concerns itself solely with the aforementioned harmony. This topic is noteworthy for its lack of coverage in the secondary literature. Other commentators toss words like "assistance" and "mutual co-operation" about, but none of them actually goes so far as to explain exactly what those words mean. Kant means something very specific about the 'harmony of the cognitive faculties', and it behoves any commentator to determine exactly what that meaning is. This is perhaps one of the most important topics in the Third Critique, 5 for it is the harmony of the imagination and the understanding which not only gives rise to the feeling of a pleasure which announces the presence of the beautiful, but also which allows us to transcend our own experience and make a judgment which, though subjective, nonetheless claims to be valid for all judging subjects. This account of harmony relies on two further discussions: what Meredith calls 'estimation' (beurteilen), and a revised account of Kant's notion of schematism. Estimation is another topic that has received little attention in the secondary literature, but its elucidation is crucial for understanding what Kant means by 'harmony' and for his account of how this harmony arises. It is through an act of estimation, Kant says, that we feel pleasure; and it is our estimation of an object and of ourselves which allows us legitimately to make judgments of taste. Without understanding what estimation entails and how it is possible, one cannot understand how Kant's theory of beauty functions. Furthermore, any account of estimation must rely on what Kant has to say about schematism. This is not schematism a la the Critique of Pare Reason, however; this is schematism without a concept, and needs its own discussion and defence. As we shall see, non-conceptual schematization will turn out to be one of the keystones of Kant's theory of beauty: hence its inclusion in this thesis. We are now faced with the question of why some objects, but not others, are able to be so schematized and estimated. This question leads us into the fourth chapter, which introduces Kant's account of aesthetical ideas. If estimation and harmony have been neglected in the secondary literature, aesthetical ideas have been completely overlooked. Most commentators seem content to lump them in with the 'contentual' aspects of the Third Critique, ignoring all of the sections after the Deduction (i.e. §§40-57) as having little to do with Kant's aesthetic theory. The problem with this approach is that it is worse than useless: it is misleading, lazy, and makes complete nonsense of Kant's theory of beauty. Aesthetical ideas are absolute crucial for explaining why some objects, but not others, produce a harmony of the cognitive faculties. By ignoring them, one is left with no non-6 circular way of identifying what is significant about a beautiful object, and no way of providing a concrete example of how the harmony of the cognitive faculties comes about. A discussion of aesthetical ideas entails a discussion of Kant's account of Geist, for it is precisely because aesthetical ideas are an expression of Geist that they possess the unity and coherence necessary for schematization without a definite concept. From aesthetical ideas, we move to the realm of the supersensible. As Kant argues in the later sections of the Third Critique, judgments of taste must have some kind of objectivity - otherwise they could not claim validity for all. This objectivity, however, cannot be based on determinate concepts, as we shall see when I discuss the harmony of the faculties. Kant's solution is to claim that judgments of taste refer to the indeterminate concept of the supersensible. Functionally, this serves to ensure that when different subjects look at a beautiful object, they all see the same thing - that they are all in possession of the same manifold of intuition. Some see this as metaphysics - but such an interpretation can only be held if one sees the noumenal/phenomenal distinction as ontological rather than epistemological. The evidence for the existence of the supersensible, provided by our judgments of taste, allows Kant to make the final steps necessary to bridge the chasm he believes has opened up between the First and Second Critiques. The last chapter in this present work centres around the Deduction of the Third Critique. Deduction-bashing is a long-standing and popular tradition among Kantian scholars, and the Third Critique has been somewhat spared only because it is less popular than its brethren. Nevertheless, few, if any, of the commentators argue in favour of Kant's Third Deduction (his fourth, if you count the A and B Deductions of the First Critique separately), though their reasons for condemning it vary. I, on the other hand, believe that the Third Critique Deduction is not only sensible, but also strong enough to do the necessary work. This last chapter, then, serves to outline what I take to be the common misconceptions surrounding the Deduction and to resurrect this argument as Kant's final 7 defence of the intersubjectivity of our judgments of taste. With this last defence securely in place, we shall be in a position to see not only why Kant's theory of beauty is far more tenable than his detractors might argue, but also why it is a fitting and glorious finale to his entire critical project. This order seems to me to be the most natural progression. From pleasure, which begins Kant's works, (and begins our experience of a beautiful object) we must refer to the harmony of the faculties for a deeper explanation of why certain objects are pleasurable. In order to explain why a given person finds an object pleasing, we must explain what it is about the object (an aesthetical idea) which allows pleasure to be produced. In order to explain why we think that everyone should find the object pleasing, we must refer to the object in itself (the supersensible) to guarantee that everyone will observe the same object. And in order to explain why everyone should find the object pleasing, we have the Deduction. Before the work begins in earnest, however, there are a few complications that must be cleared up. The first concerns the very words on this page: translation. Though always a difficult task, translating Kant is notoriously difficult. And 1 can see no less than seven words that will prove problematic. Let us begin with Wohlgefaliens. Bernard has "satisfaction", Meredith has "delight". Both of these are basically correct; the problem is that each word has a nuance that the other lacks. Kant uses the term to describe our pleasure arising from a particular source: the beautiful, the agreeable, or the good. In the first case, there is no interest at the ground of the pleasure; the latter two, however, are interested (this issue will be discussed in the second chapter). We take pleasure in the agreeable and in the good because an interest is satisfied - and so using the term "satisfaction" to describe our resulting pleasure seems to be quite appropriate. There is no interest in the beautiful, however, so what is there to be satisfied? In this case, Meredith's choice, "delight", seems better. To use the word "satisfaction" is to imply that something has been satisfied. This is the case for the agreeable and the good - accordingly, I will speak of our pleasure in them as "satisfaction". Because 8 beauty lacks an interest, I will use "delight" to describe the pleasure that it occasions. The reader is reminded, however, that "satisfaction" and "delight" are different translations of the same German word. The next term is Mitteilbarkeit. Both Bernard and Meredith translate this as "communicable", or "capable of being communicated". This is unproblematic, unless one infers that there must be someone with whom one can communicate in order for this adjective to be valid - and this happens quite frequently. In a discussion of a "universally communicable mental state", some commentators assume that there must be others present with whom one could communicate one's mental state, or that communication is a necessary consequence of something's being mitteilbar (this discussion arises again in the sixth chapter). The use of "communicable" is benign only if one thinks of diseases: a disease is communicable even if there are no other people around, and the communicability of a disease can be determined given only the assumption that others are like us in some relevant way. AIDS is a communicable disease; even if I were the last person on earth, if I had AIDS, I would have a communicable disease. To avoid these problems, I use the term that Walter Cerf uses: "sharability". While this is awkward, it avoids any hint of connection between subjects. If a subject is to communicate her mental state, she must have some contact with another subject. If a subject's mental state is merely sharable, however, there need be no connection between two agents, both of whom come to be in the same state. The two roots of the German 'Mitteilen' might also be taken to suggest something akin to "to share". 'Mit' - "with", and leil' - "part". This latter is often taken to mean "section" or "piece", but it also appears in the English word "impart" - witness the translation of mitteilen as "disclose" or "acquaint". This sense of something's being "sharable" or "disclosable" avoids connotations of intersubjective communication that "communicable" does not. The next word is willkiirlich. Ralf Meerbote deplores the use of "arbitrary" to render this word, and argues that, based on Willkiir (either the power to desire or choose, or such a power 9 determined by Wille), willkiiiiich refers to mental actions, and "allows saying that there is a way of conceiving of mental actions such that they are not explained causally but without thereby violating causal laws. ... an action which is willkiirlich is precisely an action determined by practical reason."6 This is perhaps as far from "arbitrary" as one can get. The fourth word is Belehmg. It and its related terms belebt and beleben occur at several key points throughout the Third Critique. Bernard and Meredith are not consistent in their choice of translation: Meredith tends to favour "quickening", but occasionally uses "enlivening"; Bernard uses "animating", "enlivening", and "excitement". Our feeling of pleasure and pain is really our feeling of life [Lebensgefuhf]; and when Kant talks about spirit, he is talking about a principle that gives life to inanimate objects. Life is an extremely important idea for Kant; and to choose a word that severs its original connection to this idea is misleading. Thus, I have reserved my translation of Belebung to "enlivening". The next problem of translation concerns a pair of words: urteilen/beurteilen. While the two seem nearly identical, Guyer points out that "through the prefix be- it connotes a direct connection to an object as opposed to the kind of indirect connection to an object that exists in judgment on one's own mental state."7 This is a connection that I think Kant would want to make, and one that makes a good deal of sense in the context of his aesthetic theory. Urteilen is universally translated as "judgment" - this is unproblematic. The problems arise when Bernard translates beurteilen as "judging" and Meredith as "estimating". Bernard's translation is to be lauded, for it maintains the etymological connection between the two terms "judging" and "judgment". The problem is that the two terms are too close. In Bernard's interpretation, it is difficult, and at times impossible without a German edition, to determine if the original word is urteilen or beurteilen. For this reason, I have chosen to follow Meredith's choice of "estimating", even when quoting Bernard. The reader must always remember that there is a close, intimate, etymological connection between "estimating" and 10 "judgment" that is lost in translation. The lost connection, however, is more than made up for by the increased clarity of this translation. There is a significant distinction between the two terms, and a translation that blurs that distinction should be avoided. We now come to the granddaddy of interpretative problems: Zweckmdfiigkeit. Werner Pluhar argues quite convincingly that Meredith's translation of Zweckmcifiigkeit as "finality" both erases a distinction present in the original work, and implants a different distinction not present in the original work. The word proposed by Bernard, "purposiveness", manages to avoid these problems, and so, Pluhar concludes, "the purposiveness terminology is crucially superior to all other initially plausible candidates, and especially to the finality terminology."8 Thus I have used "purposiveness", even when quoting Meredith. I have tried to maintain consistency in my translations, even at the expense of misquoting both Bernard and Meredith. It is my contention that nothing is lost, and a great deal of clarity is gained by my doing so. I have, however, left the text of commentators alone. One final note: I have, for the most part, followed Bernard's translation, primarily because its language is more modern, but I do quote Meredith wherever it seems more appropriate. Quotations from the Bernard translation simply cite a section number, whereas quotations from Meredith are prefixed with an M . There is one more issue that must be resolved before I begin in earnest. It is more important than it might seem at first glance, for misinterpretations surrounding this very point can have dire effects on evaluations of Kant's arguments, as we shall see when I discuss the Deduction later on. The problem is this: Kant is never clear about exactly what he means by 'taste'. In the Preface he calls taste "a faculty of aesthetic judgment", in §§VII and 1 he claims that taste is the faculty of judging of the beautiful, under certain conditions (later spelled out by the Four Moments.) At §40 he calls taste "the faculty of judging a priori of the sharability of feelings that are bound up with a given representation (without the mediation of a concept)." Still later, at §60, Kant writes "taste is 11 at bottom a faculty forjudging of the sensible illustration of moral ideas". Most of the substance of Kant's account of taste and beauty can be found in the Analytic of the Beautiful, which breaks down into four sections, or Moments. These are Kant's favourite categories of Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Modality. The first, Quality, explains that the uniqueness of judgments of taste lies in their quality: they are disinterested. The Moment of Quantity deals with a measurement of size: it tells us that delight in the beautiful should be something shared by all judging subjects. The Third Moment, Relation, considers the way in which the purposes involved in a judgment of taste are related to one another (namely, as subjectively purposive, without there being any actual purpose). Finally, the Moment of Modality informs us that the beautiful makes a necessary (rather than a possible or contingent) reference to delight. These four categories arise again in §29, where Kant uses them to distinguish the beautiful, the agreeable, the sublime, and the good, respectively. There seem to be three basic interpretative positions regarding the status of taste and the four Moments of the Third Critique: the first, held by Francis Coleman, Donald Crawford, and Salim Kemal, is that the four Moments outline "characteristics"9 of a judgment of taste, or that "[t]he judgment of taste is basically a disguised liking report."10 The implication seems to be that each of the four Moments discusses a particular property of judgments of taste; that these are descriptive passages. The second position, argued by Paul Guyer (and supported by Kenneth Rogerson) is that "universality and necessity ... are defining criteria for the judgment of taste, and disinterestedness and the form of finality [the first and third Moments] are justificatory criteria."11 The second and fourth Moments, on this view, lay down the conditions according to which a judgment can be considered a judgment of taste; the first and third Moments, on the other hand, are those qualities to which we look to determine whether our judgments of taste are correct. The final position is taken up by Anthony Savile, who claims that the four Moments appear 12 not in elucidating the judgment's content, for about that nothing at all has yet been said; rather, they appear in specifying the grounds on which that content, whatever analysis it may receive, must be judged when it is offered in a judgment of taste.12 According to Savile, then (and to Cohen as well, though for different reasons,) a judgment of taste is only a judgment of taste if it satisfies the four Moments - to use Guyer's terms, all of the Moments are defining criteria. My sympathies lie with the last position, though all seem to have flaws. The gravest problem that confronts the first position is that it suggests that Kant is doing aesthetic psychology. The whole impetus behind the critical philosophy is to examine the conditions under which alone certain things (knowledge, freedom, nature as a system) could be possible. To suggest that Kant shifts gear and now decides to talk about what is actually going on inside our minds when we make judgments of taste is a bold step, but one which Kemal is prepared to make: "his analysis does not always clearly distinguish their transcendental features from what is true of their actual empirical instances".13 I am not prepared to make this step: I believe that this position is unsympathetic to the critical project, and, moreover, do not believe that it is well supported by the textual evidence. The second position seems far more plausible, perhaps because it is more in line with the transcendental philosophy that we have come to expect from Immanuel Kant. The problem, however, seems to be that the textual evidence supports Savile's position. The judgment of taste is therefore not a judgment of cognition, and is consequently not logical but aesthetical, by which we understand that whose determining ground can be no other than subjective. Every reference of representation, even that of sensations, may be objective ... save only the reference to the feeling of pleasure and pain, by which nothing in the object is signified, but through which there is a feeling in the subject as it is affected by the representation. (§1) [I]t is the mere form of purposiveness in the representation by which an object is given to us, so far as we are conscious of it, which constitutes the delight that we without a concept judge to be universally communicable; and, consequently, this is the determining ground of the judgment of taste. (§11) As we can see from these two quotes, Kant is quite clear that both pleasure and the form of 13 purposiveness are intended as grounds of the judgment of taste; particular the latter quote, which implies that pleasure, the form of purposiveness, and universality, are intricately related and involved in grounding judgments of taste. It would seem, prima facie, that Kant does not sufficiently distinguish between the first and third, and the second and fourth Moments, to warrant classifying the former as justificatory, and the latter as defining, criteria. The problem with Savile's position (a problem noted and discussed by Ted Cohen14), is that there no longer seems to be any room for Kant's contention that one can make erroneous judgments of taste: how can anything, from Kant's view, be simultaneously a judgment of taste and mistaken? Kant himself suggests that the mistake consists in failing to separate off everything belonging to the pleasant and the good and thus failing to make a judgment whose "determining ground" is solely the "pleasing." I submit that to the extent that the pleasing ... is not the determining ground the judgment is not a judgment of taste. Thus there is no difference between what on this account is a mistaken judgment of taste and what in fact is not a judgment of taste at all. 1 5 But there are numerous passages in which Kant wants to leave room for the possibility that, when I assert that my shrubbery is beautiful, I may, in fact, be mistaken (§§8, 38, 38-Remark, 39). Moreover, if a judgment only counts as a judgment of taste if it satisfies the four Moments, how are we to make sense of Kant's comments about "barbaric taste" (§13), taste that is "crude and unexercised" (§14) - that is, taste which requires charms to be added to beauty in order to interest the mind - but which is nevertheless referred to by Kant as "taste". Why should he do this if judgments of taste necessarily obeyed the four Moments? And what shall we do when Kant talks about "pure judgments] of taste" (§§2, 13, 14), and "judgments of taste proper." (§14) Pure judgments of taste as opposed to what? When Kant wrote "a judgment about beauty, in which the least interest mingles, is very partial and is not a pure judgment of taste" (§2) why did he include the word "pure"? If Savile and Cohen are correct, and Kant's position is that interested judgments are not judgments of taste, then he need only have written "is very partial and is not a judgment of taste" - is not a judgment of taste at all. But that is not what he wrote. It is perhaps what he should have 14 written; God knows that that would have made more sense (or at least been more consistent.) Alas, the problem remains. I must admit, Savile's position has its support: "Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or a mode of representation by means of a delight or aversion apart from any interest (§5), "the mere form of purposiveness in the representation by which an object is given to us ... is the determining ground of the judgment of taste."(§11) Or consider the following passage, which goes a long way toward defending the Savilean position: It may be uncertain whether or not the man who believes that he is laying down a judgment of taste is, as a matter of fact, judging in conformity with that idea; but that he refers his judgment thereto, and consequently that it is intended to be a judgment of taste, he announces by the expression "beauty.1 (§8, my italics.) The use of the words 'believes' and 'intended' can be interpreted to suggest that when one fails to meet the criteria outlined in the four Moments, one fails to make a judgment of taste; after all, if the status of a judgment of taste were guaranteed simply by the use of the word 'beautiful' then there would be no need for Kant to have said 'it is intended to be a judgment of taste,' for the judgment would be a judgment of taste (it just might be mistaken or impure). I think the problem is that Kant waffles. At points his text supports the Savilean position, at others, it undermines it. It seems, from examining the text closely, that Kant had no considered opinion on the matter. Savile argues that all of the Moments are defining criteria (to use Guyer's terms); I would argue that all four Moments are justificatory criteria. In my opinion, a judgment of taste is simply one in which it is asserted that an object is beautiful; a pure judgment of taste (or a judgment of taste proper-) is one which both asserts that an object is beautiful and meets the conditions specified in the four Moments. There is evidence, good evidence, to support both positions. The major drawback to Savile's position, however, is that it leaves no room for erroneous judgments of taste. On the Savilean view, Kant must just not have written what he had meant when he said "lay down an erroneous judgment of taste." Thus we founder on the rock of interpretative indecision. For my part, I prefer to maintain the intelligibility of statements like "pure judgment of 15 taste", and "barbaric taste", and instead give up the idea that the four Moments are conditions for a judgment of taste: they are, rather, conditions for a judgment of taste proper. Having defined what I take Kant to mean by 'taste', I believe it is now time for the main event. P L E A S U R E 16 DISINTERESTEDNESS Many trees have been sacrificed in the debate over exactly what Kant means by 'disinterested', but the answer seems to me quite clear. "The satisfaction which we combine with the representation of the existence of an object is called 'interest."'(§2) If Kant ever wavers from this definition, it is usually to omit the term 'representation'. The use of this term may seem odd here, given the way it is used in Kant's account of knowledge, but the definition makes sense when 'representation' is interpreted to mean something closer to 'awareness' than to a representation of imagination.16 I take it that Kant's intention is to define an interest as a satisfaction which depends on an object's actually existing (and perhaps available for use,) as opposed to being merely represented by the imagination. Our satisfaction in a chocolate brownie depends on actually having the physical brownie, and being able to eat the brownie. A virtual brownie could satisfy no hunger. A painting, on the other hand, does not have to be physically present, nor does it have to continue to exist, to provide pleasure. My memories of the Mona Lisa, however, are sufficient to send my cognitive faculties into harmonious play - thus this pleasure is disinterested. It is absolute fundamental to Kant's project, as we shall see in the next chapter, that the object of aesthetic judgment be a representation, and not a physical object. Given the importance of this point, we must closely examine the arguments raised against Kant. If the definition is so clear, why all the dispute? Since Paul Guyer offers one of the more interesting and sustained looks at Kant's notion of disinterestedness in the secondary literature, I will examine and evaluate his objections. Guyer begins by pointing out that, on the above definition, interest is a satisfaction, which one might consider odd, given Kant's intentions for reflection: "if the aim of reflection in aesthetic 17 judgment is to isolate pleasure due to the harmony of the faculties by excluding those due to interest, it would seem that interest must be a source rather than a kind of pleasure."17 The question, of course, is whether that is the true aim of reflection. Kant does not say that our satisfaction in either the agreeable or the good is due to interest; he says that it is bound up with interest.(§§3,4) The difference is not merely semantic: Kant carefully avoids causal language when discussing the role that interest plays in our satisfaction in the good and the agreeable - but what he does not manage to avoid is ambiguity. To clear the matter up, we must take a deeper look at interested pleasures. "All interest presupposes or generates a want"(§5); "[interested] satisfaction always has reference to the faculty of desire, either as its determining ground or as necessarily connected with its determining ground. "(§2) The existence of an object can satisfy us for one of three reasons: because it gratifies our senses, because it is good for something, and because it is good in itself. The first is satisfaction in the agreeable, the second two are satisfaction in the good. An object must exist in order to gratify our senses because they are passive; without the object, there is nothing to affect them. An object must exist in order to be esteemed by us (to be assigned an objective worth) precisely because it is being assigned an objective worth; without the object, there is nothing to which the worth could be assigned. That which is useful can only be used if it actually exists; likewise, that which is good in itself is only good in so far as it actually is. Guyer criticises this appearance of'existence' by claiming that, since Kant is the philosopher who emphasised that 'being' is not a real predicate, 'being' cannot be doing any serious work for him here. "Some further fact about the properties of things, or features of their existence, must be linked to the notion of interest..."18 Obviously. The utility of an object depends on its shape, its size, what it is made of, etc. A knife made out of butter would be a thoroughly useless knife. But Guyer is missing the point. A knife must actually exist in order to be useful - true, it must also have other qualities, but all of those qualities are predicated on its being 18 present (as opposed to being possible). Delight in the beautiful does not depend on the existence of the object - merely on its representation; and a representation of imagination does not necessarily depend on an object's actually existing. The imagination can represent an historical object, a fictional object, a future object - and none of these depend on the presence of an object. One cannot cut with a future knife; one can imagine a future life. As Guyer correctly points out, Kant attempts to defend the disinterestedness of our delight in the beautiful negatively; that is, he claims that there are three sources of delight/satisfaction (the beautiful, the agreeable, and the good,) and then argues that only the latter two are interested. If Kant's argument is sound, it will serve to prove the case at hand. In §§3 and 4, Kant attempts to distinguish the beautiful from the agreeable and from the good, respectively; but it is not until the last paragraph of §3 that Kant truly distinguishes our satisfaction in the agreeable from that in the beautiful. Of the agreeable, Kant says that by sensation it excites a desire for objects of that kind f dergleichen Gegenstdnde' - Meredith has "for similar objects", Guyer has "for other objects of the same sort"]; consequently the satisfaction presupposes, not the mere judgment about it, but the relation of its existence to my state, so far as this is affected by such an object. ( § 3 ) Guyer makes great hay out of the phrase "dergleichen Gegenstdnde" - as one can see from the above translation, he takes Kant to mean that our satisfaction in the agreeable involves further experiences of objects, rather than the experience of the present agreeable object. I believe that this interpretation is both textually and linguistically unwarranted. On my reading, all Kant is arguing is that when our senses are stimulated by an object, a desire is "excited" for objects of that kind - and, by definition, the object closest in kind to the object being experienced is precisely the object being experienced. The senses, being passive, cannot act - they can merely react. They are unable to conceive, by themselves, of a future object; thus when they are stimulated in a pleasurable way, they produce a desire for that kind of stimulation - the desire is consequently directed, not toward a future object, but toward the kind of object which happens to be present. 19 Guyer later criticizes the argument of §3 as follows: l)Kant distinguishes the agreeable and the beautiful on the grounds that the former "produces an interest in further experiences of the same sort"19 while the latter does not; 2)all pleasure produces, by definition, an interest in its continuation. Therefore, Guyer concludes, the distinction between the agreeable and the beautiful is obscure at best. Guyer's argument has two premises; my rebuttal to the first appears above; to the second, the claim that pleasure produces an interest in its continuation, I have merely this to say: given Kant's account of'interest', it is simply false. For this claim to be true, Kant would have to maintain that pleasure produces a satisfaction which is combined with the representation of the existence of an object; i.e. it would have to produce a satisfaction which is combined with the existence of the feeling of pleasure. Nowhere does he do this.20 What he does say is that "the consciousness of the causality of a representation, for maintaining the subject in the same state, may here generally denote what we call pleasure..." (§10) There is nothing in this definition, which Guyer seems to be using to make his argument, to suggest that pleasure produces satisfaction; what pleasure does do is maintain itself. There is no 'interest' (in the Kantian sense) involved; what is involved is a state which perpetuates itself. But this is a far cry from a satisfaction in said state's existence. If Guyer's interpretation were correct, Kant would be committed to two instances of pleasure: the pleasure itself and a satisfaction in the occurrence of said pleasure - and there is nothing in the text of the Third Critique which suggests that Kant even considers this position, let alone commits himself to it. It is Guyer's equivocation of the term 'interest' which generates the illusion that Kant is at odds with himself. As for §4, Guyer has this to say: [tjhere are two problems in his continuation of the argument. First, his explicit contrast between the beautiful and the good does not mention interest, but turns on the question of connection to a concept. Second, the move which Kant makes from connection to a concept to connection to interest does not in fact make it clear that our pleasure in the beautiful does not involve 'delight in the existence of an object.'21 It is interesting that Guyer should reproach Kant for shifting to talk of concepts, for he quotes, 20 immediately preceding the above passage, the following section from the Critique: "In [the good] there is always involved the concept of a purpose, and consequently the relation of reason to the (at least possible) volition, and thus a satisfaction in the presence of an object or an action, i.e. some kind of interest. "(§4) As we can see from this quote, Kant brings up the fact that the good is connected to a concept in order to argue that it is interested. It is precisely because the good involves the concept of a purpose that it has a relation to the will and hence to a satisfaction in the presence of an object or an action. Kant may perhaps bite off more than he can prove when he claims that "to will something, and to take a delight in its existence, i.e. to take an interest in it, are identical" (§4) but he does not need to take such a strong position. In order to prove that the satisfaction in the good is interested, all he needs to show is that the act of willing presupposes a satisfaction in the ' existence of the object or action willed - and this even Guyer is prepared to grant.22 Guyer raises one final question, which, if valid, would prove to be fatal for Kant, for, under Guyer's interpretation, it undermines the distinction between the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good. The question is this: why cannot the beautiful be an object of will? Guyer's reasoning is as follows: Kant argues [at the end of §4] that the agreeable, the useful, and the morally good are all alike "in being invariably coupled with an interest in their object." This is because each of these may be an object of the will; and "to will something and to take a delight in its existence, i.e., to take an interest in it, are identical." If this is so, then that which is not an object of the will is not an object of interest, and if the beautiful is not an object of the will, then our pleasure in it is not connected with an interest. But an argument of this form ... would also fail to prove that our delight in the beautiful is not connected to any interest. For Kant has shown neither that the beautiful cannot be an object of the will, nor that willing something and taking a delight in its existence are identical.23 Guyer's has two criticisms: that Kant has not shown that the beautiful is not an object of the will, and that he has not proven that willing something and taking a delight in its existence are identical. The first is false. The beautiful is not an object of the will simply because it is not the beautiful object itself which is willed but only its representation. On this point Kant is extremely specific and never 21 wavers - our delight in the beautiful is delight in the representation of an object. The reasons for this will become clearer later on in this work. Guyer's second criticism is true, but uncompelling. Kant never does show that willing something is identical with taking a delight in its existence, but, as I argued above, he does not have to. All Kant's argument requires is the claim that willing an object (the actual existence of an object, that is,) presupposes a satisfaction in its existence - and Guyer grants him this point. The good and the agreeable are interested because when we will that they should exist, we will the actual existence of the objects themselves - when we will the existence of the beautiful, we will simply the existence of the representation of a beautiful object. This distinction, between the beautiful object (the object itself) and the object of beauty (the representation of said beautiful object), arises again in the Deduction. The last point to be made on this subject concerns the creation of interest. Guyer again faults Kant for disallowing the possibility that our delight in the beautiful might create an interest in beautiful objects: The beauty of irreplaceable masterpieces like the Parthenon ... seems to provide very good reason ... for the continued existence of these objects; and nothing in Kant's argument appears adequate to undermine our temptation to think of such efforts as stemming from an interest produced by aesthetic judgment.24 Indeed, there is nothing in Kant's arguments to undermine such a temptation. Fortunately, there does not need to be. All Kant says about the creation of interest is that "Judgments of taste ... do not in themselves establish any interest." (§2, fn, italics mine) But he goes on to say that "Only in society is it interesting to have taste" (ibid.). Since, one could argue, the idea of a state of nature is illusory (or is at best an interesting thought-experiment,) and one is always influenced by some sort of society, judgments of taste will always be interesting (i.e. bring an interest in an object with them). Guyer believes that he has shown Kant's initial account of interests to be flawed - he attributes these flaws to an insufficiency in the definition of'interest' and attempts to remedy them by proposing a more 'informative' account. But as I have shown, we need not (and should not) accept Guyer's 22 interpretation. The initial definition of interests is, I think, strong enough to do the work that Kant needs it to do, and needs no modifications. ONE PLEASURE, DIFFERENT DELIGHTS This present section is of importance primarily because of the relation it has to the following section, which is concerned with the connection between pleasure and the harmony of the faculties. Richard Aquila has argued that the interpretation of the harmony which assigns to it a causal role in the production of pleasure conflicts with the belief that "aesthetic experiences are unique sorts of experiences, different in kind from nonaesthetic experiences."25 Before I begin questioning the link between pleasure and cognitive harmony, then, I must examine the tenability of this belief in the uniqueness of aesthetic experiences. Aquila takes as his primary text §29: The pleasant, as motive of desire, is always of one and the same kind ... Hence in judging its influence on the mind, account is taken only of the number of its charms ... and so only of the mass, as it were, of the pleasant sensation; and this can be made intelligible only by quantity. On the other hand, the beautiful requires the representation of a certain quality of the object. He goes on to say: Strictly speaking, of course, Kant does not explicitly say here that an aesthetic pleasure is qualitatively different from a nonaesthetic one. Indeed he only says, one might argue, that a necessary condition for having an aesthetic pleasure is the representation of a certain quality of the perceptual object™ Indeed, one might argue this -1 know that I would. So what's Aquila's problem? Well, he says, if this is all that Kant had intended, "there is no point in his having placed so much weight on the fact that non-aesthetic pleasure can differ only quantitatively. Surely nonaesthetic pleasures ... often arise from the perceptual representation of various qualities of objects..."27 Secondly, Kant uses the word "Qualitat, which Aquila thinks he would not have done had he merely wished to express the view that "aesthetic pleasures admit of what we might call 'qualitative' differences"28 Aquila insists that aesthetic pleasures may differ from other pleasures on the basis of their form, rather than their 23 "quality'. Witness, he says, §39, where Kant argues that although others may differ from us with respect to the sensations which they obtain from perception, pleasure in the beautiful is universally sharable: What Kant appears to be saying here is that although there is no reason to suppose that others will (or can) experience the same kind of nonaesthetic sensations as I do, the case is quite different with the experience of aesthetic pleasures. There I am entitled to suppose that others will, under the appropriate conditions, experience just the same sort of pleasure as I experience. This, it seems to me, is just to acknowledge that an aesthetic pleasure is a unique kind of pleasure.29 There are a number of problems with Aquila's interpretation. The first is that he has forgotten to read the entirety of the relevant passage. In the General Remark appended to §29 (the text under discussion here,) Kant distinguishes the agreeable, the beautiful, the sublime, and the good. Not surprisingly, he distinguishes them according to his favourite classification scheme: the four Moments. The agreeable falls under the heading of Quantity, beauty under Quality, the sublime under Relation, and the good under the surveillance of Modality. The beautiful falls under Quality because it involves the representation of a certain quality of the object under consideration. The agreeable falls under the category of Quantity because it is distinguished by the strength and number of its charms. Sensation is passive - it can only be acted upon - and hence the stronger the acting forces, the greater the sensation. The category of Relation applies to the sublime because of the way judgments of sublimity relate what is sensible in a representation to a possible supersensible use. Finally, Modality governs the good because (for Kant) what is good involves a necessity, derived from concepts, which commands obedience. The reason Kant places so much weight on the fact that non-aesthetic pleasures differ quantitatively is because they come under that Moment - not because aesthetic pleasures are qualitatively different from all other kinds of pleasures. And the first sentence that Aquila quotes ("The pleasant, as motive of desire, is always of one and the same kind") should not lead us to conclude, as Aquila does, that "nonaesthetic and nonmoral pleasures are qualitatively indistinguishable 24 from one another"30, merely that they all have the same effect on our desire. Pleasure from cognac is not the same as pleasure from chocolate - but both pleasures affect our desire in the same way. This is why the pleasant is always of one and the same kind; and it differs only with respect to quantity because whether I want a snifter of cognac or a chocolate brownie depends on which craving is stronger - on which object has a greater "number of charms" with which to seduce me. The second problem with Aquila's argument lies in his actual conclusion that aesthetic experiences are unique (see his quote from page 98 in the middle of the previous page). Aquila is confusing sensation with pleasure. Since we cannot assume that the senses of everyone else function in the same way as our own, we cannot assume that they derive satisfaction from the sensation of the same objects. This does not mean, however, that the satisfaction which they do feel is in any way different from our own. If I know that you dearly love chocolate, then I can presume that your delight in a fudge brownie will be equivalent to mine. We can presuppose, however, that the cognitive faculties of others function in exactly the same ways as our own - because of this similarity, we can presume that any pleasure which is based upon the activity of the cognitive faculties will be the same pleasure for every subject. Although the empirical facts as to whether one takes pleasure in one object over another may differ, the actual feeling of pleasure remains the same for all, whether it is pleasure in sensation (the agreeable), pleasure in reflection (the beautiful), or pleasure in subjugation to a law (the good). The sensation of an object may differ for each subject - but the feeling of pleasure does not. It is Aquila's conflation of sensation with pleasure which leads him to his unfortunate conclusion. But so far I have not shown that all of our pleasures are identical; merely that Aquila's argument that they are not is untenable. To provide further evidence that all feelings of pleasure are the same, we must look at §3. As Guyer correctly points out, the first three paragraphs of §3 are devoted to distinguishing between sensations and feelings. On a superficial first reading, one might (as I did) interpret Kant to 25 be arguing that there is only one kind of pleasure: "everything that pleases is agreeable because it pleases (and according to its different degrees or its relation to other pleasant sensations it is agreeable, lovely, delightful, enjoyable, etc.)" This interpretation fails after even the most cursory examination of the text, for it is clear that Kant presents this position only to refute it. Again, however, one must not be too quick to judge - Kant's aim here is not to show that aesthetic pleasure is qualitatively distinct from other pleasures, but to draw a distinction between pleasure and sensation. If it were true, he says, that all satisfaction is sensation of a pleasure, then aesthetic judgment would be impossible, for there would be no difference between "impressions of sense which determine the inclination, fundamental propositions of reason which determine the will, [and] mere reflective forms of intuition which determine the judgment. "(§3) The agreeable is defined as that which pleases in sensation; if all satisfaction/delight were sensation of a pleasure, then everything which produced a pleasurable feeling would be defined as agreeable - the agreeable, the good, and the beautiful would be "on a par in everything relevant to their effect upon the feeling of pleasure, for this would be agreeableness in the sensation of one's state". (§3M) We would have to admit that the basest hedonist and the most pious nun both seek the same thing: pleasurable sensations. Kant, however, clearly wants to differentiate between Hugh Hefner and Mother Teresa. He does so by proposing a distinction between sensation and feeling: sensation refers to what is objective - the way the senses are affected by an object; whereas feeling refers merely to the subject (and its "feeling of life"). On Kant's view, there are three sources of delight/satisfaction: one arising from reflection, one arising from sensation, and one arising from obedience to a moral law. The feeling of pleasure is always one and the same, but its sources may very - and it is on the basis of these varied sources that we may legitimately judge others. Not surprisingly, Guyer finds fault with this passage. Indeed, all of his comments seem to stem from one basic misinterpretation, and that is this: "The ostensible point of §3 is to show that 26 "delight in the agreeable is connected with interest,' and that this differentiates it from pleasure in the beautiful. But only the last of the section's four paragraphs actually addresses these concerns."31 His first point is true enough; but the second sentence is not. The first three paragraphs, while they may seem to be a digression, are crucial to distinguishing satisfaction in the agreeable from satisfaction in the beautiful. It is precisely because satisfaction in the agreeable is grounded on sensation that Kant includes these paragraphs. If all satisfaction were a sensation, then aesthetic pleasure and moral respect would be sensations also; but then there would be no significant difference between any of them. The fundamental difference between satisfaction in the agreeable and delight in the beautiful is that the former is grounded on sensation, and the latter on reflection (it is for this reason that only the former is interested). If Kant omitted the first three paragraphs of §3 , he would be unable to make this distinction - and given that this is his intention in this section, the paragraphs are crucial. Nevertheless, Guyer maintains that the distinction fails to avoid the pitfalls that Kant warns about: "What he has called for is a distinction between kinds of pleasure, but what Kant supplies is instead a distinction between feelings of pleasure and all other kinds of sensation. ... [the distinction] simply confirms the view that pleasure consists in a special kind of sensation."32 Guyer does not defend his interpretation, which is a pity, for I fail to see why anyone would interpret the passage in this way. Kant is not distinguishing between feelings of pleasure and all other kinds of sensation, for the most relevant kind of sensation here is a ground of pleasure - it is sensation which grounds our satisfaction in the agreeable. Guyer's interpretation suggests that feeling and sensation are not all that different; indeed, he goes to far as to call feeling "a special kind of sensation." But this ignores what Kant says in the second paragraph: If a determination of the feeling of pleasure or pain is called sensation, this expression signifies something quite different from what I mean when I call the representation of a thing (by sense, as a receptivity belonging to the cognitive faculty) sensation. For in the latter case the representation is referred to the object, in the former simply to the subject... ( § 3 , my italics) 27 On the basis of this evidence, to call feeling a special kind of sensation is, I think, an egregious mistake; feeling is clearly 'something quite different' from sensation. This is not a distinction between feelings of pleasure and all other kinds of sensation; what Kant distinguishes here is the feeling of pleasure from a sensation that may give rise to that pleasure (the sensation of the agreeable). This is a distinction between sources of pleasure - a pleasure based on sensation, and a pleasure based on reflection. It would seem, then, that not only do the first three paragraphs of §3 provide a necessary argument, they also provide an argument that can withstand scrutiny. P L E A S U R E AND C A U S A L I T Y There remains the question, however, of the connection between our delight in the beautiful and the harmony of the faculties - is it a causal relationship or not? As usual, the subject has generated some debate, with Paul Guyer and Richard Aquila squaring off against each other. Guyer believes that "a causal theory of our pleasure in the beautiful... is more consistent than any other with his theory of aesthetic judgment... " 3 j whereas Aquila claims that "[n]ot only is the causal account a philosophically unsatisfactory one; it also conflicts with a belief which appears to be an important part of Kant's aesthetic theory [the belief that aesthetic experiences are unique kinds of experiences - see the beginning of the previous section],11,4 Presumably both of these men cannot be correct - we must examine the text to see which (if either) is the better position. As Guyer acknowledges, Kant's terminology is ambiguous. At times he uses language which is explicitly causal, at others his language avoids even the implication of causality. Despite all the ambiguity, however, Guyer infers a causal relationship: The general law that success, especially unexpected, in the attainment of an objective produces pleasure appears to function as a causal law relation kinds of states of affairs, and to explain the case of aesthetic response by means of a causal relationship between two psychological states that is an instance of this more general law/ 5 Kant offers three accounts of how pleasure and harmony are connected. The first is simply 28 that "the consciousness of the causality of a representation, for maintaining the subject in the same state, may here generally denote what we call pleasure." (§10) And, as we shall see during my discussion of the harmony of the faculties, Kant asserts that the state produced by contemplation of the beautiful reinforces and reproduces itself. By definition, therefore, this state is pleasurable. The second argument, but closely related to the first, concerns the ground of a judgment of taste. In the First Moment, Kant claims that, in aesthetic apprehension, "the representation is altogether referred to the subject and to its feeling of life, under the name of the feeling of pleasure or pain." (§1) I imagine that, on this view, whatever promotes and strengthens a subject's feeling of life [Lebensgefiihl] is pleasurable (pain is rarely discussed in the Analytic of the Beautiful); and, as we shall see, the harmony of the faculties that results from aesthetic apprehension involves the enlivening [Belebung] of the cognitive faculties. It is because the harmony of the faculties enlivens both faculties that it strengthens the subject's feeling of life; and such strengthening is, Kant believes, pleasurable. The third argument begins with the assertion that "[t]he attainment of every aim is coupled with a feeling of pleasure" (§VI, M) and since discovering order and unity is the aim of the understanding, anything which represents said order will be a source of pleasure. Guyer ignores the first two options, insisting that, for Kant, pleasure must be based on the fulfilment of an aim. Since all of Guyer's concerns and conclusions about the relationship between pleasure and the harmony of the faculties arise because he adopts this aim-fulfilling account of pleasure, we must see why Guyer emphasizes this account over others. In his answer to the question "why should the harmony of the faculties arouse, or cause, a feeling of pleasure?" Guyer offers only two options: one is the first mentioned above, located at § § VTII, 10, and 12. Guyer dismisses this account because "although it explains the effects of the feeling of pleasure ... [it] does not illuminate what is important to us, namely, the conditions under which this feeling is first produced."36 Guyer's language here reveals his presuppositions. By looking 29 for the conditions under which the feeling of pleasure "is first produced", he seems to be ruling out anything but a causal account of pleasure. Guyer wants to know how pleasure is produced - this is nothing but the search for the cause of a given effect. Given that this is the question that he is asking, it is no wonder that he finds the answer that he does. Guyer is looking for a theory of pleasure - he will not find one at § V I I 1 of the First Introduction, because this section is only concerned to give a definition of pleasure. To discover the "conditions under which this feeling is first produced" one must look at those states which preserve, strengthen, and maintain themselves - i.e. states of the harmony of the cognitive faculties. The definition of pleasure in the First Introduction does not illuminate what Guyer thinks it should - thus he dismisses it. But is there any reason why we need follow Guyer in looking for an account of pleasure? Kant does give a theory of pleasure - he just does not do so here, nor does he do so all at once. We must be patient, then; and reject Guyer's adoption of the "aim-fulfilment" theory of pleasure as premature. This theory of pleasure, however, underlies his conclusion that the relationship between the harmony of the faculties and the feeling of pleasure is a causal one: "The general law that success ... in the attainment of an objective produces pleasure appears to function as a causal law relating kinds of states of affairs,"37 "[Kant's] only explanation of the pleasurability of aesthetic response suggests that this response is an instance of a general causal connection in human psychology between pleasure and accomplishment."38 T 4 answer to the question of the exact nature of the relationship between the harmony of the faculties and our delight in the beautiful must wait. Aquila, as I have said, takes the opposite position. Not only is the causal relationship unsatisfying, he believes it to conflict with an important belief of Kant's - the belief that aesthetic pleasures are qualitatively different from other kinds of pleasures. It was the intention of the last section to show that this latter claim is unwarranted - that aesthetic pleasures are not different in kind, 30 they merely have a different ground, from other types of pleasure. Thus if I can show that the causal account of pleasure is not philosophically unsatisfying, it will become apparent that Aquila's objections also lose their bite. On Aquila's interpretation, the causal account of aesthetic pleasure connects feelings with objects through other mental states which are intentionally directed towards those objects. The only sense, on this view, in which aesthetic feelings 'have objects' is that such feelings are causally connected with certain other states which have objects....This view is a philosophically unsatisfactory one because it fails to accommodate the fact that there is a phenomenological difference between an experience in which one perceives some object while at the same time feeling a pleasure and an experience in which one feels a pleasure in that very object.39 Aquila seems to be concerned that, on this view, there would be no way of distinguishing a pleasure which is felt in the form of an object, a pleasure which is felt in the matter (i.e. the sensation) of the object, and a pleasure which is not occasioned by the object at all but merely accompanies the perception of the object: "none of these differences in the causal origin of a pleasure one feels on the occasion of some perception need be a difference which makes a difference in the total experience itself. ... [These pleasures] might be phenomenologically indistinguishable experiences on the causal account."40 If this were the case, writes Aquila, we could never account for the fact that aesthetic pleasure is a pleasure in an object. That's it? This is his objection? How did this man get tenure? The whole point of Kant's account of reflection is based on the fact that our pleasures are phenomenologically indistinguishable from one another. A pleasure is a pleasure is a pleasure is a pleasure. A chocolate brownie tastes different from a butterscotch brownie, but the pleasure is the same. It is for this very reason that we must reflect upon the source of said pleasures in order to distinguish delight in the beautiful from satisfaction in the agreeable. The whole reason that we can be mistaken in our judgments of taste is because it is possible for us to mistake a pleasure based on a concept (i.e. pleasure in the good) or pleasure based on sensation (the agreeable) for pleasure based on mere reflection (the beautiful). If 31 these pleasures were phenomenologically distinguishable (as Aquila implies they should be,) then I could never be mistaken about whether I am making a judgment of taste. If, upon the very act of taking of pleasure in an object, I could determine whether it was pleasure felt merely in the form of the object, or a pleasure based on some other consideration (e.g. sensation, utility) I would never mistake a disinterested pleasure for an interested one. I could thus know whether my judgments of taste were based on a disinterested pleasure, and if so, my judgments of taste would be infallible. The only reason that one can be mistaken about judgments of taste is because one can mistake an interested pleasure for a disinterested one. Aquila's interpretation makes havoc of all that Kant has to say about mistaken judgments of taste, the imputation (rather than postulation) of the agreement of others, and Kant's entire account of aesthetic reflective judgment (arguably the most important aspect of the Critique of Judgment). Because he has given us no good reason (nor even a mediocre one) to abandon the causal account's explanation for our pleasure in objects, I will ignore his complicated account of why it is we find certain objects beautiful, and continue on with the story. A P L E A S U R A B L E H A R M O N Y . Why, then, do we find the harmony of the cognitive faculties pleasurable? The causal account seems flawed; so does one of its major rivals. One similarity between Guyer and Aquila is that they both assume that the connection between the harmony and pleasure is a factual one; Kenneth Rogerson disagrees. While agreeing that there is a necessary connection between pleasure and the harmony of the faculties, he maintains that the connection is normative, rather than factual. "It is not the case that everyone will, as a matter of fact, always take pleasure in free harmony, but everyone should."41 The principle underlying this normative connection is, according to Rogerson, the principle of common sense. This interpretation offers quite a different perspective on the connection between harmony and pleasure than that offered by either Guyer or Aquila. Rogerson assumes that the 'ought' 32 in the imputation of agreement to others has normative force; and he bases this, in part on Kant's use of the terms ^mnteri and ^forder rt. Before examining his argument for the normativity of a common sense, I will turn to his analysis of these two terms. Rogerson criticizes a fairly popular interpretation that distinguishes ^muteri and sforderri on the basis that the former is connected with epistemological arguments, and the latter with morality.42 He claims that in §7 the terms are used interchangeably, that fiorderri is used in §22, well before any talk of morality, and that in §§40 and 59, when Kant connects beauty and morality, he uses ^muteri. Rogerson is correct to challenge this interpretation, for there is no textual evidence to warrant such a distinction. This is not to say, however, that the two terms are used interchangeably. A close look at the text will reveal a significant difference: in §§6, 7, 9, 40, and 59, Kant uses the terms zitzumuthen', snnithet', swuihen', 'zugermithet', and zumuthet', respectively, to talk about either our expectation or our demand that others share our delight in a beautiful object. §§7, 8, 22, and 41, on the other hand, use the terms Jordert', Jordern', Jorderri, and Jordert', respectively, to express our demand that others agree with our judgments of taste. Rogerson draws three conclusions from his analysis of these two terms, the only two of which are legitimate: ^mtteti' and yorderti do not support a distinction between a factual and a normative claim that others will take delight in the beautiful; and the universal validity discussed in the Second Moment is precisely the demand ('fordert') that everyone agree with our judgments. For his last conclusion, Rogerson argues from the fact that there is no factual/normative distinction between the two terms, to the conclusion that both terms are used by Kant in a normative sense. But, as I have shown, this is not true. 'Muteri refers specifically and consistently to our delight in the beautiful (and our demand that others share said delight.) 'Forderif refers consistently to our judgments of taste and our demand that others assent to these judgments. Kant shifts, at §36 and 39 and uses the words ^ansitmf and yansinnen' to refer to our expectation that others will share our delight; they seem to 33 be standing in for the term 'muteri. Why Kant changes his terminology at this point I do not know, but the close relation between *ansinnen' and 'mitten' serves to bolster, rather than undermine, my interpretation. There is little textual support for Rogerson's position; it also makes little interpretative sense. To construe the connection between harmony and pleasure as normative has some undesirable consequences. For to say that one 'ought' (in a normative sense) to feel pleasure in the harmony of the faculties implies that one could fail to do so. 'Ought' implies can; it also allows 'could not'. One ought not demand something that must necessarily be fulfilled - but Rogerson denies that pleasure necessarily follows upon the harmony of the faculties: "It seems at least possible that a person could appreciate a work of art, admit that it expresses an Idea, and yet fail to feel any pleasure."43 Rogerson uses this possibility to support his argument; I would argue that anyone who failed to feel pleasure in such an object must necessarily, on the Kantian account, have an interest that prevented her from feeling pleasure. Imagine a rabidly pro-capitalist neo-conservative (someone who makes Rush Limbaugh look like Karl Marx). Upon perception of a work of Soviet art, this person might acknowledge the technical expertise of the artist, agree that it conveys an aesthetic idea (say, of the glorious proletariat,) and yet fail to feel pleasure. We need not conclude from this, however, that the person has failed to take pleasure in the harmony of her cognitive faculties (i.e., that the connection between harmony and pleasure is an normative one) for I would argue that this work of art simply fails to harmonize with this person's cognitive faculties. It is not that the capitalist fails to take pleasure in the harmony of the faculties; it is that she has a strong interest against the work that prevents her from experiencing the harmony of her cognitive faculties. The ultimate problem with Rogerson's account is that there is little textual evidence for it. Nowhere does Kant suggest that one's cognitive faculties could be in free play, without one thereby feeling pleasure. In §VII, where Kant discusses the connection of the feeling of pleasure to the 34 harmony of the faculties for the first time, there is no suggest that one could fail to feel pleasure in the harmony. In §9, Kant writes that the "estimation of the object...is the ground of this pleasure in the harmony of the cognitive faculties..."And in §§11 and 12, Kant writes "it is the mere form of purposiveness in the representation by which an object is given to us ... which constitutes the satisfaction...", "[t]he consciousness of the mere formal purposiveness in the play of the subject's cognitive powers...is the pleasure itself." There is a question here, but it concerns the identity of the harmony and the pleasure, not the possibility of failing to find the harmony of the faculties pleasurable. Rogerson's mistake seems to derive from a misunderstanding of the uncertainty inherent in any judgment of taste: "The judgment of taste itself does not postulate the agreement of everyone; ... it only imputes this agreement to everyone". (§8) The uncertainty does not derive, as Rogerson believes, from the possibility of others failing to find free harmony pleasurable; it derives from the fact that we can never be certain whether we have correctly judged the object to be beautiful, i.e., whether we have correctly reflected upon the source of our delight, an uncertainty which, as Cohen points out, derives from the agent's opacity to herself.44 What, then, is the connection between pleasure and the harmony of the faculties? It is not normative; it is not causal, nor does it seem to be non-causal. The answer, I think, is again quite simple: a relationship not unlike that of genera and species - an essential part of the harmony of the faculties is that it is a pleasurable state, just as it is an essential part of human existence that we have the capacity to communicate with one another. It is claimed, in §VIII of the First Introduction and again in §§10 and 12, that any state that maintains itself, or which is a determining ground of the activity of the subject, is a pleasurable state. Kant's considered opinion is hardly clear - at some points it seems as if the harmony of the faculties is the feeling of pleasure, at others Kant claims that pleasure is the awareness of the harmony of the faculties, thus implying that there are two different 35 states. Closer consideration of the latter half of §9, however, will reveal a helpful hint. When Kant claims that we become aware of the harmony of the faculties through the feeling of pleasure, he is less concerned with giving an account of the production of pleasure and more worried about avoiding the counter-argument that we are aware of harmonious free play through the intellect. Once this is realized, we no longer need interpret Kant as implying that there are two distinct processes at work in our delight in the beautiful; merely as claiming that the harmony of the faculties cannot be known intellectually. With this in mind, we can again consider the question of the identity of the harmony of the faculties with the feeling of pleasure. Since §9 does not force us to admit the possibility of there being two processes, we can again consider the identification of the harmony of the faculties as a pleasurable state. On this interpretation, the harmony of the faculties is not identical with the feeling of pleasure, it is merely an instance of it, in the same way that a circular plate is the instantiation of the concept of a circle. To identify a particular harmony of the faculties with the feeling of pleasure would be like identifying a particular circular plate as the understanding (as the faculty of concepts.) There are many circular things; there are many pleasurable objects/states of affairs. Flowers, wine, a good action, a new Simpsons episode - each of these has an effect on the feeling of pleasure for one of three reasons: because it pleases in reflection, gratifies the senses, or is esteemed by our reason (or, in the last case, all three). Being happy does not create a feeling of pleasure - it is a feeling of pleasure. One can no more be happy without feeling pleasure than one can judge a plate to be circular without involving the concept of a circle. And if someone asks you how you know or are aware that you're happy, you simply say "Because I feel happy." No further evidence is needed. The feeling is evidence for the state - but this does not mean that the state causes the feeling. The state consists, in part, of the feeling; likewise, the feeling of pleasure is partly constitutive of the harmony of the faculties. If one does not feel pleasure, then one is not experiencing a harmony of the faculties. 36 The question still remains: why is the harmony of the faculties pleasurable? That is to say, why does it reinforce and maintain itself? The answer turns on the idea of life. The harmony of the faculties consists in the enlivening [Belebung] of the imagination and the understanding; in a judgment of taste, the object is referred to the subject's Lebensgefiihl; aesthetical ideas enliven [beleben] the mind; the beautiful, unlike the sublime, "directly brings with it a feeling of the furtherance of life".(§23) While Kant never defines what he means by Tife' in the Third Critique, it seems intuitive to me to associate it with growth, expansion, strengthening - in contrast to 'death' which would suggest the very opposite. Given these associations, and given Kant's definition of pleasure, anything which heightens the feeling of life would be pleasurable. The repeated use of the root 'leberi in Kant's discussion of beauty, harmony, and aesthetical ideas cannot be overlooked; especially not when one takes into account the significance of *Geist' during his discussion of aesthetical ideas. *Geist' is what differentiates us from inanimate matter; it is that part of us which lives forever, and makes us fully human: it is the enlivening principle. For an object of beauty to express such a principle, through an aesthetic idea, is for that object to remind us of the power of animation - the power of transforming inanimate matter into a living organism. This line of argument will surface again when I discuss Kant's use of Geist in the fourth chapter. Kant believes that the awareness of this power is pleasing - and I concur. He offers no defence for this; neither will I. It is unfortunate that his argument for the pleasurability of the harmony of the faculties ultimately rests on such an intuition; but it is an intuition which I think is strong enough to withstand even the most intense scrutiny. Hardly a rational defence - but then, "we are not always forced to regard what we observe (in respect of its possibility) from the point of view of reason." (§10) 37 A CERTAIN HARMONY We have shown above that our pleasure in the beautiful is dependent upon the harmonious interaction of the cognitive faculties. None of the commentators denies this fact. What is interesting is that few of them actually bother to explain exactly what Kant means by 'harmony'. Many commentators seem content to write that aesthetic pleasure is based on the harmony of the imagination and the understanding. If pressed as to what this harmony is, they say that it is a relationship of mutual assistance, or co-operation, or accordance - that the imagination, freed from the constraints of the understanding, nevertheless conforms to its requirements. Fine. But what does that mean? This is the first question that we will raise here in this chapter. The second concerns the mental process by which this harmony arises: beurteilen. The final topic emerges out of the second: given an account of estimation, how is such a mental process possible - this is to ask two things: first, what is it about the object which makes this mental process possible; second, to what extent is the process of beurteilen possible given what First Critique has to say about the production of knowledge? The first question of this final topic cannot be fully resolved until the next chapter, for it requires the introduction of the aesthetical ideas. As we shall see, Kant's account of aesthetical ideas plays an important expository and justificatory role in his account of just how it is that an object can give rise to a process of estimation (and thus also why it is that some objects, but not others, are beautiful). We can, however, go some distance towards the solution by introducing what Kant has to say about the concept of the supersensible. In brief, it is because a beautiful object allows us to refer to the supersensible that we can justify the universal appeal of our judgments of taste. There are some final constraints both on the process of beurteilen and on its objects, which we will discuss at the end of this chapter. 38 THE M E A N I N G OF H A R M O N Y There are two general positions concerning the nature of harmony: the first is argued by Uehling, Zimmerman, Guyer, and Meerbote; the second, by Makkreel. The idea common to both is that in aesthetic reflection the content of the imagination accords or harmonizes with the requirements of the understanding. There are subtle differences in the way the commentators express this. Uehling borrows an analogy from Zimmerman, and proposes that the content of the imagination is, for example, a synthesized manifold of a series of red patches, each one half the size of the last. What is in the imagination is a synthesized manifold exhibiting temporal and spatial relationships (play and figure). Those temporal and spatial relationships exhibited by the sensation are the form of the object of sense. Now understanding, as we have already seen, is the faculty of the forms or rules of thought. Thus, not the sensations but only the form exhibited by those sensations could correspond with the understanding as the faculty of the forms of thought.45 In the above example, the form of the object corresponds to the "purely rational formula of half the first and half again".46. Thus, according to Uehling and Zimmerman, such an object would possess the requisite spatio-temporal manifold for harmonious interaction with the understanding. The last sentence of the quote from Uehling echoes Meerbote's account, in which he claims that "Aesthetic forms must be ... invariant features of apprehended manifolds."47 By 'invariant', Meerbote simply means those aspects of a representation which remain unchanged "over all cases of production of concepts, in contrast to specific changes displayed on different occasions when specific, different, determinate concepts are produced."48 Hence the object of a pure judgment of taste is the presence or absence of conformity of the apprehended features of a manifold to the invariant features of the understanding. Since apprehended variant features of a manifold will not display such conformity, it will require apprehended invariant features of the manifold for the comparison to find that the manifold conforms to the understanding.49 Thus when the imagination apprehends an object which possesses such features (things like orderliness, lawfulness, and unity) the representation will conform to the understanding and hence occasion a harmony of the faculties (we shall return to Meerbote later in this chapter). 39 Guyer's remarks are remarkably similar, and they stand well as a summary of the above positions: the harmony of the faculties is "a state in which a manifold of intuition is in some sense apprehended as unified without being subsumed under any determinate concept, or in which the imagination meets the understanding's general requirement o f ' lawfulness' without the use of a concept".50 There is a problem, however, to which each of these interpretations falls prey - and that is the problem of synthesis. Both Guyer and Uehling explicitly refer to the imagination as presenting a synthesized manifold for referral to the understanding - if this manifold exhibits unity and regularity, it harmonizes with the understanding, and free play emerges. And although Meerbote avoids specific reference to the problem of the synthesis of the manifold of intuition, he presupposes it when he points at the problem confronting his interpretation of estimation. But Kant quite clearly states in the First Critique that all synthesis is an act of the understanding (B130). If the understanding directs the imagination (as it must if we are talking about the synthesis of a manifold) by presenting a concept according to which the manifold must be synthesized, the imagination cannot be free - and if the imagination is not free, then it cannot engage in free play. How, then, to reconcile these two positions? Meerbote concludes from his account of'invariant features' that these features are possessed by all sense-perceptible objects "given only the assumption that all sense-perceptible objects are empirically cognizable ... Since such features will always put the cognitive capacities into conformity, all sense-perceptible objects are beautiful. Lack of conformity is impossible."51 What he neglects to mention is that the only reason that the manifold of a non-beautiful object will display unity, order, and coherence (the invariant features) is because the manifold has been synthesized by the understanding. Meerbote avoids any discussion of synthesis (or, rather, lack thereof) in aesthetic reflection, and one potentially crucial distinction between a beautiful object and a non-beautiful object 40 is missed. A second explanation of the harmony of the faculties appears to avoid this problem: Rudolf Makkreel's. He is the only person to put any significant weight oii Kant's claim that the imagination "schematizes without a concept". (§35) While other commentators mention this, few of them use it as thoroughly as does Makkreel. While in the First Critique schemata are the crucial factors in synthesis, Kant's careful avoidance of the term 'synthesis' when outlining the role of the imagination in aesthetic estimation should suggest to us that he is describing a different function for schematization. Borrowing from §VI1 of the First Introduction, Makkreel reveals a distinction between cognitive and aesthetic reflective judgments. Cognitive judgments require three activities: first, the apprehension of the manifold of intuition; second, the synthesis of the manifold ("i.e., the synthetic unity of consciousness of this manifold in the concept of an object"); and third, the presentation in intuition of the object corresponding to this concept [Gegenstand]. Aesthetic reflective judgments lack the second step (and thus the synthetic unity of consciousness given by a concept). A beautiful object is one in which "the form of [the] given object [Objekt] is so produced in empirical intuition that the apprehension of its manifold in the imagination agrees with the presentation of a concept of the understanding (regardless of which concept)". (§FI, VII) What is significant in the latter passage, according to Makkreel, is that Kant refers to a concept as being presented; for earlier, in his description of the three acts involved in cognition, Kant talked about an object [Gegenstand] being presented. The distinction between Objekt and Gegenstand is a contentious one in the literature surrounding the First Critique52, but Makkreel's interpretation leads him to argue that "[t]he fact that presentation is referred to both a concept of the understanding and a Gegenstand indicates that presentation in reflective judgment involves schematization; but it does not include the application of an empirical concept for the purpose of obtaining determinate knowledge of an object. " 5 j In other words, Kant's use of the term Gegenstand at section X X of the First Introduction signifies 41 that the manifold under consideration is one which has been mediated by the imagination; the understanding presents an indeterminate concept, which is compared by the reflective judgment with the schematized manifold (the Gegenstand) presented by the imagination. Makkreel concludes: The aesthetic judgment directly compares the apprehended form of an object with the way categories are generally schematized in relation to the form of time ... although Kant speaks of a harmony of the understanding and the imagination, what is actually compared in the aesthetic imagination are two products of the imagination, i.e., a form apprehended by the imagination and schemata as temporal rules of the imagination.54 Although I believe that Makkreel's interpretation is ultimately more defensible than its main opponent, I think that Makkreel misunderstands the function of schematization in the Third Critique. Kant is quite clear that the image formed by the imagination is compared with the understanding; I see no reason for concluding, as Makkreel does, that the "form apprehended by the imagination" is compared with "schemata as temporal rules of the imagination." He infers from §VII of the First Introduction (which begins "the form of the given object") that the comparison in reflective judgment is between the act of apprehending a manifold and the act of presenting a concept; he thus concludes that reflective judgment compares a form of imagination with schemata as temporal rules for presentation. This inference is, I think, unwarranted; throughout the Third Critique Kant speaks of comparing a manifold with "the presentation of a [non-determinate] concept". What is crucial, I think, is not the act of presentation itself (as Makkreel implies) but rather the fact that the manifold of intuition can be compared with one of indefinitely many concepts - it can be so compared because the manifold meets the requirements for subsumption under a concept (unity, order, universalizability). SCHEMATISM To get a better understanding of exactly what is going on here, we must take a look at Kant's account of schematism in the First Critique (granting that the First Critique is concerned with 42 knowledge and therefore determinate concepts). He says: But pure concepts of understanding being quite heterogeneous from empirical intuitions, and indeed from all sensible intuitions, can never be met with in any intuition. ... Obviously there must be some third thing, which is homogeneous on the one hand with the category, and on the other hand with the appearance, and which thus makes the application of the former to the latter possible. This mediating representation must be pure, that is, void of all empirical content, and yet at the same time, while it must in one respect be intellectual, it must in another be sensible. Such a representation is the transcendental schema.(E\lllA.\3%)... [The schema of a pure concept of understanding] is a transcendental product of imagination, a product which concerns the determination of inner sense in general according to conditions of its form (time), in respect of all representations, so far as these representations are to be connected a priori in one concept in conformity with the unity of apperception.(B181/A142) There is an affinity between the schematization of the categories and the schematization involved in the Third Critique - both the pure concepts of the understanding, and the concept of the supersensible (the concept of an object as it is in itself) that Kant claims underlies a judgment of taste (more on this later), are non-sensible; that is, it is impossible for any image to adequately represent them. The Categories, however, are determinate: thus their schemata involve "the pure synthesis ... in accordance with concepts, to which the category gives expression"(B181/A142). Cognitive judgments are determinant; a concept (whether pure or empirical) is given, and we are to find out which objects may be subsumed under it. Thus conceptual schematization amounts to little more than providing rules for the formation of an image corresponding to a concept (when the concept is empirical) or providing a rule for the determination of inner sense when the concept is a pure concept of the understanding. Reflective judgments, on the other hand, are just that - reflective: a particular is given, and the universal must be found which corresponds to it. Because this judgment seeks something universal, we should not expect our acts of schematization to produce an image, but rather something akin to a transcendental product of imagination, a product which concerns the determination of inner sense in general according to conditions of its form (time), in respect of all representations, so far as these representations are to be connected in one concept in conformity with the unity of apperception.(B 181/A142) 43 In other words, in reflective judgment, the schema produced by the schematization of the imagination will do little more than unify, in inner sense, the manifold of intuition, and thus present the object under consideration as an orderly unity. But this is sufficient to represent the object as an object which conforms to a law (though which law is left undetermined) - and this is sufficient to guarantee that the object in question will agree "with the conditions of universality which it is the business of the understanding to supply"(§9) - and an object which does this is an object which can occasion the harmony of the cognitive faculties.55 This act of schematization is, Kant says, governed by no determinate concept (we shall see why he says this later on). Two conclusions follow from this: first, the imagination is Tree', which is simply to say that its act of schematization is directed neither by nor towards, a definite concept. Because there is no determinate concept directing the process of schematization, the imagination is not led by the understanding - it does not follow any law, for "[t]he understanding alone brings the law"(§22-General Remark), but it is selbsttdlig - and, as Kant argues in the Third Antinomy of the First Critique, to be self-active is to be free. The second conclusion is that the resulting schema is applicable to an indeterminate number of determinate concepts: it is for this reason that Kant describes an aesthetic idea as a "representation of the imagination which occasions much thought, without however any definite thought, i.e. any concept, being capable of being adequate to it." (§49) (We shall come back to this point next chapter, when we discuss Kant's account of aesthetical ideas in more detail.) More importantly, however, is the role that this schematization plays in Kant's larger concerns. In an oft-overlooked passage in the latter sections of the Third Critique, Kant discusses the relative worth of the beautiful arts. He says of poetry that it strengthens the mind by making it feel its faculty - free, spontaneous, and independent of natural determination - of considering and judging nature as a phenomenon in accordance with aspects which it does not present in experience either for sense or understanding, and therefore of using it on behalf of, and as a sort of schema for, the supersensible. (§53) 44 Bear with me: the pure concepts of the understanding are to be found nowhere in nature - yet we may justifiably use them because we have for them transcendental schemata which provide us with universally valid procedures for determining the form of inner sense. The transcendental schema is that "third thing, which is homogeneous on the one hand with the category, and on the other hand with the appearance and which thus makes the application of the former to the latter possible."(B177/A13 8) Now for the concepts of the understanding, this schema is going to be a transcendental determination of time; for time, as "the formal condition of the manifold of inner sense, and therefore of the connection of all representations..."(B177/A138), is homogeneous with appearances. But a determination of time which is universal and rests on an a priori rule is also homogeneous with the categories. "Thus an application of the category to appearances becomes possible by means of the transcendental determination of time..."(B178/A139). Now, when considering the nature of beauty, we must grant Kant some leeway - after all, beauty is only the symbol of morality, not its empirical representation. If, then, Kant's analysis of schematization in the Third Critique is not precisely the same as it is in the First Critique, we should be neither surprised nor concerned. His argument seems to be not that we can provide an actual schema for the concept of the supersensible, merely that we can provide something akin to a schema.56 In cognitive judgments, the object given in intuition is compared with the schema of a concept given by the understanding - if the object satisfies the appropriate requirements, it is subsumed under that concept. Aesthetic judgment, as a kind of reflective judgment, works in the opposite fashion: the imagination schematizes (without a concept) the object given in intuition, and compares that schema with the understanding's requirements of law and order. If there is agreement, then the understanding must provide a concept; "otherwise [a judgment of taste] could make absolutely no claim to be necessarily valid for everyone."(§57) This concept, however, cannot be determinate; for then it would determine the synthesis of the imagination according to a definite rule 45 - and so it must be the rational concept of the supersensible. We are now in a position to see why the reflective judgment acts as a sort of schema for the concept of the supersensible. The trick is to determine what the primary significance of the schemata is. In the First Critique, the schemata provide a way for Kant to explain exactly how it is that we can apply the pure concepts of the understanding, which are not derived from experience, to experience. Likewise, because in reflective judgment the imagination schematizes without a concept, our 'schemata' provide grounds for us to apply the concept of the supersensible to empirical objects - not as a constitutive concept, but only regulatively, as a way of guaranteeing assent to our judgments of taste. And so, as Kant says, poetry (but presumably this holds true of all beautiful objects) allows the mind to use its faculty of reflective judgment "on behalf of, and as a sort of schema for, the supersensible. "(§53) (I shall come back to this later, when I discuss Kant's account of symbolism.) Thus to say that the imagination and the understanding harmonize with one another is to say that the imagination, under no guidance from any determinate concept, conforms to the requirements laid out by the understanding, resulting in a mental state which maintains itself, and leading us towards evidence of a realm beyond the realm of the senses. This is to be contrasted with the perception of the sublime, where the apprehension of the imagination sets it in conflict with an idea of reason. "Nature ... is sublime in such of its phenomena as in their intuition convey the idea of their infinity." (§26) In the perception of a sublime object, the imagination attempts to comprehend and represent an image of infinitude - it necessarily fails. Reason, on the other hand, is able to represent such a manifold through the idea of infinitude. The resulting feeling is therefore not one of harmony, but of the imagination straining to achieve a representation, falling short, and reason stepping in to finish the task. The involvement of reason awakens in us an awareness of our supersensible faculties; in perceptions of sublimity we feel a "Momentary checking of the vital powers [Lebenskrdfte] and a consequent stronger outflow of them". (§23) The imagination fails, and our "vital powers" (there's 46 that word leben again), our "powers of life" are halted; reason then steps in to complete the task, and we feel a more powerful "vital power" come into play. Unlike the harmony aroused by the beautiful, the sublime both attracts and repels the mind, and "does not so much involve a positive pleasure as admiration or respect." (§23) A N ACT OF ESTIMATION Having given my account of what exactly Kant means by ' harmony', I will now turn to that act of the subject through which this harmony emerges: the act of estimation. Once again, Paul Guyer seems to be leading the way, with other commentators (Eva Schaper, Kenneth Rogerson) agreeing with his interpretation. To my knowledge, Guyer was one of the first commentators to acknowledge that judgments of taste involve two acts of reflection: first, a free contemplation of the form of an object which produces pleasure just because, without appealing to a concept, it does bring about harmony between the manifold of imagination and the understanding's demand for unity, and then the logically distinct act of reflection by which one determines that one's pleasure is due to this "simple reflection" and thus universally though only subjectively valid. 5 7 This is, of course, entirely correct: Kant does refer to the estimation of the object (or the estimate of the object, presumably produced by an act of estimation) as being the source of our pleasure in the object - the very distinction between the pleasing and the agreeable is that the agreeable is felt through passivity (i.e. sensation) alone, whereas the beautiful pleases through activity of the subject (an act of reflection). At §9 he states explicitly that "This merely subjective (aesthetical) estimating of the object, or of the representation by which it is given, precedes the pleasure in the same..." But at §VTI Kant talks about the form of an object being "estimated as the ground of a pleasure in the representation of such an object". Clearly, then, there are two functions of estimation involved in judgments of taste. Guyer then goes on to claim that Kant never "adopted a clear terminology for the distinction", 47 a claim which is echoed by Rogerson. It is here, I think, that the standard interpretation is incorrect. Let us quote the passage on which this interpretation relies: When the form of an object (as opposed to the matter of its representation, as sensation) is, in the mere act of reflecting upon it, without regard to any concept to be obtained from it, estimated [beurteilt] as the ground of a pleasure in the representation of such an Object, then this pleasure is also judged [geurteilt] to be combined necessarily with the representation of it, and so not merely for the Subject apprehending this form, but for all in general who pass judgment. (§VIIM) Guyer reads into this passage "the fact that the passage ... uses the past participles of both urteilen and beurteilen in connection with the assessment of a feeling of pleasure."58 He concludes from this that Kant does not make a formal distinction between the two levels of reflection and that §9, Kant's self-proclaimed "key to the critique of taste" suffers. Guyer's initial analysis is perhaps true; but the words in question (beurteilt and geurteilt) signify two different kinds of assessment. The first assessment, that which for which 'beurteilt' is used, is the judgment that the feeling of pleasure is due to the act of reflection; the second, that for which 'geurteilt is used, is the judgment that the feeling of pleasure is necessarily connected with the representation of the object, and hence is universally valid. In order to understand what is going on here, we must take a closer look at what Kant has to say about estimation, judgment, and simple reflection. Kant's use of the terms 'reflection' and 'simple reflection' are refreshingly consistent: one reflects on the form of an object. The appearance of the term 'blosse' ('mere' or 'simple') seems to indicate that this reflection occurs "without regard to any concept to be obtained from it." So far so good. 'Estimation', however, presents a difficulty. Sometimes it is used as a noun: "the estimates men form" (§7M), "what estimate we form of it [the object]" (§2M), "the estimate of the object" (§9M); sometimes it is used as a verb: "the form of an object ... is ... estimated as the ground of a pleasure" (§VIIM), "Aesthetic judgment is, therefore, a special faculty of estimating" (§VIIIM), "Investigation of the question of the relative priority in a judgment of taste of the feeling of pleasure and the estimating of the object" (§9M). Moreover, 'estimate' (noun) is often used to describe that 48 which grounds our pleasure, while 'estimating' is often used to describe the judgment that our pleasure in an object is due to our estimate of it. But presumably an estimate is the result of an act of estimation - what exactly does Kant mean? The answer involves looking at how Kant defines 'beurteilen'. In §1, Kant says To apprehend a regular and appropriate building with one's cognitive faculties ... is quite a different thing from being conscious of this representation with an accompanying sensation of delight. Here the representation is referred wholly to the Subject, and what is more to its feeling of life - under the name of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure - and this forms the basis of a quite separate faculty of discriminating and estimating, that contributes nothing to knowledge. All it does is to compare the given representation in the Subject with the entire faculty of representations of which the mind is conscious in the feeling of its state. (§1M) But in the First Introduction, Kant says this about reflection: To reflect (or to deliberate) is to compare and combine given representations either with other representations or with one's cognitive powers, with respect to a concept which is thereby made possible.(FT, V ) 5 9 The comparison mentioned in the last sentence of the quote from §1 reveals that estimation is a kind of reflection. "To be appraising [Meerbote's word for beurteilen] in turn, is to be reflecting (and aesthetic appraising in particular is reflecting in a fashion intimately connected with the pleasurable and generally valid way of choosing just alluded to)."60 There are several passages in the Third Critique which bear out this interpretation: "what estimate we form of [the object] on mere contemplation (intuition or reflection)" (§2), "Delight in the beautiful must depend on the reflection on an object" (§4) "this purely subjective (aesthetic) estimating of the object... is antecedent to the pleasure in it, and is the basis of this pleasure in the harmony of the cognitive faculties." (§9) The activity of the subject which grounds or gives rise to the feeling of pleasure is referred to as both 'reflection' (often 'blosse' reflection) and 'estimation'. The result of this act is consistently called an 'estimate' of the object. It would thus seem that contrary to what Guyer maintains, simple reflection upon an object is exactly what is meant by 'beurteilung1'. Some confusion seems to be generated because Kant also refers to the act whereby 49 we become aware that our pleasure is due to an act of estimation, as itself an act of estimation. But I do not believe that this is problematic. Reflection involves a comparison of representations either with other representations or with the cognitive faculties. The first level of estimation, the act which results in free play (and hence delight), involves the comparison of a schematized manifold with the understanding as "the faculty which determines the judgment and its representation (without any concept) in accordance with its relation to the subject and the subject's internal feeling, in so far as this judgment may be possible in accordance with a universal rule."(§15) The second level of reflection, whereby we become aware of the ground of our pleasure, involves the comparison of the estimate obtained in the first level with the feeling of pleasure or pain. As I mentioned in the introduction, 'estimation' is a word, like 'judging', used to translate 'beurteileri'. In the First Critique, all judgments require acts of schematism, and I see no evidence that Kant wants to abandon this position. Thus a second level of estimation will presumably involve a second level of schematism. Although Kant does not mention this, it is necessary for his account to proceed; at the second level of reflection, the comparison of our first-level estimate and our feeling of pleasure or pain reveals a necessary connection between the two. Indeed, this is the subject of the Fourth Moment. This kind of necessary connection, however, can only be obtained by a necessary connection in inner sense between the estimation of the object and a feeling of pain - and an act of schematization is necessary to unify inner sense. Thus to complete his argument, Kant must maintain that we schematize a second object, resulting in the unification, in inner sense, of a manifold of intuition which contains the estimation of the object obtained at the first level and a feeling of pleasure. What kind of object could be so schematized? Only our own mental faculties. This is perhaps to be expected - at the second level of reflection, we reflect upon ourselves to determine the source of our pleasure. This reflection involves the schematization (still without a concept) of ourselves (specifically, of our cognitive faculties and our feeling of pleasure and pain); it unifies in 5 0 inner sense the estimation of the object which produced the harmony of the faculties and the feeling of pleasure. Once this unity has been achieved, we can determine whether the relation between the estimate and the pleasure is a necessary relation (in which case the estimate is the source of the pleasure) or whether the relationship is merely contingent (in which case, our pleasure in the object was based on sensation rather than reflection). At this point, if a necessary relation has been determined at the second stage, there may follow a third act, at which point the delight in the object is imputed to all - the Geschmacksurteil itself. Estimation plays two roles in a judgment of taste - but this should not pose any problems for Kant. In a cognitive judgment, the understanding plays several roles: it provides the conditions for the Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception, it gives the rules under which a manifold can be synthesized into an object, and it provides the empirical concept under which the synthesized manifold is then subsumed. In like fashion, estimation is involved at several points in the process whereby an object is judged to be beautiful. Guyer's is not the only account of reflection, however: Meerbote presents an alternative vision of how it is that the imagination and the understanding come to be in harmony with each other. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Meerbote's account turns on his notion of'invariant features', which are those aspects of a manifold of intuition which remain constant over the production of concepts: aspects like orderliness, lawfulness, coherence, and unity. The imagination and the understanding harmonize when the imagination apprehends a form which possesses such invariant features. For evidence that Kant refers to 'invariant features' of a manifold, Meerbote cites the First Introduction: But because in simple reflection on a perception it is not a matter of reflecting on a specific concept but in general only of reflecting on the aile of a perception to aid the work of the understanding as a faculty of concepts. (FI, §VII) Meerbote interprets "aile of a perception" to mean "condition or conditions of perception" which "express certain general features of what is perceived (and imagined), features which remain 51 unchanged or invariant over all cases of production of concepts".61 I think that, first of all, the interpretation of "rule" as a condition or conditions is suspicious, but second, that this interpretation places too much emphasis on Kant's use of the term 'rule' as a specific rule rather than as the way the imagination aids the understanding. The section from which this passage is cited is concerned to distinguish an empirical concept from mere reflection. As I quoted earlier, Kant is here maintaining that an empirical concept involves three acts of cognition: 1) the apprehension of a manifold, 2) the synthesis of this manifold in a concept, and 3) the presentation of an object corresponding to this synthesis. In the passage that Meerbote quotes, Kant is beginning to draw up his argument that aesthetic reflection involves no empirical synthesis and hence no determinate concept. What is reflected upon is not the conformity of an apprehended and synthesized manifold to a specific concept, but rather the way in which the apprehended manifold conforms to the possibility of the presentation of a concept. I think that 'rule' is best understood not as a condition of perception, but rather as something akin to a schema - a rule that governs the production of images which correspond to concepts - except that in this case, the schema corresponds to no specific concept. To sum up my account of estimation: it is a kind of reflection. Upon contact with a beautiful object, one estimates (or reflects upon) the object - that is, the imagination schematizes the manifold of intuition without a determinate concept, resulting in a schema which satisfies the understanding's demand for unity, coherence, and order. The imagination and the understanding are thus thrown into harmonious play, and a pleasure is felt. Upon the feeling of this pleasure, one estimates further - one reflects upon oneself m order to determine the source of this pleasure. One schematizes one's own mental faculties (again, without a concept) to determine whether the estimate formed in step one is necessarily connected in inner sense with one's feeling of pleasure. If so, one is now aware that one's pleasure is due to the harmony of the faculties. Finally, one takes into account the fact that the process of estimation is universally valid (to be proved in the chapter on the Deduction) and one 52 concludes that the pleasure occasioned by the representation of the object is likewise universally valid: one then judges that the delight in it should be felt by all, that is to say, one declares the object to be beautiful. "HOUSTON. WE H A V E A P R O B L E M " We must now return to the question raised earlier - given the account of perception in the First Critique, how is it possible to be aware of an object without involving the understanding? As mentioned above, Kant maintains the following positions in the First Critique: "the manifold in a given intuition is necessarily subject to the categories" (B143); and "Pure understanding is not, however, in a position, through mere categories, to prescribe to appearances any a priori laws other than those which are involved in a nature in general, that is, in the conformity to law of all appearances in space and time." (B165) But he also maintains in the Third Critique, that "the freedom of the imagination consists in the fact that it schematizes without any concept".(§35) Given that schematism, in the First Critique, is always a procedure of the understanding, and that a schema is a "formal and pure condition of sensibility to which the employment of the concept of understanding is restricted"(B179/A140) it might seem as though Kant is contradicting himself. How can he maintain these two positions? Quite easily - the First Critique is concerned with cognitive, determinant judgment: judging whether a particular given manifold may correctly be subsumed under a universal (i.e. a concept). The primary topic of the Third Critique is reflective judgment - determining, for a number of given objects, which universal may correctly subsume them. If the imagination, in reflective judgment, were to schematize with a concept, then the universal would already be given - and hence we would not have reflective judgment. To be engaged in reflective judgment is, necessarily, to be engaged in the search for universals; hence it presupposes the initial absence of those universals and thus the absence 53 of any determinate concept. The imagination must schematize without a concept, for otherwise it is involved in a determinant judgment. And when the imagination does schematize without a concept, it is prompted by no faculty other than itself - it is spontaneous, and hence free. This is what Kant means when he says that "the freedom of the imagination consists in the fact that it schematizes without any concept."(§35) (See the section on schematization in this chapter.) This is not to show that the First and Third Critiques are consistent, however; merely to show that Kant's positions in them are both necessary. The problem remains: how to make the Third Critique consistent with the First. There are a few solutions offered in the secondary literature: Paul Guyer proposes that we divide Kant's account of knowledge into psychological and verificationist elements: "a theory of syntheses as mental processes by which mental states of cognition are produced, and a theory of the categories as rules by which the verification of claims to cognition may proceed."62 The categories are thus not necessary for the actual syntheses themselves, but merely for the verification of a particular synthesis as an element of knowledge. The problem with this account is that it seems to fit rather poorly with nearly everything that Kant has to say about synthesis in the First Critique. Especially in the B Deduction, Kant is quite clear: an appearance would not be an appearance for us were it not for the categories. [T]he manifold in a given intuition is necessarily subject to the categories.... A manifold, contained in an intuition which 1 call mine, is represented, by means of the synthesis of the understanding, as belonging to the necessary unity of self-consciousness; and this is effected by means of the category. (B144) To construe the categories, as Guyer does, as belonging to a verificationist account of knowledge is to conflict with Kant's entire account of synthesis and knowledge. It suggests that what Kant is doing is actually cognitive psychology rather than transcendental philosophy. A second solution is proposed by Makkreel. He relies on three facts that few other commentators seem to noticed. The first, which I mentioned earlier, and which I will discuss in detail 54 next section, has to do with the nature of Geist - in particular, the fact that its products are zusammenhangend. The second two, as mentioned above, are the fact that Kant never talks about a synthesis of imagination in the Third Critique, and his comment that the imagination "schematizes without a concept" (§35). It is through this schematization that the imagination presents a unified, coherent, orderly image to the understanding, satisfying its requirements for subsumption under a concept. Given that schematization is linked to conceptual determination in the First Critique, questions now arise about the possibility of schematizing without a concept. On this point, all that Makkreel has to say is that "Kant seems to be pointing to ... the imagination's basic function of mediating between sensibility and intellect."63 I believe that I can go one better. In §20 of the B Deduction of the First Critique, Kant connects the categories to a given manifold of intuition through the original synthetic unity of apperception: "All the manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the 'I think' in the same subject in which this manifold is found"(B132). This act of bringing a manifold under one apperception is, says Kant, a logical function of (determinant) judgment, and is thus subject to the categories. This is the central argument of the Deduction in the First Critique - to argue that all experience, indeed, all intuition, is necessarily subject to the categories as the conditions under which an intuition can become an intuition for me: all possible perceptions, and therefore everything that can come to empirical consciousness, that is, all appearances of nature, must, so far as their connection is concerned, be subject to the categories Pure understanding is not, however, in a position, through mere categories to prescribe to appearances any a priori laws other than those which are involved in a nature in general, that is, in the conformity to law of all appearances in space and time.(B165) The categories guarantee that all appearances will conform to law - but they do not prescribe to the appearances any determinate laws. That is left up to the specific empirical concepts under which a manifold is subsumed in a determinant judgment. As we have seen, there is no such specific concept in a reflective judgment - thus we should expect Kant to maintain that the manifold of a beautiful object must conform to a law (that being guaranteed by the categories) without a specific law being 55 present - and (perhaps surprisingly) this is exactly what he does say: Hence [the proceedings of the imagination] is a conformity to law without a law; and a subjective agreement of the imagination and understanding - without such an objective agreement as there is when the representation is referred to a definite concept of an object... (§22-Remark) To say that the imagination schematizes without a concept, as I have been saying all along, is thus perhaps slightly misleading: the imagination provides a schema for no determinate concept; but the process of schematization would not occur were it not for the pure concepts of the understanding. The categories alone make it possible for us to have intuitions, and so are presupposed by all acts of schematization. What are schematized in a judgment of taste are not a determinate concepts, but rather manifolds of intuition. Just as the "direction' of determinant judgments (from universals to particulars) is reversed when we are considering reflective judgments, so too is the focus of schematization. Rather than schematizing a concept for a manifold, the manifold is schematized for an indeterminate concept. As I have shown above, the resulting schema cannot guarantee the objective validity of any concept04, but only the unification, in inner sense, of the manifold of intuition: what the schematism of understanding effects by means of the transcendental synthesis of imagination is simply the unity of all the manifold of intuition in inner sense, and so indirectly the unity of apperception. ..(B185/A146) The presence of the word "synthesis' here may seem problematic, given my argument that synthesis involves conceptual determination, and hence rules out a priori any freedom on the part of the imagination. What must be distinguished here is empirical synthesis from transcendental synthesis - empirical synthesis is the problem, for it relegates the imagination to a reproductive role, producing a schema of a determinate concept according to the laws of association (given by the understanding). The transcendental synthesis of the imagination, however, "aims at no special intuition, but only at unity in the determination of sensibility" (B179/A140) and indeed, is required by any intuition in order for it to be an intuition for us. 56 All that is required to ground a judgment of taste is the unification in inner sense of the manifold of intuition of the object.65 This unification of inner sense is guaranteed by the schematism. In a cognitive judgment, the manifold of intuition must be synthesized under a determinate concept because only in this way can it achieve objectivity (because only in this way can it be about objects); the judgment of taste has no such requirement, and so requires no synthesis. Schematization (though without a concept) suffices to unify the intuition in inner sense and hence identify the intuition of an object (and the attendant feeling of pleasure) as my intuition (and my pleasure). I have now explained how it is possible for the imagination to freely represent an object which accords with the understanding: a beautiful object is schematized by the imagination, without the involvement of any determinate concept. All that this process of schematization can provide is a manifold which conforms to law. To say that the imagination schematizes without a concept, then, is to say that it provides a universal procedure for representing an image which is not bound to any specific concept: Hamlet can be read as a melancholic treatise on death, a passionate meditation on revenge, a history play, a morality play, or yet another tragic Shakespearean love story. The image satisfies the understanding's requirements of universality (see §9) because it is itself a universal procedure, and hence it harmonizes with the understanding. There are two final restrictions on the act of harmony. First, the harmony must be based on form and not on sensation; for it is only form that can be known a priori to be universally sharable. This restriction ensures that our estimates are universally sharable. If (as we shall see in the chapter on the Deduction) the act of estimation is universally sharable, then only if its content is universally sharable can the final result (an estimate) can also be known to be universally sharable. It is for this reason that Kant spends so much time discussing Euler's theory of colours and tones: for if colours and tones prove to be formal determinations of a manifold (as, I think, Kant believes they are,) then they are universally sharable, and hence can count as beautiful. If they belong to mere sensation, then 57 they can play no part in aesthetic estimation. The second restriction is that the form of the object must be dependent upon an activity of the mind, and not merely on us qua passive subjects: the form must occasion pleasure, not merely gratification. The reason for this involves Kant's overall project. The purpose of the Third Critique is to prove the possibility of the conditions of freedom - to show that it is at least possible for human freedom to have an effect on the phenomenal world: "nature must be so thought that the conformity to law of its form at least harmonizes with the possibility of the purposes to be effected in it according to laws of freedom." (§11) What is important for us here is that the phenomenal world must conform to the possibility of the purposes of the transcendental world, for that is the ground of human freedom. If Kant can show one kind of connection between the transcendental and the empirical world (say, through a representation producing a pleasurable harmonious activity of the mind,) then he has provided proof of the possibility of the transcendental world having an effect on the phenomenal world - and from here it is a short step to the argument that other aspects of the transcendental world (namely, human freedom) can also have an effect on the phenomenal world. This is why Kant approaches his task through beauty. According to his account, a beautiful object harmonizes with our cognitive faculties: this means that the representation of an object (a phenomenon) harmonizes with our mind - the condition of phenomena. (This is why Kant is so insistent that it is not the existence of the object itself that pleases, but only its representation. It is also for this reason that Kant insists that only feelings of pleasure that are based on the activity of the subject can ground judgments of taste.) In a judgment of taste, the phenomenal world, through the representation of a single object, is felt to harmonize with something that is a priori known to be 'outside' the phenomenal world (i.e. our selbsttdtig cognitive capacities). Moreover, in a judgment of taste, we are, through the process of non-conceptual schematization, provided with a justification for a reference to the supersensible - the schema 58 produced by our imagination is universally valid, yet this is achieved by subsumption under no determinate concept. Subsumption under some concept is necessary for universal validity, however, and so the representation of a beautiful object must refer to the rational concept of the supersensible. (The question as to whether this is the most suitable candidate for the role of the indeterminate concept will be dealt with in the fifth chapter.) The combination of these two facts provides evidence that the transcendental world can have an effect on the phenomenal world (in this case, through the supersensible as the ground of the pleasure that we take in beauty; in the case of morality, through the supersensible as the ground of the possibility of freedom). It is because we feel pleasure in the presence of the beautiful that we are aware of cognitive harmony - the pleasure announces not only the presence of the beautiful; it also announces that the transcendental world is having an effect on the phenomenal world. This latter announcement is what Kant has been searching for all along: some sort of evidence to suggest that it is at least possible for human freedom to have an effect upon the empirical world. Such evidence helps to seal the rift between the First and Second Critiques; it is in search of this evidence that Kant set out on the sea ofbeauty. A E S T H E T I C A L IDEAS: A M A T T E R OF L I F E A N D D E A T H 59 Some commentators like to argue that Kant's theory of beauty has a form/content distinction.66 To this end, they divide the Third Critique into two sections: the first, comprised of §§1-42, espouses a formalist doctrine; the second, §§43-60, outlines the contentual elements of his theory. This view seems quite widely held and accepted. It is also, I think, very superficial. When most commentators discuss the later sections of the Third Critique, especially those concerning the aesthetical ideas, they constate aesthetical ideas as offering constraints on what may be represented in a beautiful object, and offer the following platitudes: aesthetical ideas are counterparts to rational ideas; they are inexponible representations of the imagination; they engender much thought without being reducible to a definite concept; etc., etc. Nearly everyone seems to believe that the discussion of aesthetical ideas can be separated from the earlier, "formalist" sections of estimation, harmony, and purposiveness. Unfortunately, this leaves most commentators without any illuminating explanation of why it is that some objects harmonize with the cognitive faculties while others do not. Though Kant does not argue this point clearly, it is precisely because some objects express aesthetical ideas that they can be schematized by the imagination without a definite concept. Aesthetical ideas are not a supplement to Kant's account of harmony; they form a vitally necessary component of his theory of subjective purposiveness. To continue our discussion from the last chapter: we were considering the question of why it is that some objects can be schematized without a concept (resulting in a representation of the imagination, viz. a schema, which accords with the understanding) whereas others cannot. As Makkreel points out, the answer hinges on aesthetical ideas. As with nearly everything else in the Third Critique, Kant is hardly clear on these matters - what he does have to say about aesthetical ideas is spread throughout the later sections of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and requires 60 careful interpretation. He introduces the notion of aesthetical ideas at §49 by saying the following: by an aesthetical idea I understand that representation of the imagination which occasions much thought, without however any definite thought, i.e. any concept, being capable of being adequate to it; it consequently cannot be completely compassed and made intelligible by language. ... Such representations of the imagination we may call ideas, partly because they at least strive after something which lies beyond the bounds of experience and so seek to approximate to a presentation of concepts of reason ... but especially because no concept can be fully adequate to them as internal intuitions. Thus an object which expresses an aesthetical idea will furnish to the imagination a manifold of intuition which is incapable of being subsumed under any definite concept - hence the representation, in order to have universal validity, must make reference to the indeterminable concept of the supersensible. Furthermore, the aesthetical idea, as a singular idea, provides unity to the beautiful object, and so while the imagination, in its schematization of the object, is directed by no determinate concept, the resulting schema nevertheless has a unity which satisfies the requirements of the understanding, and a harmony is born. More needs to be said about the nature of these aesthetical ideas, but already we can see that they play a caicial explanatory and justificatory role in Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment - they explain why it is that some objects rather than others are able to produce a harmony of the cognitive faculties, and why it is that the reflective judgment must make reference to the supersensible, thereby acting as a sort of schema for it. None of the above discussion, however, goes any distance towards explaining exactly what an aesthetical idea actually is. The definition of an aesthetical idea can be thought of as similar to the definition of a concept. In Aristotelian thought, a concept is defined by its genus and differences -thus the concept 'man' is defined by the genus to which it belongs - 'animal' - and its differences with other objects contained under that genus - 'rational': 'rational animal'. Likewise, an aesthetical idea is defined by the specific idea or concept being represented, and a host of what Pluhar calls 'supplementary' presentations and what Bernard and Meredith call 'approximate' or 'secondary' representations. The word Kant uses is 'Nebenvorste/hing', which is translated best by Pluhar's 61 'supplementary' representations. As Nebenvorstelhmgen however, they must supplement a regular Vorstellung. An aesthetical idea, therefore, is defined as a Vorstellung which represents a concept (say, the god Jupiter), and the Nebenvorstelhmgen which are bound up therewith. The Nebenvorstelhmgen are the 'aesthetical attributes' of the object being presented. Kant defines these as: Those forms which do not constitute the presentation of a given concept itself but only, as approximate representations [Nebenvorstelhmgen] of the imagination, express the consequences bound up with it and its relationship to other concepts are called (aesthetical) attributes of an object whose concept as a rational idea cannot be adequately presented. Thus Jupiter's eagle with the lightning in its claws is an attribute of the mighty king of heaven, as the peacock is of his magnificent queen. ... They furnish an aesthetical idea, which for that rational idea takes the place of logical presentation; and thus, as their proper office, they enliven the mind by opening out to it the prospect into an illimitable field of kindred representations. This is how it is possible for aesthetical ideas to occasion much thought without being reducible to a concept: they consist of a representation which is bound up with an indefinite number of supplementary representations, all of which set the mind to thought, but which are so numerous that they cannot be contained within a single concept. When Kant explains the poem of "the great King" (Frederick) by reference to an attribute which the imagination (in remembering all the pleasures of a beautiful summer day that are recalled at its close by a serene evening) associates with that representation, and which excites a number of sensations and secondary representations for which no expression is found (§49) he is citing the primary representation (the beautiful summer day) and the supplementary representations (the sensations associated therewith) as evidence for the poem's beauty. An aesthetical idea is created, then, when a representation associated with a concept gives rise to a number of supplementary representations, all of which provide more matter than could ever be contained under that concept - the imagination overflows, as it were, with content. Although Kant never defends this interpretation of aesthetical ideas, he states or implies it at several points: 62 [the imagination] is free to furnish unsought, over and above that agreement with a concept, abundance of undeveloped material for the understanding... (§49) [genius] shows itself... in the enunciation or expression of aesthetical ideas which contain abundant material for that very design [i.e. the relation between the imagination and the understanding]... (§49) the aesthetical idea is a representation of the imagination associated with a given concept, which is bound up with such a multiplicity of partial representations in its free employment that for it no expression marking a definite concept can be found... (§49) and finally, [poetry] expands the mind by setting the imagination at liberty and by offering, within the limits of a given concept, amid the unbounded variety of possible forms accordant therewith, that which unites the presentment of this concept with a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is completely adequate, and so rising aesthetically to ideas. (§53) What is interesting of the first, third, and fourth, of these sections is the reference they make to a concept. This may seem out of place, given Kant's general anti-conceptual turn in the Third Critique. Not to fear - the concept to which he refers can force no degree of determinacy upon aesthetical ideas because of the multitude of supplementary representations contained within. I think that the reference to a concept here is best understood as an attempt to ensure that the aesthetic ideas have a degree of unity and coherence - it is, after all, Jupiter's eagle (to use Kant's example) and not his queen's - for she is represented by a peacock. The concept which limits the field for our aesthetic ideas is only meant to ensure that the ideas are unified around the same object - that everyone sees the eagle as a symbol for Jupiter, and not a symbol for Mercury. The concept is like a theme, ensuring that all of its associated representations have the same subject matter. In interpretative terms, the concept does not inform us as to what we can say, only what we cannot: it will not help us understand The Taming of the Shrew, but it will prevent us from describing it as a documentary about the domestication of insectivorous mammals. There is a further curiosity about aesthetical ideas, one which Kant never makes explicit: the ability to express aesthetical ideas is spirit (§49) - and as Makkreel points out, 63 spirit has an enlivening power that unifies in terms of a comprehensive idea. The term Kant uses is zusammenhcingend, not synthelisch. What is zusammenhcingend is inherently unified; it requires no special acts of synthesis to combine or connect its manifold. What is felt through the interior sense already coheres or hangs together. Thus, when the creative imagination functions in terms of the enlivening and coherent principle of spirit, it will not need to synthesize or unify previously separate representations into a whole.6 7 Thus because beautiful objects are expressions of aesthetical ideas (§51), and because aesthetical ideas are given by spirit, that which is beautiful is inherently unified. Consequently, when a beautiful object is schematized, it requires no act of empirical synthesis to combine the representations into a unity. This is one of the crucial differences between beautiful objects and non-beautiful objects: beautiful objects are spirited, and hence they have an inherent unity. When the imagination schematizes the manifold of intuition of a beautiful object, it unifies our apprehension of the manifold in inner sense - because the object is inherently unified, the resulting schema also possesses such a unity: thus the schema accords with the understanding. This unity of the manifold is guaranteed because, as I have shown above, an aesthetical idea has two parts: a representation, which is associated with a concept, and a multiplicity of supplementary representations which are bound up with the primary representation. Because all of the representations are associated with a concept, they are all unified around a common theme; but because the supplementary representations are limitless, they cannot be contained within any definite concept. Aesthetical ideas explain why it is that some objects harmonize with the cognitive faculties while others do not (because the former are inherently unified); they also explain how it is that those particular objects which do harmonize with the faculties are able to do so (because they are associated with a great number of differing, but related, representations). To draw a form/content distinction in Kantian aesthetics is to ignore the crucial role that aesthetical ideas play in guaranteeing the unity of the manifold of beautiful objects, and thus explaining how it is that the imagination can harmonize with the understanding. 64 SYMBOLS There is another issue which remains to be discussed while on the subject of aesthetic ideas - that of symbolism. Kant talks about beauty as the "symbol of morality" (§59) but, as will become apparent, his notion of symbolism plays a far more important role in the Third Critique. As usual, very little space is devoted to symbolism in the text itself - indeed, it seems like Kant gives issues an amount of coverage in inverse proportion to their importance. Having said that, let us see exactly why symbolism is important for his general account of beauty. As mentioned above, aesthetical ideas are associated with concepts. Which kinds of concepts? Again, Kant is never clear, but when he does mention them, he talks solely about concepts of reason. There is a good, though unstated, reason for this. There are three kinds of concepts: empirical concepts, the pure concepts of the understanding, and rational concepts (i.e. ideas of reason). If it were the purpose of a work of art, via its aesthetical idea, to present an empirical concept, the art world would be very boring indeed. If Da Vinci, in painting the Mona Lisa, had wanted merely to present us with a woman, he would have done better simply to present a real woman. We already have rules and procedures for presenting empirical concepts in experience; art would thus be irrelevant at best. Likewise for the pure concepts of the understanding. The schemata themselves are precisely the procedures in our possession for the presentation of these concepts in experience. A painting which attempted solely to present us with the concept of causality would be boring. Rational concepts, however, are an entirely different matter. By definition, a rational concept is one "to which no intuition (or representation of the imagination) can be adequate."(§49) There can thus be no rule for presenting this concept in experience. We can, however, symbolize this concept in experience - and this is the function of the aesthetical ideas. Remember, they are called aesthetical "partly because they at least strive after something which lies beyond the bounds of experience and so seek to approximate to a presentation 65 of concepts of reason, thus giving to the latter the appearance of objective reality... "(§49) This, I think, holds true of all aesthetical ideas, not simply those about invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity, creation, etc. (to use Kant's examples) for the reason given above - an aesthetical idea about any other kind of concept would be irrelevant, pointless, and boring. Even if the ideas concern that which is available to us in experience, like love, death, or fame, the artist "tries, by means of imagination ... to go beyond the limits of experience and to present them [the ideas] to sense with a completeness of which there is no example in nature. "(§49) But if these ideas are rational ideas, there can be no intuition adequate to them; how, then, is an artist supposed to represent the idea in intuition? To answer this, we must look at Kant's account of symbolism. In the penultimate section of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant talks about beauty as the symbol of morality: Intuitions are always required to establish the reality of our concepts. If the concepts are empirical, the intuitions are called examples. If they are pure concepts of understanding, the intuitions are called schemata. If we desire to establish the objective reality of rational concepts, i.e. of ideas, on behalf of theoretical cognition, then we are asking for something impossible, because absolutely no intuition can be given which shall be adequate to them. All hypotyposis ... or sensible illustration, is twofold. It is either schematical, when to a concept comprehended by the understanding the corresponding intuition is given, or it is symbolical. In the latter case, to a concept only thinkable by the reason, to which no sensible intuition can be adequate, an intuition is supplied with which accords a procedure of the judgment analogous to what it observes in schematism, i.e. merely analogous to the rule of this procedure, not to the intuition itself... (§59) A symbol is an intuition that indirectly presents the concept by means of an analogy. The faculty of judgment here acts in two instances: the first, by "applying the concept to the object of a sensible intuition, and then applying the mere rule of the reflection made upon that intuition to a quite different object of which the first is only the symbol. "(§59) To use Kant's example, a hand-mill is the symbol of a despotic state, not because of any physical similarities between the two, but because in reflection we see similarities between the way in which a hand-mill functions and the way in which a despot rules. 66 This is all that Kant has to say about the nature of symbolism in the Third Critique - the rest of the section is devoted to comparing beauty and morality. But in What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff (1791) Kant states that [i]f the concept cannot be represented immediately, but rather only through its consequences [Folgeti] (indirecle), it can be called the symbolization of the concept. ... The symbol of an idea (or a concept of reason) is an analogical representation of an object. That is, its relation to certain consequences is the same as the one that is attributed to the object in itself and its consequences, even though the objects themselves are of wholly different orders, as for example, when I represent by myself certain products of nature, perhaps the organized things, animals and plants, in relation to their cause, and a clock in relation to a man as its maker, because the relation of causality in general as a category is the same in the two cases. But the inner constitution of the subject of this relation remains unknown to me, and thus only the former can be represented, never the latter.68 An aesthetical attribute (the Nebenvorstellung) is a symbol of a concept because it represents the consequences [Fo/gen] bound up with the concept: for example, the Eiffel Tower symbolizes France because it is one of France's most famous monuments, instantly recognizable as the Eiffel Tower. Rational ideas cannot be presented immediately, for no intuition can be adequate to them. They are presented by aesthetical ideas, through analogy and symbolism: these are the only means that we have for presenting in experience something which properly belongs only outside experience. Above, I argued in support of Kant's claim that the reflective judgment must make reference to the supersensible, for only in this way could universal validity be achieved and conceptual determination be avoided. Now we are in a position to see why he argues that the reflective judgment acts "as a sort of schema for the supersensible". Just as the schemata provide rules for us to apply the pure concepts of the understanding to experience, so the reflective judgment allows us to apply the pure rational concept of the supersensible to experience. The relationship between the schemata and the reflective judgment is symbolic; but not, on that account, any less valid. The schema function in the same way as the reflective judgment does; and so the latter is a symbol of the former. 67 SPIRITS Kant defines spirit as the capacity to present aesthetical ideas: Spirit, in an aesthetical sense, is the name given to the animating [belebende] principle of the mind. But that by means of which this principle animates [belebt] the soul, the material which it applies to that (purpose), is what puts the mental powers purposively into swing, i.e., into such a play as maintains itself and strengthens the mental powers in their exercise. (§49) The second sentence here is quite convoluted, but I take it that all Kant is arguing is that spirit animates the soul by presenting an aesthetical idea, which "puts the mental powers purposively into swing", i.e., throws them into harmonious free play. I trust I am here forgiven some word play. Spirit enlivens. In religious terms, Geist is soul, the breath of God, that which transforms humans from mere clay into living, breathing, and moving beings. Life, breath, and movement. One could translate 'beleberi' as "enliven1, explicitly drawing the connection between spirit and life that is contained in the original German. Or, one can translate it as Bernard does, as 'animate', thus forging the bond between spirit and movement. Indeed, synonyms of'animate' (as a verb) abound in their implications of movement: activate, invigorate, energize, quicken; as an adverb: alert, lively, alive, and breathing. It is written that "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7) - thus it is the breath of God, Geist, that grants Adam life. To translate 'Geist as 'spirit' (as Bernard and Meredith do) allows one to expand this list with words like 'respire' (breathe), 'expire' (die), 'aspire' (hope), and 'inspire' (both an aspect of breathing, and an important part of the artistic process). Again, in Judaeo-Christian mythology, one's spirit is that aspect of oneself which is immortal and indestructible; it is what allows one to aspire against all odds, it is that which makes us, as humans, an intermediary between the divine and the profane. Geist belebt. "A poem may be very neat and elegant, but without spirit. A history may be exact and well arranged, but without spirit. A festal discourse may be solid and at the same time elaborate, but without spirit." (§49) Without spirit, these works are lifeless, inanimate, unmoving. Beautiful objects often 'move us to tears' - that which is spirited 68 (animated, enlivened) moves us by setting our faculties into play. A QUICK TRIP TO T E L E O L O G Y There is a strong analogy here (almost more than an analogy) between a spirited work (whether of nature or of art) and a living organism. Let us take a quick jaunt into the Critique of the Teleological Judgment: "I would say provisionally: a thing exists as a natural purpose if it is (although in a double sense) both cause and effect of itself. "(§64) Now while beauties have no purpose, and are not themselves purposes, as expressions of aesthetical ideas, they do seem to be cause and effect of themselves. The aesthetical idea is the cause of the object, particularly in art, where "a representation (although an indeterminate one) of the material, i.e. of the intuition, for the presentment of this concept [of the product as a purpose]" is presupposed.(§49) Thus a beautiful object is only possible through the involvement of an aesthetical idea; but the object itself is the embodiment and expression of the idea - without the object, the idea has no substantive existence. A natural purpose is an organized being; each part exists by means of, and for, every other part (and the whole). An organized being is then not a mere machine, for that has merely moving power, but it possesses in itselfformative power of a self-propagating kind which it communicates to its materials though they have it not of themselves; it organizes them, in fact, and this cannot be explained by the mere mechanical faculty of motion. ... We perhaps approach nearer to this inscaitable property if we describe it as an analogon of life... (§65) Likewise, beautiful objects occasion a state of mind (the harmony of the faculties) which propagates and strengthens itself. An idea is to be the ground of the possibility of the natural product. But... this [the idea] is an absolute unity of representation, instead of the material being a plurality of things that can supply by itself no definite unity of composition..." (§66) Now technically Kant is here talking about natural purposes and internal purposiveness, but I take it that an aesthetical idea holds much the same status. The idea of the object (the aesthetical idea) 69 is the ground of the possibility of the beautiful object, and grants to it 'absolute unity of representation'. Aesthetical ideas grant 'life' to beautiful objects; and as 'living' organisms, they are necessarily organized. As organized objects, the parts of these beauties are cause and effect of both each other and of the whole; the objects are able to propagate themselves (or, rather, their representations in the mind of the estimating subject); and they possess an absolute unity of representation - they are zvsammenhangend, which further explains why their schema harmonize with the understanding. Small wonder, then, that these objects (or, rather, their representations,) bring with them "a feeling of the furtherance of life" (§23) and are referred, in estimation, to the "subject and to its feeling of life, under the name of the feeling of pleasure or pain." (§1) A beautiful object strengthens our feeling of life because it is the symbol of a living organism. This is why conceptual determination is anathema to Kant's account of beauty - determination would mean the death of the object, the loss of its vibrancy and power. GENIE S Kant attempts to distinguish natural beauties from artificial ones through the introduction of genius. (His motivation for such a distinction touches on the connection that natural beauties have to morality; I will say more on this in the next chapter.) Properly speaking, he says, art is "production through freedom, i.e. through a will that places reason at the basis of its actions."(§43) Since art, as a human skill, is based on the will (which is also the faculty of purposes,) of the artist, art presupposes a priori both a purpose to be effected, and a rule governing the possibility of the production of its works. Having just distinguished art from nature in this fashion, Kant proceeds to blur the distinction: though art has rules at its basis, it must appear as free from such rules - as a product of nature: "Nature is beautiful because it looks like art, and art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as art while yet it looks like nature. "(§45) A natural object must appear as though it were 70 designed (though we may not postulate a designer) in order to be beautiful; a product of art is designed, but it must not so appear. The rules which determine the production of a work of art must not be allowed to distract the viewer - "the form of the school does not obtrude itself'(§45). Further, in order to avoid any conceptual determination in a judgment of taste, the rules of art must not have a concept as their determining ground. These types of rules, Kant says, could not come from art itself; hence it must be nature in the subject which "gives the rule to art"(§46). This natural ability, or talent, of a subject to produce rules which are not conceptually grounded is genius. "Genius is the innate mental disposition through which nature gives the rule to art. ... [It] is a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given .... It cannot describe or indicate scientifically how it brings about its products, but it gives the rule just as nature does." (§46) Kant gives other constraints on genius: its products must be original (for what is merely copied can be learned via ailes), and they must be exemplary - that is to say, they must stand as examples of art, and not as mere nonsensical ramblings.69 None of these constraints, however, is as interesting as the insistence that genius is a product of nature, for it is this claim that allows us to deconstruct the dichotomy erected between art and nature. The primary distinction between art and nature, Kant says, is that art is produced through the freedom of the artist (§43). All else follows from this - the introduction of genius, the claim that art appears as nature and nature as art, the non-conceptual rules, etc. Kant also insists, however, that art is a product of genius, which is a talent given by nature. This issue warrants further consideration. At §43, the beginning of his discussion of art, Kant writes: (1) Art is distinguished from nature as making (Jacere) is from acting or operating in general (agere), and the product or the result of the former is distinguished from that of the latter as work (opus) from operation (effectus). By right it is only production through freedom, i.e. through an act of will [WiUkiir] that places reason at the basis of its action, that should be termed art. (§43M) He then goes on to add, at §45, that 71 art has always a definite design of producing something. ... Hence the purposiveness in the product of beautiful art, although it is designed, must not seem to be designed, i.e. beautiful art must look like nature, although we are conscious of it as art. But a product of art appears like nature when, although its agreement with the rules, according to which alone the product can become what it ought to be, is punctiliously observed, yet this is not painfully apparent; ... it shows no trace of the rule having been before the eyes of the artist and having fettered his mental powers. The distinction being drawn in these two passages is that art has as the ground of its possibility a design, or purpose, whereas nature does not. Art is willkiirlich; it is produced by the will, which is the "faculty of desire determined by reason. "(§4) Reason grounds the production of art because reason provides the rules by which art is made possible and the purposes which it attempts to effect. Nature, on the other hand, has no such guiding will, and so it has no purposes (though it may appear as though it does). This much is clear, and it seems like a reasonable distinction. Problems arise some twelve sections later when Kant says: in the products of genius it is the nature (of the subject), and not a premeditated purpose, that gives the rule to the art (of the production of the beautiful). For since the beautiful must not be judged by concepts ... it cannot be rule and precept which can serve as the subjective standard of that aesthetical but unconditioned purposiveness in beautiful art that can rightly claim to please everyone. It can only be that in the subject which is nature and cannot be brought under rules of concepts, i.e. the supersensible substrate of all his faculties ... Thus alone is it possible that there should be a priori at the basis of this purposiveness, for which we can prescribe no objective principle, a principle subjective and yet of universal validity.(Remark I - §57, italics mine) Kant seems to be contradicting himself. Art was initially defined as being a product of the will, i.e. as being designed with a purpose given by reason; now he claims that it is not the premeditated purpose which determines the production of beautiful objects, but rather the supersensible substrate of the subject. This apparent inconsistency arises because in order to maintain the freedom of the imagination in reflection upon the beautiful, Kant has to avoid any intrusion of concepts. For every art presupposes rules by means of which in the first instance a product, if it is to be called artistic, is represented as possible. But the concept of beautiful art does not permit the judgment upon the beauty of a product to be derived from any rule which has a concept as its determining ground, and therefore has at its basis a concept of the way in which the 72 product is possible. Therefore beautiful art cannot itself devise the rule according to which it can bring about its product. But since at the same time a product can never be called art without some precedent rule, nature in the subject must (by the harmony of its faculties) give the rule to art; i.e. beautiful art is only possible as a product of genius.(§46) If we look closely, however, the apparent inconsistency disappears; for there is no contradiction between Kant's account of genius and the his account of human freedom. It is "nature in the subject" - its supersensible substrate - which gives the rule to art. But presumably it is this same substrate which grounds the possibility of human freedom, for it is precisely that which is supersensible in us - our faculty of Reason - which grants us our transcendental freedom. In fact, Kant goes so far as to say that "both kinds of ideas, rational and aesthetical, must have their principles and must have them in reason - the one in the objective, the other in the subjective principles of its employment." (§57-Remark I) In so far as art involves the expression of aesthetical ideas, it will involve the faculty of reason. To say, then, that art is a product of human freedom, and to say that it is a product of nature in the subject, are one and the same thing. What inconsistency there is lies in the role of purposes: for if art is produced according to a definite purpose, then it would seem as though the freedom of the imagination is compromised; but without a purpose, there is no role for reason to play, and hence no involvement of human freedom. I believe that I can offer an interpretation which manages to avoid this dilemma. An artist must have a purpose guiding her actions: if art is to be a product of human freedom, then her reason must be involved, and thus there must be a purpose which she intends to effect in her work. However, this does not necessarily mean that the work which she does create actually possesses that purpose. The artist's actions are necessarily guided by a purpose; but her work must necessarily be devoid of purpose (assuming her work to be beautiful). There is no contradiction here if we assume that Kant is offering a non-intentional account of art; i.e. an account which states that the intentions of the artist are necessarily irrelevant when considering the beauty of a work of art. This not to say that authorial intentions are unimportant - they may be historically important, politically important - but merely to 73 say that they cannot play a role in the estimation and judgment upon a work. Shakespeare may have had certain intentions while writing Richard III - those intentions may be important if we are evaluating the historical influence of the play; but they are completely unimportant if we wish to evaluate the play as a thing of beauty. Kant further reduces the importance of the author when he says: the author of a product for which he is indebted to his genius does not know himself how he has come by his ideas; and he has not the power to devise the like at pleasure or in accordance with a plan, and to communicate it to others in precepts that will enable them to produce similar products. (Hence it is probable that the word 'genius' is derived from genius, that peculiar guiding and guardian spirit given to a man at his birth, from whose suggestion these original ideas proceed.) (§46) (The word 'genius' survives in the English word 'genie' (or 'djinn'), which echoes the Greek idea of the Muse, who would speak to artists and provide them with their ideas.) Art, Kant wants to argue, is produced through freedom, and this involves autonomy. The basis for our moral freedom is that we are able, via the Categorical Imperative, to live according to laws which we can will to be universal. By postulating the Kingdom of Ends, we can conceive of laws which would be given by a universal Reason - by recognizing that these are laws (and hence binding on us) we become autonomous: we give to ourselves those laws which we cognize as being laws for all. Autonomy (and hence freedom) involves self-legislation. But how can an artist be autonomous when: a) she does not know how or from where her ideas come to her; and b) she "has not the power to devise the like at pleasure or in accordance with a plan"? (§46) By claiming that the works of art are products of genius (as they must be to avoid conceptual determination) and thus products of nature, Kant removes any ground for distinguishing art from nature. Art itself is a product of nature. Just as it is the supersensible substrate of nature which grounds the possibility of natural beauties, so it is the same supersensible substrate (of the artist this time: the artist's mental faculties - though the two are the same (see Remark II - §57)) which grounds the possibility of artificial beauties. 74 Thus art both is and is not a human product. The actual work is a product of human endeavour, guided by purposes given by Reason. But the work itself can have no purpose - and so the significance of the work is determined not by the creator, but by those who evaluate the work. The art is, in a different sense, a human product - its significance still depends on humans, but not on the human who created it. The author has lost her authority. She is no longer self-legislating, for the ideas and rules come to her from elsewhere. She is not the producer and legislator of her genius; quite the opposite. She obeys her genius (Muse) and follows its commands. Genius is what guides her qua artist. This has far-reaching implications. Much to the delight of philosophers like Derrida, the artist is no longer autonomous; the artist is no longer author (in the traditional sense as having authority over her work). Natural beauties and artificial beauties differ only in that the latter involve an intermediary step. True, the artist has purposes which determine her actions, but these purposes leave no mark on the final product. Gone are authorial intentions; gone is the stamp of the author as the arbiter of the meaning of her work. The cause of the work, the aesthetic idea, has its seat in nature. The significance of a work of art can never be fixed - but even this is not seriously at odds with what Kant maintains in the Third Critique. Since aesthetical ideas occasion much thought without being reducible to concepts, one can think and say much about them without reaching a limit, save the limit imposed upon them by the concept to which the aesthetical idea refers (see above). One can interpret Shakespeare's Macbeth in a wild variety of ways, perhaps more than can be comprehended. To be sure, there are limits to what one can say about the play (it is not, for example, a morality tale about a space-roving astronaut and his loveable dog Spot) but those limits do not in any way constrain how many interpretations may be produced over a century. Kant seems to undermine his own intentions when he introduces a distinction between a work of art and a work of nature, for it forces him into maintaining a position in which there is, and can be, no significant distinction between the two. As 75 I have argued, however, Kant's intentions are not necessarily relevant when discussing the coherence and consistency of the Third Critique; indeed, by Kant's very own arguments (or the only logical result of them) the intentions of the author cannot be passed on to his work. This apparent undermining reinforces other, perhaps more important, aspects of the Third Critique - by sacrificing the freedom of the artist, Kant gains infinitely more freedom for the object of beauty. 76 M E T A P H Y S I C S ???? or T H E R O L E O F T H E S U P E R S E N S I B L E W I T H I N K A N T ' S C R I T I Q U E O F J U D G M E N T The Dialectic is most important for its introduction of the supersensible into Kant's account of beauty. Some commentators have been quite surprised by this move: Reference to a supersensible ground of appearances has so far played no role at all in Kant's exposition of his theory of taste, which has been cast entirely in terms of ordinary empirical objects and the ordinary and not so ordinary uses of our faculties for dealing with such objects.70 This postulation of the supersensible as the ground of the judgment of taste comes as a complete surprise to the reader who has so far followed Kant through the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment without encountering the doctrine of noumenal reality versus mere appearance.71 It is this latter quote which I find most surprising. I find it hard to believe that any reader of Kant's critical works would be surprised to encounter "the doctrine of noumenal reality versus mere appearance" - it is, after all, one of the more important distinctions that Kant has left to western philosophy. Both authors seem to ignore the main problem that motivates the Third Critique: that of resolving the rift between the noumenal and the phenomenal world created by the first two critiques. Kant's exposition of taste has perhaps involved no reference to the supersensible, but Guyer is not looking deep enough; Kant's whole reason for writing about taste arises because of what he has said about the supersensible in his first two critical works. As for Schaper, any reader who comes through the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment "without encountering the doctrine of noumenal reality" is obviously a very poor reader: Kant refers to it in the Preface, in §11 (more than just a passing reference, he writes an entire paragraph on the "unity of the supersensible ... with that which the concept of freedom practically contains"), and in §IX. (But perhaps I am being unfair. After all, 77 Schaper did reserve her comment for those who had read the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment; and technically, the Critique begins after the Introduction. Still, who reads a text without first reading the Introduction? And especially a philosophical text ... ) Having given a rather lengthy explanation of how it is that our cognitive faculties come to harmonize with one another (and another discussion about exactly what that means,) we are still faced with one last question, an age-old metaphysical question: why? Why is there beauty? Some commentators72 do not approach this question, appearing content simply to assume that beautiful objects are a given fact about our world. Others address the issue, but dismiss Kant's account as "metaphysical speculation"73 or as a "flight into metaphysics."74 (Apparently "metaphysics" is a four-letter word.) This is, of course, utter nonsense. By severing Kant's aesthetics from the broader context of his transcendental philosophy in which it was written and published, Schaper (and the others who would follow her down this path) is left with unsatisfactory answers to several, if not all, of the interesting questions which arise in Kant's work. To my knowledge, the only author to give an intelligent recreation and defence of Kant's position is Anthony Savile. Lest we jump the gun, let us examine what is at issue here. Contained within the "Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment" is, as to be expected, an antinomy. This particular antinomy concerns the following theses: (1) Thesis. The judgment of taste is not based upon concepts, for otherwise it would admit of controversy (would be determinable by proofs. (2) Antithesis. The judgment of taste is based on concepts, for otherwise, despite its diversity, we could not quarrel about it (we could not claim for our judgment the necessary assent of others). (§56) Kant's solution to the problem is to say that the judgment of taste makes reference to an indeterminate (undetermined and undeterminable) concept: "the transcendental rational concept of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of all sensible intuition".(§57) This concept of the supersensible manifests itself in three ways throughout Kant's Critical project: as the substrate of nature, as the 78 "principle of the subjective purposiveness of nature for our cognitive faculty", and as the ground of the possibility of freedom. (§57 - Remark 11) This concept, however, has gathered much controversy, not least because it is never clearly elucidated within the Third Critique itself. To return, then, to the question at hand: why does beauty exist? If this were Kant's question, he would indeed be engaging in speculative metaphysics, for one might as well ask why anything exists. To be sure, some philosophers have asked that question - but not Kant. A better rendering of the question that underlies the Dialectic is the following: what is the ground of the existence of beautiful objects? Despite what Guyer and Schaper claim, we should expect Kant to locate this ground in the realm of the supersensible - and in this he does not disappoint. On his view, it is the supersensible as the substrate of nature that grounds the presence of certain forms, and the supersensible as the substrate of our mental faculties which grounds the fact that those forms harmonize with us. How this grounding proceeds is about as uncontroversial as anything else Kant says in the Third Critique - and now seems an appropriate time to discuss some of the interpretations that have been offered. AESTHETICS AND M O R A L I T Y Donald Crawford believes that the supersensible is the most important aspect of the entire book, as it connects beauty to morality, thus completing, in his view, the Deduction of judgments of taste. On Crawford's account, Kant's Deduction has five steps: first, pleasure in the beautiful is based on a universally communicable mental state; second, such a state is based on the harmony of the cognitive faculties; third, the harmony is based on the formal purposiveness of the object. The fourth step is to argue that the process of reflection, which, when directed towards beautiful objects results in the requisite harmony, is a necessary condition of any experience. Finally, the connection to morality serves to ground Kant's claim that we demand [fordert] that others concur with our 79 judgments of taste. It is only with the assistance of the normativity of morality, thinks Crawford, that Kant can justify any claim to the judgments of others. Without going into the matter too deeply, I think that while Crawford's account is interesting, his motives for producing it are uncompelling, and his account does not delve deeply enough. To be sure, it does seem that Kant uses the nature of morality and human freedom to justify our demands that others find beauty in the same objects as ourselves. It is the mark of a good soul, Kant argues, to find beauty in nature. Beauty is the symbol of morality in part because in order to have taste, we must be able to judge apart from our own interests - likewise, morality requires that one be able to abstract from one's interests in order to do what is truly right. Thus it is that lacking taste becomes, for Kant, a serious deficiency. There is also another, perhaps broader, reason as to why beauty is the symbol of morality. Remember that Kant's ultimate aim is to unite the two realms of philosophy - the theoretical and the practical - in order to show how it is that human freedom is compatible with a causally determined world. A beautiful object must make reference to the concept of the supersensible to achieve universal validity, and our response to a beautiful object reveals that the phenomenal world harmonizes with the transcendental world - our cognitive faculties, which are our 'supersensible substrate'. It is in the Dialectic that Kant attempts to clarify and define the role that the supersensible plays in grounding the possibility both of beautiful objects, and of our reaction to them. Using morality as a tool to justify the Deduction, as Crawford does, misses the profound role that the supersensible plays in reconciling the first two Critiques. As we shall see, it is precisely because aesthetic judgments are grounded upon the rational concept of the supersensible that they are able to ground the possibility of freedom. INDETERMINABLE CONCEPTS What about this rational concept of the supersensible which I keep mentioning? Theodore 80 Uehling, Jr. suggests that it is the Ding-an-sich, the Kantian noumenon which underlies all appearances. So far so good. But he then goes on to suggest, as does Zimmerman, that aesthetic experience lets us "experience of the noumenal world as it filters through the phenomenal world". 7 5 Zimmerman's account postulates an untenable distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal worlds (namely, that they are two separate worlds) which Uehling's account avoids, but the implication is the same in both: aesthetic experience gives us a glimpse into those dark regions about which nothing can be known. Uehling correctly points out that Kant's account of spatio-temporality only holds for general, determinations of objects - that objects conform to universal laws, and have a particular form. These qualities are imposed by the mind upon the manifold of intuition given through the senses. But the particular form possessed by an object is left entirely undetermined by the mind. Triangularity and squareness are not imposed because particular determinations are not imposed. The difference in shape between a square object and a triangular object must not, therefore, be due to our way of perceiving objects. ... If, therefore, particular determinations and differences among objects are not imposed, they must therefore be due to the objects or things themselves.76 While Uehling is correct to point out that particular determinations (like circularity) are not imposed by the mind, he is not justified in concluding from this that such determinations are actually properties of objects in themselves. One simply cannot talk about spatio-temporal form when one is talking about noumenal objects, for spatio-temporality is one of the conditions under which a noumenal object appears to us as a phenomenal object. If it looks as though the rational concept under discussion is the concept of the object qua noumenon, then what role does it play? As one might expect, Paul Guyer also has something to say on this issue. He criticizes Kant for concluding that since an indeterminable concept must underlie judgments of taste, it must be the concept of the supersensible. In Guyer's opinion, Kant simply assumes that the concept of the supersensible is the only candidate for the position of'indeterminable 81 concept'; but Kant has forgotten, he says, another contender: the concept of subjective purposiveness (i.e. an object's propensity to produce the harmony of the cognitive faculties). These two concepts are clearly not identical, says Guyer, and on his interpretation, We should look for Kant to argue that aesthetic judgments do not admit of dispute because they are not based on determinate concepts, but that they do admit of contention and rational claims to intersubjective validity because they are based on the indeterminate concept of the harmony of the higher cognitive faculties...77 Kant ignores this latter option in his quest for the indeterminate concept, says Guyer, and so his argument commits the fallacy of false dichotomy. There are, as usual, a number of problems with Guyer's interpretation. The first is that he misunderstands what role the mysterious indeterminate concept is to play in judgments of taste. Kant is looking for a concept to which the schematized manifold of intuition can be referred: this reference occurs 'prior' (in the logical sense of the term) to the harmony of the cognitive faculties (indeed, it forms part of the explanation of the harmony) and hence the harmony of the cognitive faculties can be ruled out a priori as a possible candidate. This rebuttal is, however, dependent upon my interpretation of schematization and harmony (see the third chapter), and so perhaps some other proof is needed to show why Guyer's interpretation should be rejected. Let us take a closer look at what Kant has to say about determinable and undeterminable concepts. "The concepts of the understanding are [determinable]; they are determinable through predicates of sensible intuition which can correspond to them."(§57) As Guyer notes, this means that the rule for the application of such a concept mentions specific properties which may be presented by an object in intuition, and the presence or absence of those properties in a particular object fully determines whether the determinate concept must be predicated or denied of it. 7 8 Guyer goes on to claim that the concept of subjective purposiveness does not satisfy these conditions. But surely it does - for there are definite properties which absolutely determine whether we may predicate or deny "is subjectively purposive" of any given object - namely, the presence or absence 82 of the harmony of the cognitive faculties. If an object harmonizes with the cognitive faculties and sets them into free play, then we may assert of the object that it is subjectively purposive. If there is no harmony, then we may declare the object not to be subjectively purposive. We may be mistaken; there may be harmony where there should be none, or it may be present where it should be absent (according, I suppose, to a judge with taste) but none of this undermines the determinability of the concept of subjective purposiveness any more than a mathematical mistake undermines the determinability of addition. Guyer's champion has fallen; Kant is left with only one candidate for the 'indeterminable concept' - the supersensible. The function of the concept in cognitive awareness is to provide a law for the imagination. As a law, it is both unified and universal. In aesthetic reflection, there is no determinate concept; and while Kant can guarantee the unity of the schematized manifold by referring to the process of estimation and to the aesthetic idea which the object expresses, he seems to doubt the universality of such a schema: there is undoubtedly contained in the judgment of taste a wider reference of the representation of the object (as well as of the subject), whereon we base an extension of judgments of this kind as necessary for everyone. At the basis of this there must necessarily be a concept somewhere. ... For if we do not admit such a reference, the claim of the judgment of taste to universal validity would not hold good. (§57) When estimating an object, there must be some element of conceptual determination - for example, it must be necessary that everyone be in possession of the same representation. Michelangelo's David has but two arms - anyone who saw differently would no doubt be suffering from some ailment, whether physical or psychological. Likewise, Hamlet is not a "National Geographic" special on Japanese beavers. There is something objective about judgments of taste. In order to avoid this conceptuality interfering with the process of estimation and reflection, however, Kant must maintain that the concept which is involved in aesthetic reflection is an indeterminable one - the concept must have no definite, recognizable characteristics [Merkmale]; for if it did, the mere reference of the 83 manifold to this concept would suffice to preclude any free play of the imagination. Presumably, this solution avoids both the Scylla and the Charibdes of taste: it allows Kant to fix limits on the process of estimation by ensuring that everyone will estimate the same thing; but it also allows Kant the philosophical freedom to maintain that our feelings which are aroused by the object are in no way determined by the concept of the object. I must therefore modify my interpretation of aesthetic reflection contained in the above pages: the imagination apprehends and schematizes the manifold of intuition, and refers it to the concept of the supersensible which underlies nature. It is difficult to fill in exactly what this latter is, since the supersensible is, by definition, undetermined and unknowable. Presumably, it will possess little more than the qualities previously mentioned: order, universality, and unity. Thus, the reference will result in the imagination according with the understanding, and a harmony is once again born. The concept of the supersensible plays another role in aesthetic reflection, however: it also serves to ground our possibility, both as phenomenal objects, and as judging subjects. As Savile puts it, "what it is that gives rise to the purposive way in which things impinge on us is ultimately something unfathomable at the bottom of our own nature as well as what lies at the bottom of the nature of things to which we attend."79 It is the supersensible in us which determines both how our cognitive faculties function and how we are able to shape materials into original expressions of aesthetical ideas (i.e. genius). Yet Guyer objects: Further, we must note, it is not only questionable whether there is any need for and force in a noumenal explanation of the harmony of the faculties; it is also dubious whether reference to a supersensible substratum can alleviate any of the difficulties that stand in the way of Kant's aesthetic theory. If there is one problem about the explanatory power of his model of aesthetic response, it is that it is hard to see how the possibility of the harmony of the faculties consists with the first Critique's thesis that synthesis is always subject to concepts; and if there is one problem for Kant's deduction of aesthetic judgment, it is that a general similarity of human cognitive faculties does not seem to entail that we must all respond in the same way to particular objects.80 As I have shown in Chapter Three, the "first problem" which confronts Kant, the conceptuality of 84 syntheses, simply does not apply to his aesthetic theory. Second, it is unclear to me what a "noumenal" explanation of the harmony of the faculties is. An explanation which relies on the invocation of the noumenon in order to succeed? If this is correct (and I don't see what else it could be) then any explanation of the harmony of the cognitive faculties will be a noumenal explanation, if only because the cognitive faculties belong to the transcendental realm. They are the very conditions of phenomena, and hence cannot themselves be phenomenal. Guyer's problem seems to be that he interprets "noumenal' and 'supersensible' as ontological predicates rather than epistemological ones -1 think it is for this reason that he accuses Kant of doing metaphysics. This ontological interpretation of Kant is, I hope, on its death bed - apart from causing no end of unnecessary interpretative problems within Kant's critical project, it also sits very uneasily with Kant's avowed intentions. To say that the supersensible substrate underlies us as judging subjects is simply to acknowledge that our cognitive faculties are part of what make possible the world of sense, and hence cannot be considered sensible. Guyer continues: "we do not need to go beyond our understanding of nature as phenomena governed by empirical laws to explain the existence of beautiful objects...The existence of beautiful objects in nature requires no supersensible substratum to account for something left unexplained by our empirical sciences."81 This claim might be taie - but we do need the supersensible substratum to explain the existence of beautiful representations, for according to Kant, representations are representations of objects as they are in themselves - as they are supersensibly. Without the supersensible substratum, there would be nothing to appear, and hence no appearances. No appearances, no beauty. If, then, someone asks why certain objects are beautiful, we can point her to the concept of the object in itself; though we may not, contra Uehling, assign to that Ding-an-sich any qualities whatsoever. She may continue to ask why that object is beautiful and not others; and if she is unsatisfied by responses such as "Because that object is subjectively purposive", we quickly 85 nan out of things to say. Is this a problem? Savile thinks not (and I concur): [Noumena] do not intimate the frustrating presence over the cognitive horizon of necessarily ineffable, but taie, explanations for phenomenal things, eternally closed to us. Rather, they simply serve as a reminder where the quest for explanations must come to a halt. ... If we bear this in mind and apply it to the present discussion, there will be little difference between saying that the necessity to judge something beautiful is rooted in the supersensible and saying that the necessity to make that judgment cannot be provided with any fuller explanation than that when all is taken into account there remains nothing else to think, and that there remains nothing else to think for the reason that the response of delight that the beautiful object calls forth is one that is entirely proper to it, given that it has the material and intellectual constitution which it does and that it is presented to us in the social and cultural setting in which it is. 8 2 At a certain point, then, investigations must come to a halt, as we recognize the limitations of our judgment, just as in the first Critique we were forced to recognize the limitations of our reason. RECONCILING THE SCHISM How, then, does this account help to bridge the distance between the first two Critiques? Since delight in the beautiful is based on our cognitive abilities, rather than our senses (on pleasure and not on gratification,) said delight is based on our activity as subjects; moreover, it is based upon that in us which is supersensible (as the present chapter has shown). In order to guarantee the universality of judgments of taste, the imagination must, in its act of schematization, refer to the concept of the supersensible. So given that the harmony of the cognitive faculties has a supersensible, i.e., transcendental, basis, we have one half of the equation. We need only look at what it is that prompts this harmony to see the answer. The harmony of the faculties is based on the apprehension of the manifold of intuition of an object: on the object's representation; on the object as it appears to us, i.e., as phenomenon. The representation, a phenomenon, appears as though it were designed to harmonize with our cognitive faculties - with the supersensible - and it allows us to refer the representation to the concept of the supersensible itself. Kant's primary concern throughout the Third Critique has been to show how it is possible for the empirical world to conform to the requirements 86 of freedom. In the case of beauty, a particular, empirical, phenomenal object reveals itself to be subjectively purposive, i.e. designed so as to harmonize with our cognitive faculties, and thus to conform to the requirements of our transcendental capacities. Given that the principle of the purposiveness of nature is a principle of judgment, we can see how judgment will mediate between understanding and reason. It guarantees, via the principle of purposiveness, that nature will appear as though it were designed to conform to the requirements of freedom - and this principle can be justified by appealing to our experience of beautiful objects. On the assumption that a particular beautiful object is in some way representative of other objects, we have some evidence to suggest that the phenomenal world exists in such a way that it could allow for the possibility of human freedom. H E A R I N G VOICES IN M Y H E A D 87 Despite what Paul Guyer and Eva Schaper think, the Deduction is hardly misplaced. They both criticize Kant for organizing the material of the Third Critique in such a way that the Deduction appears under the heading of the 'Analytic of the Sublime". This interpretation is warranted only if one reserves one's interpretation to the English translations, for both Bernard and Meredith do include the Deduction as part of the Sublime. This is a mistranslation. The headings on the pages of the German text clearly reveal that the Analytik des Erhabenen is followed by the Allgemeine Anmerhmg zur Exposition der dsthetischen rejlectirenden Urteil, which in turn is followed by the Deduction der reinen dsthetischen Urteil. Not only do the page headings imply a distinction between the Sublime and the Deduction, but the General Remark leads into the Deduction by stating "The remaining part of the Analytic of the Aesthetical Judgment contains first the [Deduction of Pure Aesthetical Judgments]". In overlooking these two important textual considerations, Guyer concludes that the Deduction is part of the Analytic of the Sublime, when in fact, it forms a separate part of the Analytic of the Aesthetical Judgment. The Analytic of Aesthetical Judgment does not divide into two books, as Guyer maintains84 - it divides into three: the Analytic of the Beautiful, the Analytic of the Sublime, and the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments. But enough about architecture. As in the first two Critiques, there must be a Transcendental Deduction of the concepts that are presupposed by our judgments. Kant's claim at §38 that the Deduction is "easy" may be true; but clearing the ground and laying the foundation for it is not. The Deduction is possibly the most controversial element of the Critique of Judgment - while not as confusing as the intervention of the supersensible, the latter is ignored by several commentators as an unnecessary supplement to Kant's aesthetic theory. Though I have tried to argue that these interpretations are mistaken, they 88 nevertheless remain as a common tactic to avoid dealing with some of the odd things that Kant says. There is, however, no avoiding the Deduction. Though some (like Guyer and Schaper) may criticize its placement in the text, they nevertheless acknowledge that it represents one of the fundamental pieces in Kant's aesthetic puzzle. If there is no getting around the Deduction, it might seem as though there is no getting through it either. While there are some (admittedly not many) writers who believe that Kant's basic arguments and presuppositions are at least reasonable, if not successful (Crawford and Kemal are the only two that I can think of); most commentators believe that Kant's argument fails. This failure, if one can prove it to be true, would undermine Kant's project more than the failure of any other argument in the third Critique, for if Kant cannot justify our predilection forjudging things to be beautiful, then he is left without any bridge to cross between the First and Second Critiques. As I have shown above, it is our ability to judge of beauty which gives us evidence that the phenomenal world conforms to the requirements of the noumenal world; if this ability cannot be justified, then our evidence is worthless, and we have no reason (says Kant, at least in the Third Critique) for thinking that human freedom can have any effect in the empirical realm. It thus falls to this chapter to examine closely the textual evidence that Kant provides to justify his account of aesthetic reflective judgments, and to see on which side the scale falls. UNIVERSALITY AND NECESSITY While the actual Deduction itself occurs at §38, the groundwork for it is laid at several points throughout the text: Section VII of the Introduction, at §8, with the introduction of the 'universal voice', §9, §21, and §§30-37. As with all else Kantian, however, deciding which passages count as part of which deductive strategy is contentious, and there are several viable interpretations. The broadest belongs to Donald Crawford, who holds that the Deduction actually takes place over most 89 of the Critique itself. As I mentioned in the last chapter, he sees five steps: the first argues that "pleasure in the beautiful ... must be based upon a universally communicable mental state."85 The second stage argues that this mental state is the harmony of the cognitive faculties, and the third argues that this harmony must be based upon the formal purposiveness of the object under question. Step four consists in arguing that the harmony of the cognitive faculties is a necessary condition of experience; and step five connects aesthetics to morality and so justifies our demand that others concur with our judgments of taste. It has been suggested by Guyer, however, that Crawford conflates the analytical parts of the text with the deductive; and that steps one through three are, properly considered, conditions of a judgment of taste, or, rather, conditions of a judgment's being a judgment of taste. I think that the text lends itself equally well to both sides of the argument: the fact that pleasure is based on a universally communicable mental state is an important distinguishing feature of our pleasure in the beautiful (and thus distinguishes a judgment as a judgment of taste). This fact is also important, however, in that it distinguishes our pleasure in the beautiful from other types of pleasure on the grounds that the former is based on a universally communicable mental state, something which supports the idea of a sense common to all - and on this idea rests the bulk of the Deduction. But if Guyer is right, and Kant's Deduction is limited merely to what Crawford terms step four - the appearance of a ' common sense' - this by no means signifies that the Deduction is compact and centralized. Barrows Dunham sees no less than five separate deductive strategies in the Third Critique.86 For Dunham, the literary structure of the third Critique belies the chronological construction of its components: citing compelling evidence, he claims that §§38-40, the actual Deduction itself, was written first. This may explain, he says, why some commentators see it as redundant. The next two strategies that were written are the second and fourth Moments: §§6-9 and §§18-22. The fourth occurs in the dialectic, at §57, and the fifth is located first in the book, at §VII 90 (though this should come as no surprise, as it is well-known that Kant wrote the published introduction after the body of the Critique.) Not surprisingly, there are those who disagree with Dunham: Paul Guyer, who eschews this proliferation of Deductions, finds the central arguments of the Deduction only in §21 and §§30-40. Thus the arguments of the Deduction, the status of the ideas and notions raised within the arguments, and even the question of which passages count as relevant arguments all form part of the canonical debate surrounding Kant's Deduction of aesthetic judgments. Perhaps the only thing the commentators are agreed upon is the intended purpose of the Deduction: to justify our judgments of taste; to defend our propensity to impute to (and demand of) others a certain feeling in response to an object; to explain how it is that, from the basis of our own feeling of pleasure, we judge that all other subjects should feel likewise. In Kantian terms, to justify our use of something, be it a concept, an idea, or a judgment, it is sufficient to show that the subject under consideration is a universally necessary condition of something which we know to be the case. Thus the Deduction of the Categories is completed by showing that they are necessary if we are to have any knowledge whatsoever: they are the conditions of experience, and hence can be known a priori. We should not be surprised if we see Kant arguing in much the same fashion in the third Critique: if he can show that aesthetic reflective judgment is a necessary condition of something which we know to be the case, this would suffice for its Deduction. It should thus come to no further surprise that Dunham finds the roots of the Deduction in the second and fourth Moments, for they deal with the universality and necessity of judgments of taste. The second Moment, however, is not as fecund as the fourth - it merely introduces the notion of a "universal voice' and follows it up with a discussion of the "universal capacity for being communicated" (§9M) of the mental state which occasions pleasure in the beautiful. The majority of the groundwork for the Deduction is performed by the fourth Moment, specifically §§20 and 21. 91 Thus one can also see why Paul Guyer ignores the second Moment and concentrates on the fourth as he begins his discussion of Kant's Deduction. Guyer sees seven steps in §21. The first is to argue that cognitions and judgments must admit of being universally communicated; the second, that if a cognition is universally communicable, then the mental state which is the subjective condition of knowledge (i.e. the disposition of the cognitive faculties suitable for a representation to be given to us) must also be universally communicable. Steps three and four are, respectively: "The proportion between imagination and understanding may differ for different objects and there are different mental states which may cause knowledge" and "there is a particular proportion between imagination and understanding which in fact is most suitable for "enlivening' them"87. Step five consists simply in arguing that this proportion can only be felt (rather than known), six in claiming that the disposition of the faculties which is "most suitable for knowledge in general" must be communicable, and seven, that if the latter disposition is communicable, then so is the feeling which reveals its presence. Admitting step seven, however, is equivalent to admitting the existence of a common sense - thus, Guyer says, if steps one through seven are unassailable, then Kant has won his war. But Guyer levels his cannon of arguments at steps seven, one, two, three, and four (in that order) and believes that each of his counter-arguments suffices to sink Kant's Battleship'™'. In order to save Kant's boat, I will strafe Guyer's own counter-arguments and see what is left standing when the smoke clears. Against step seven, Guyer claims that Kant simply assumes that "if a given state of mind is one in which all persons may find themselves, then whatever constitutes evidence of being in that state is available to everyone" - or, "same cause, same effect"88. There is a problem with this line of argument: as I argued in Chapter Two, the connection between the harmony of the cognitive faculties and the feeling of pleasure should not be seen as a causal one, but rather more like a case of genus and species. It is not clear that the feeling of pleasure is just evidence of being in a particular mental 92 state; in many instances, having a feeling of pleasure is what it is to be in a particular mental state. To construe the former as merely evidence for the latter is to miss something fundamental about each of them. Guyer goes on to argue that one can be in a certain mental state, like hating someone, without knowing it: if the harmony of the faculties is not a state of knowledge, and is a cause of pleasure, then to suppose it transparent, or a state the evidence for which must be available, requires the assumption that the principle that the attainment of an objective always occasions a feeling of pleasure precludes any possible interference between cause and effect.89 Again, there are two problems with his rebuttal. First, the pleasure that Kant is talking about is not dependent upon the attainment of an objective, as I argued in Chapter Two. The kind of interference about which Guyer is talking (repetition or predictability) does so much not "interfere' with the process by which pleasure is created as eliminate it entirely. Predictability and repetition lead to conceptual determination - if a work of art is predictable, and follows the structure laid out by its genre, one can subsume it under a concept. Consider the following example: the horror/slasher movie has several characteristics which serve to define it as a genre: a heroine who is pure and virginal, and usually smarter than her friends, a boyfriend whose sexual advances she spurns, other fun-loving teenagers whose sins (sexual intercourse, drug and alcohol use) make them primary targets for the killer, and finally the killer him/her self - often a homicidal maniac with a half-baked reason for the murderous rampage (vengeance is always a popular motive). The movie begins with a few of the less virtuous friends being ofFed by the baddy, usually in a gruesome fashion. The inept and bungling police get involved, but cannot seem to make any progress, resulting in more deaths, until the killer confronts the heroine in the final scene. The heroine, of course, is victorious, and the killer meets his/her untimely demise. This strategy is followed by several films (Nightmare on Elm Streets I through V, Friday the Thirteenth 1 through VIII, Halloween I through IV, to name but a few). The repetition of this pattern becomes so predictable that one can determine the events of the film before 93 they occur on screen. The film no longer has 'conformity to law without a law' - for we can identify a specific rule governing the events on screen (the rule of the horror film). A specific rule means that a determinate concept can be specified; but as I have shown above, conceptual determination is anathema to, and irreconcilable with, aesthetic reflection. If a work is predictable, pleasure is absent, not because the predictability interferes with a causal chain, but because the causal chain (or something like it) is itself absent. The second problem with Guyer's counter-argument is that while one might be able to hate someone without knowing it, one cannot hate someone without feeling it. 'Hate' is a word used to describe a subjective state - a whole cacophony of emotions, outbursts, and behavioural patterns; but when I say "I hate Barney", we presume that my outbursts of rage and behavioural problems are based on a particular feeling that I have. Thus to say "I hate Barney" while feeling nothing in the presence of a certain stuffed purple dinosaur would be contradictory. Likewise, to say "My cognitive faculties are harmonizing" without feeling an attendant pleasure is also contradictory. One's cognitive faculties can harmonize without one knowing it; but they cannot do so without one feeling it. Guyer could respond here that it is possible for me to feel something without knowing that I feel it (resentment and anger often fit well into this category), but such an objection would not be entirely relevant. Kant is quite happy to admit that the harmony of the faculties is not a state of knowledge and that it is possible for my faculties to harmonize without me knowing it; indeed, if we always knew when our cognitive faculties were harmonizing, it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) for us to make erroneous judgments of taste. The gap between feeling a state of cognitive harmony and knowing ourselves to be in such a state seems to be necessary both for Kant's account of the opacity of the judging subject and for Kant's insistence that judgments of taste depend first and foremost on reflection. Guyer's other objections are also suspicious. Against step one, Guyer charges that Kant does 94 not adequately defend the idea that the communicability of knowledge is a genuine condition of the possibility of knowledge, nor can he says Guyer, given Kant's accounts of knowledge in the First Critique and aesthetic reflection in the Third. Kant says: "[common sense is] the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and in very principle of knowledge that is not sceptical." (§21) Guyer interprets this to mean that "the communicability of knowledge [is] a genuine condition of its possibility"90 and accordingly criticizes Kant for having said such a thing. What's the problem? All through the Third Critique, Kant maintains that statements like "everyone has his own taste" are mistaken because they conflate the beautiful with the pleasant. It is simply part of what it means when we assert something to be beautiful, says Kant, that we attribute pleasure in it to everyone. Likewise, he seems to be implying that when we talk about knowledge, we are talking about something which can be shared and communicated by everyone. Something which could only be shared by a few simply wouldn't count as knowledge. Kant is saying that if one wants to forego universal communicability, one can do so - but only by becoming a sceptic. Anyone who wishes to avoid being a sub-Humean philosopher must admit that knowledge is universally communicable. Even if Guyer's attacks here were well-aimed, they would still fall short of the mark. In discussing the First Critique, Guyer admits that "knowledge is produced only by following a rule"91 but denies that such rules are intersubjectively valid. This would be a very strange kind of rule. Rules are rules precisely because they are binding on everyone. Furthermore, Kant writes in the Third Critique that "a judgment with objective universal validity is also always valid subjectively" (§8) -and because it is the purpose of the First Critique's Deduction to prove that the Categories have objective validity, one can infer that they have subjective validity as well. Knowledge is objectively valid; therefore it is also intersubjectively valid. The conditions of knowledge are conditions for everyone. Guyer maintains, however, that "the Deduction [of.the First Critique] is written from a 95 standpoint of methodological solipsism"92, and it is this belief, I think, which generates so much trouble for him. If it were taie, then perhaps Kant would be in a bind to explain how it is that human minds all seem to function in the same way, and be bound to the same ailes. But if it were true, Kant could not be doing transcendental philosophy. His whole intention in the first Critique is to explore the conditions under which alone knowledge of objects is possible. It is simply assumed throughout that the conditions are the same for all finite discursive understandings (i.e., us) - those left out of the equation would be intuitive understandings, like God. To be sure, Kant does not address the problem of other minds -1 think that this is because he feels it is irrelevant: all human minds work the same way; describe one, you describe them all. The conditions of knowledge are conditions for all; thus if knowledge works in the way that Kant claims it does, we must all follow the same rules of synthesis and apperception - they must be universally communicable (and thus so must knowledge itself) if we are to have any knowledge at all. Guyer's criticisms of steps 2, 3, and 4, all have a common basis: the notion of'proportion'. If Guyer's interpretation of this term and the use to which Kant puts it is correct, then Kant faces a horrible dilemma: either proportion is a "general cognitive capability"93 in which case explaining why some objects, but not others, are beautiful, becomes impossible; or it is a "unique ease or facility in synthesis"94 in which case the intersubjective validity of aesthetic response falls by the wayside. So let's take a look at Guyer's interpretation: [Proportion] might [...] be understood to refer to the relationship between the unifiability of any manifold presented by the imagination and the unity required for the application of a concept by the understanding. ... The proportion would consist in the fact that the multiplicity of items in the manifold may be seen as a unity from the point of view dictated by some concept or another. If this is so, then all manifolds suitable for representation of an object would display the same proportion - namely, reducibility to unity.93 Guyer later goes on to characterize proportion as "a function which produces a unique result for any particular assignment of values to its variables".95 Others read 'proportion' as akin to 'ratio', thus preserving the relational aspects of the original term 'Proportion'. Both of these terms founder on 96 the next premise: "But this accordance of the cognitive powers has a different proportion according to the variety of the objects which are given." (§21) For, as Guyer points out, if proportion as ratio is the best interpretation then "the proportion is either always the same, regardless of any difference in objects presenting the manifold,... or else the concept of proportion alone does not explain optimal adaptability."97 Fortunately, there are subtle nuances of the term that can be brought out by better translation. 'Proportion' can also mean something closer to 'subset' (as in, "a proportion of the words in this thesis are 'gin'") and this, 1 think, captures better the flavour of Kant's argument. There is a certain proportion of the cognitive powers which is required for a representation which is to be turned into a cognition: namely, sensibility (for apprehending the intuition), the imagination (which is to synthesize the intuition into a manifold in order that it be recognized as belonging to a concept) and the understanding (which is to provide said concept). Kant describes this proportion as "the subjective condition of cognition" which occurs when "a given object by means of sense excites the imagination to collect the manifold, and the imagination in its turn excites the understanding to bring about a unity of this collective process in concepts." (§21) It is important to note, I think, that 'proportion' is never used to refer specifically to the imagination and the understanding (in distinction to terms like 'accordance' and 'relation'), but rather to the cognitive capacities as a whole. If Kant had meant 'relation' when he wrote 'proportion', as some authors assume, then why didn't he just use the word 'relation'? The fact that he uses' Verhallniss', 'Slimmung', and 'Proportion' in the same paragraph suggests to me that he means something different in each case; more importantly, I think the interpretation stands up better if we interpret 'Proportion' as something closer to subset. It thus becomes a noun which applies only to the cognitive faculties as a whole, and not to the imagination and the understanding specifically. When Kant writes of "a proportion of them [the cognitive faculties]" he just means the imagination and the understanding in the particular way that they relate 97 to one another for the purposes of cognition. The advantage of this interpretation is that it allows us to explain how Kant can maintain that "this accordance of the cognitive powers has a different proportion according to the variety of objects which are given. " ( § 2 1 ) Consider the following passage from the First Introduction: For there is always a great difference between (considering) representations so far as they, related merely to the object and the unity of (our) consciousness of it, belong to knowledge, and referring them to the faculty of desire through that objective relation in which they are regarded as the cause of the reality of the object. This latter case is further distinct from considering representations merely in relation to the subject, in which case they afford their own grounds for maintaining their existence in the subject and are regarded in relation to the feeling of pleasure. (FI, 1 2 ) This is how the proportion of cognitive powers differs according to the different objects which are given to it: in the case of an object of knowledge, the imagination synthesizes a manifold in accordance with a concept, which the understanding provides. In the case of a beautiful object, the imagination schematizes the manifold of the object without a determinate concept, though with the help of the supersensible, in order to comply with the understanding's general requirement for conformity to law. In the case of a sublime object, the understanding is not involved at all - the imagination represents an object as presenting a rational idea of infinity, and is thus compared to Reason. There are many different ways of judging objects: as beautiful, sublime, good, useful, pleasurable, as objects of knowledge, etc. Different objects, when encountered by a human mind, spur different sets of cognitive powers into action, or spur the same cognitive powers into action but in markedly different fashions. None of these categories is exclusive - an object can be useful, pleasurable, and an object of knowledge. Remember that these categories are not binding upon the objects as they are in themselves, merely upon our way of classifying them. If Kant is right, and each judgment provokes a different subset of cognitive powers into action, then an object can be judged as an object of knowledge and as beautiful; the judgments, owing to the spontaneity of the cognitive powers, can come spontaneously. Thus if, while listening to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, I say 98 "This, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, is beautiful", I am actually making two judgments. The first (grammatically speaking) is the cognitive judgment that the piece of music to which I am listening is Beethoven's Fifth. The second is the aesthetic judgment that the piece of music is beautiful. In both cases, the mental faculties of the imagination and the understanding function in very different ways. This account of Kant's notion of'proportion' can escape both horns of Guyer's dilemma: it is a general cognitive capacity, but does not preclude the particularity of aesthetic response, because beautiful objects occasion a different proportion of cognitive powers than do objects of knowledge. The question of whether one can still maintain the intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgments is still up in the air; and I will engage with it after one last discussion of Paul Guyer's arguments. Guyer claims that Kant may have realized that §21 was not completely airtight, for he goes on to say in §22 that the question of whether common sense is a regulative principle or a constitutive one must be left open. As Guyer understands it, if common sense were regulative, it could not be a condition of the possibility of knowledge (which Kant now claims it is - "[common sense is] the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge" (§21). But Guyer seems to be confusing universality and necessity with constitution. There are principles outlined in the Third Critique which are necessary a priori, and yet which are still regulative: the principle of the formal purposiveness of nature is one. This is a principle which is transcendental; judgment is "compelled, for its own guidance, to adopt it as an a priori principle"(VM); yet it is only "a regulative principle of the cognitive faculties"(lXM). Clearly, then, the fact that a principle is necessary does not automatically make it a constitutive principle. The fact that Kant hesitates at §22 to classify common sense as either regulative or constitutive should not cast any doubt as to the validity of his argument at §21. C O M M O N SENSE AND A UNIVERSAL VOICE 99 The time now comes for me to give my own account of §21, and to explain just how it is that the presupposition of common sense can be justified. We find the first hint of Kant's strategy at VII of the published Introduction, where he says: he who feels pleasure in the mere reflection upon the form of an object without respect to any concept although this judgment be empirical and singular, justly claims the agreement of all men, because the ground of this pleasure is found in the universal, although subjective, condition of reflective judgments, viz. the purposive harmony of an object... with the mutual relations of the cognitive faculties (the imagination and the understanding), a harmony which is requisite for every empirical cognition. Though the specifics of the argument change somewhat, the form of Kant's Deduction remains unchanged through the body of the Third Critique (with the apparent exception of §57, which uses the indeterminate concept of the supersensible in order to ground our judgments of taste and thus guarantee their intersubjective validity - although even this does not break the mold of the argument, for it is the concept of the supersensible which, Kant says, underlies both us as judging subjects, and the beautiful object itself). The next ingredient to be added to this mix is the idea of a "universal voice', which surfaces in the second Moment, only to vanish from the rest of the text. At § 6 , Kant says that since the person who judges feels himself quite free as regards the satisfaction which he attaches to the object, he cannot find the ground of this satisfaction in any private conditions connected with his own subject, and hence it must be regarded as grounded on what he can presuppose in every other person. Consequently he must believe that he has reason for attributing a similar satisfaction to everyone. And at §8: if we call the object beautiful, we believe that we speak with a universal voice, and we claim the assent of everyone ... We may see now that in the judgment of taste nothing is postulated but such a universal voice, in respect of the satisfaction without the intervention of concepts, and thus the possibility of an aesthetical judgment that can, at the same time, be regarded as valid for everyone. ... The universal voice is, therefore, only an idea (we do not yet inquire upon what it rests). Kant's introduction of the universal voice at §8 ties in nicely with §9's discussion of universal communicability; for the universal communicability of a feeling presupposes that there is a universal 100 voice with which one can communicate the feeling. At §9, Kant defines the subjective condition of judgments of taste as "the universal capability of communication of the mental state in the given representation" - or, at least, that is the dominant interpretation. The problem with reading the text this way is that it lends itself to the conclusion that it is the universal communicability of a pleasurable mental state which itself produces the pleasure - a position for which Kant has been roundly criticized. This criticism is, I think, unfair. The actual text reads: Hence it is the universal capability of communication of the mental state in the given representation which, as the subjective condition of the judgment of taste, must be fundamental and must have the pleasure in the object as its consequent. (§9, my italics) Guyer sees this passage as being a notoriously incomplete argument - the insistent Also which begins the paragraph quote above suggests a conclusion; but it is a conclusion, says Guyer, which does not follow from the previous paragraph, and so Kant has not yet given a valid argument for why pleasure in the beautiful must be a consequence of a universally valid mental state. This is only true, however, if we ignore the title of the section, for the title presents us with two options: "Investigation of the Question Whether in the Judgment of Taste the Feeling of Pleasure Precedes or Follows the Estimating of the Object". If we take this as the first premise of Kant's argument, a disjunctive statement, we find that the second premise (in the second paragraph) denies the first disjunct (that the universal communicability of the judgment of taste follows upon our pleasure in an object), and hence the conclusion of the third paragraph affirms the second disjunct: pleasure is a consequence of the mental state in the given representation. Kant may be committing a fallacy of false dichotomy, but he is not guilty of providing a blatantly invalid argument. And even the charge of false dichotomy is suspect: assuming only that there is a necessary and unmediated connection between the representation and our feeling of pleasure, (which we can presuppose, given that our pleasure is a pleasure in response to the representation of an object) either the pleasure is the ground of the mental state in the judgment, or vice versa. 101 The problem with the passage is that it is unclear exactly of what pleasure is a consequent. Kant could be arguing that pleasure is a consequent of the "universal capability of communication (of the mental state)" - and that the subjective condition of the judgment of taste is the universal capability of communicating the mental state. Or he could be arguing that the condition of the judgment of taste is the mental state itself, and that pleasure is a consequent of this state (not the state's communicability). To resolve this problem, one must look to what seems to be Kant's worry. He wants to deny the following argument; the feeling of pleasure produced by the beautiful is prior to any act of judging/estimating the beautiful - therefore, all that the judgment of taste asserts is that the pleasure in said object is a pleasure which can be felt by all. As argued in the second chapter, this position is contradictory, for such a pleasure would be merely satisfaction in the agreeable. Now if Kant were arguing that it is the universal communicability of the relevant mental state which grounds our pleasure, then it would be unnecessary for him to continue on: "But nothing can be universally communicated except cognition and representation... "(§9). The remainder of this paragraph, and the following two paragraphs, are concerned with arguing that the mental state in a judgment of taste is, in fact, universally communicable. This suggests to me that the dominant interpretation is wrong, and that Kant's considered position is that the pleasure in the beautiful is simply the sensation (though he should have said 'feeling') of the enlivening of the imagination and understanding while engaged in their harmonious activity. This harmonious activity only comes about through an act of estimation (see the third chapter) which is presupposed as being universally sharable (this argument will come in a moment). Thus in a judgment of taste, the pleasure is the result of the mental state in the given representation of an object, a state of estimation, which is known a priori to be universally sharable. In the first two paragraphs of §9, Kant proves that pleasure in the beautiful is dependent on a logically prior mental state (the harmony of the faculties); in the rest of the passage, he shows that the mental state is universal. A question might now arise as to whether Kant means to distinguish the 102 'mental state in the given representation' mentioned in the above quote from the faculty of judgment, but I believe that the answer is 'no1. The mental state under discussion is one in which, as I have argued in Chapter Three, the imagination presents a non-conceptually schematized manifold of intuition to the understanding in order to confirm said manifold's order and unity. But this is the activity which Kant ascribes to the reflective judgment in the Introduction: "apprehension of forms in the imagination can never take place without the reflective judgment ... comparing them with its faculty of referring intuitions to concepts. "(VII) The mental state of harmony is the activity of the reflective judgment. There is thus only one subjective condition for judgments of taste: the faculty of judgment. There are, furthermore, two salient facts about this faculty - first, it is possessed by all humans; second, it can, when directed at the appropriate objects, produce in any and all humans a feeling of pleasure. It is not that the universal communicability of the harmony explains our pleasure (as Guyer and others insist), it is the harmonious mental state itself which does so; the fact that this state is universally communicable is a further fact about the nature of this state. Some confusion is perhaps generated because Kant claims at §37 that it is the universal communicability of the pleasure which is asserted a priori in a judgment of taste - this might, prima facie, seem to give some weight to Guyer's interpretation that the universal communicability of the mental state explains its pleasantness. But because, as Kant argues at §21, the harmony of the faculties is necessary for any knowledge at all, we can know a priori that the harmony is universally communicable; thus any pleasure which is based on this mental state will be a universally communicable pleasure.98 It is for this reason that "it is not the pleasure, but the universal validity of this pleasure, perceived as mentally bound up with the mere estimation of an object, which is represented a priori in a judgment of taste" (§37). If our judgments of taste merely asserted that reflection upon a particular object occasioned within me a feeling of pleasure, no a priori principle would be necessary, for the judgment would be asserting an empirical fact, rather than a 103 transcendental one. It is because my judgment transcends the bounds of my experience that it stands in need of an a priori principle and hence a Deduction. But this is not to say that it is the universal validity of the pleasure which explains the occurrence of the pleasure; the pleasure is explained by reference to the underlying mental state (of free harmony), which in turn is known a priori to be universally sharable: If the determining ground of our judgment as to this universal communicability of the representation is to be merely subjective, i.e. is conceived independently of any concept of the object, it can be nothing else than the state of mind, which is to be met with in the relation of our representative powers to each other...(§9) The connection between pleasure and universal sharability is mediated by the harmony of the cognitive faculties. Pleasure which is a genuine response to the form of an object (as opposed to its matter) must have its basis in a mental state occasioned by the representation of the object; and we know a priori that this mental state is universally communicable. Thus judgments of taste presuppose a universal voice. If I make a judgment about an object on the basis of a mental state which is occasioned by that object, then I can only demand that others concur with my judgment if I presume that they are capable of having the same mental state. I assume that they can experience "a satisfaction without the intervention of concepts" (§8), which is just to say that I assume that their minds function in the same way as mine. This assumption is brought up and used by Kant in the second Moment, but it does not receive a solid defence until §21. Officially, §21 is concerned with defending the presupposition of a 'common sense', but its function does not differ significantly from the universal voice postulated at §8. "We ask for the agreement of everyone else," says Kant at §19, "because we have for it a ground that is common to all". It is on the basis of this ground that we speak for others when we judge an object to be beautiful - this request requires a 'universal voice', and its ground is our 'common sense'. Once again, the notion of a common sense is not uncontroversial: there are two competing interpretations, summed 104 up by Crawford: The first interpretation is that a common sense is a universally communicable mental state or feeling; the second is that it is a principle underlying the exercise of the faculty of judgment; it is a principle we all have in common, or must have in common, for there to be objective knowledge or judgments at a l l ." Nearly all of the commentators who discuss this problem cite the same passages: for the first interpretation, §§20, 22, and 40; for the second, §§40 and 41. It is my belief, however, that there is no significant difference between the various accounts in the text: the passages where some claim Kant defines 'common sense' as a feeling can be read (if we fudge100 Kant's phrasing a little) as defending the idea that common sense is a principle. Take §20: "it is only under the presupposition that there is a common sense (by which we do not understand an external sense, but the effect resulting from the free play of our cognitive powers)"; and §40: "if we are willing to use the word 'sense' of an effect of mere reflection upon the mind, for then we understand by 'sense' the feeling of pleasure." The latter quote has a serious ambiguity in it, which reaches back to §3, when Kant distinguished between feeling and sensation (and then proceeded, in the rest of the text, to ignore this distinction and use 'sensation' where he should have used 'feeling'.) How should we understand the latter quote? Is 'sense' best understood as the feeling of pleasure (taken collectively as a noun), or is it best understood as the feeling of pleasure (taken as verb and noun, respectively)? If the former, then our common sense would seem to be a feeling (noun); if the latter, then it is a sense in the same way that sight is - able to perceive sensations (in this case, sensations (properly speaking, feelings of pleasure). We can glean a similar interpretation from §20: common sense is not the ability to sense things external to us (not an "external sense") but rather the ability to sense things that are internal, that are the "effect[s] resulting from the free play of our cognitive powers". These passages can, and, I think, should, be read as arguing that common sense is a sense, not a feeling; the ability to feel or sense something, as opposed to a particular, empirical, sensation or feeling. Common sense is a capacity to act rather than an instance of action. 105 Presumably, a sense senses sensations.101 A common sense, then, is an internal sense in that it is able to sense sensations which are internal to subjects - subjective sensations (i.e. feelings of pleasure). Now, on my interpretation, Kant is contravening his own warning (and promise) to refer to sensations of pleasure (subjective sensations) as feelings, and reserve the term 'sensation' to refer to what is objective; but he does this all throughout the Third Critique, so I think that it should constitute no objection to my argument. I have to alter the text somewhat, but again, Kant's phrasing is so rarely clear, especially where clarity is most needed, that I have no second thoughts about doing so. On my reading, a common sense is simply the ability to sense a feeling (noun) of particular kinds of pleasure (in particular, pleasures based on reflection). Kant describes this sensus communis as including "the idea of a sense common to all, i.e. of a faculty of judgment which, in its reflection, takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of all other men in thought"(§40). Given that this sense is common, it is thus universal (or can be assumed to be so), and when the feeling is the result of a universally valid mental process acting upon universally available material (i.e., the form, and not the matter, of a representation) then the feeling should be sensed by all judging subjects. It is, as Crawford concludes, "the capacity for a feeling"102, and hence Kant sometimes identifies it with taste itself, as a "faculty of judging of that which makes universally communicable, without the mediation of a concept, our feeling in a given representation. "(§40) £ 2 1 With an understanding of what Kant means by 'common sense', and an exploration of his earlier accounts of it, we can now turn to §21 to see what he makes of his argument. His first premise is that cognitions and judgments must, if we are not to be sceptics, be universally sharable. The second premise states that if knowledge is sharable, then the subjective conditions of knowledge are also sharable, ..Simple enough. If S is a necessary condition of P, and we know P to be true 106 (something which is assumed all the way through from the First Critique,) then we can infer that S is true. Modus Ponens. Logic doesn't get much more simple than that. If controversy is to arise, it will be over what Kant deems the "subjective conditions of cognition": the accordance of the cognitive powers with a cognition generally and that proportion of them which is suitable for a representation (by which an object is given to us) in order that a cognition may be made out of it. ... This actually always takes place when a given object by means of sense excites the imagination to collect the manifold, and the imagination in its turn excites the understanding to bring about a unity of this collective process in concepts. But this is taken directly from the First Critique: the subjective conditions of knowledge are those conditions which must be true of us, as knowing subjects; and they are: that the manifold of an object is apprehended in intuition; that this intuition is subjected to the transcendental synthesis of imagination; that the understanding presents a concept to the synthesized manifold; and that the schema of this concept is compared with the synthesized manifold. Now these are the conditions of knowledge - and as Guyer points out, Kant is not concerned with knowledge, but with aesthetic reflection. It would seem that someone capable of knowledge but not reflection could satisfy Kant's premises and fail to satisfy his conclusion. In other words, the general requirement that a person be capable of knowledge is a requirement that he be capable of subsuming his manifolds under concepts, and of.performing whatever acts of synthesis that requires, but it is not a requirement that he be capable of detecting unity and performing syntheses without the use of concepts.103 But this ignores the caicial passages at VII, §8, and §9, where Kant describes alternate functions of the imagination and the understanding. In each case, where Kant discusses his account of the harmony of the cognitive faculties, he is going to great lengths to illustrate how it is that the imagination can schematize without a concept, and how the resulting schema accords with the understanding. It seems fairly clear that Kant wants to grant to the imagination and the understanding roles that differ from the roles that they play in the production of knowledge, but which are nevertheless universally valid. If one follows Guyer in assuming that the First Critique Deduction is written from the standpoint of methodological solipsism, and one carries this assumption over into 107 the Third Critique, then any account which Kant gives of the harmony of the cognitive faculties will not necessarily be universally valid - and if the harmony of the faculties isn't universally valid, then someone could be capable of synthesizing manifolds under concepts, but unable to schematize when a concept is absent - and so satisfying the requirements of cognition would not be sufficient to satisfy the requirements of aesthetic reflection. But we have good reason to avoid this assumption.'04 I take it that when Kant is describing the subjective conditions of knowledge, he means them to be universally valid subjective conditions of knowledge; likewise, when he describes the ability of the imagination to bring together a manifold which "accords with the conditions of the universality that is the general concern of understanding"(§9M), I take it that he is describing a capability which all of us possess in virtue of the discursive understandings that we have. According to Kant, anyone who has an imagination which can synthesize manifolds, and an understanding which can present concepts such that the manifold is subsumed under the concept (i.e., any human being,) can apprehend and schematize a manifold into an apparently rule-governed schema, yet without the aile of a determinate concept. This latest addition to our range of cognitive powers may come as a surprise to those who see in the First Critique all that Kant has to say about our minds, for nowhere within the covers of the Critique of Pure Reason does Kant ever say that the imagination can schematize without concepts. These people might ask where these newfangled powers come from - are they meant to follow from the description of the imagination given in the First Critique, or are they something added on to satisfy the arguments of the Third? I believe that the answers are 'no' and 'maybe', respectively. I cannot see any evidence to support the hypothesis that Kant believes that the First Critique's account of the imagination's role in cognitive judgments provides a basis for the Third Critique's account of the imagination's role in aesthetic judgments. The Third Critique does not follow from the First Critique as a sequel follows its progenitor. 108 Does this mean that these new powers of the imagination are merely tacked on? Well, yes and no. Not "tacked on" as wings are tacked on to a cat in an attempt to get it to fly 1 0 5; but yes, Kant is describing aspects of the imagination which he has never raised before. Should we be surprised? After all, the First Critique was only primarily concerned with knowledge, not with beauty; if the cognitive faculties behave differently in these two different situations, this should be no great cause for alarm. Kant has a new subject, a new explanation, and so refers to new and hitherto unmentioned powers of the mind - namely, the ability of the imagination to schematize without a concept. So now, on with the Deduction. If knowledge is sharable, so are its subjective conditions. But the relation between the cognitive powers, and indeed the cognitive powers themselves, will vary depending on what kind of object is being apprehended. This is the third premise, and as I have argued above, it means simply that different objects (i.e. beautiful, sublime, good, useful, pleasing, etc.) will occasion a different interaction between the cognitive faculties. An object of knowledge occasions a relation between the imagination and the understanding such that the imagination is subject to the rule of the understanding; a sublime object arouses a relation between the imagination and reason, as that which occasions an idea of infinitude; a useful object occasions a relation between the imagination and a specific purpose; and so on. It is not, as Guyer maintains106, that the proportion between imagination and understanding changes for different objects, but rather than the proportion and relation of the cognitive powers involved will change - sometimes it is the imagination subsumed under the understanding, sometimes it is the imagination working freely in harmony with the understanding; sometimes the understanding is not involved at all. And nowhere in the text does Kant claim that "there are different mental states which may cause knowledge."107 Kant is talking about different end results (knowledge, agreeableness, awe, respect, etc.) and thus requires different processes (or proportions) to explain how the different results are possible. The fourth premise states that "it must be [the case] that this internal relation, by which one 109 mental faculty is excited by another, shall be generally the most beneficial for both faculties in respect of cognition" (§21) and while talk of beneficence only serves to confuse the issue, the idea is quite simple. All Kant is maintaining is that among the various relations between the cognitive faculties possible, there is one which enlivens the faculties more so than any other. In the apprehension of an object of knowledge, for example, the imagination harmonizes with the understanding, but only because it is bound to follow its rules - this does not heighten one's feeling of life, for there is no freedom of the imagination, and hence no harmony. Likewise with a sublime object - the feeling is one of respect and admiration, but not pleasure, for the object reveals to us the inadequacy of our imaginations and the frailty of our bodies. Sublimity is only pleasing (and then only negatively so) because it further reveals that our noumenal aspects are even more powerful than nature itself. The enlivening of the faculties is felt most strongly when the imagination, in its freedom, conforms to the requirements of the understanding: when the imagination and understanding are equal partners in the process. In reflection upon the beautiful, the feeling of pleasure is another name for the feeling of life (§2); and the feeling of life, for Kant, is closely related to autonomy and freedom. There can thus be little strengthening of the feeling of life when the imagination is enslaved to the understanding, in the case of objects of knowledge; to reason, in the case of objects of sublimity, and objects of intrinsic and instrumental good; and to the senses, in the case of agreeable objects. Kant's fifth premise simply reiterates what he has argued through the first three Moments: that this relation (by which the feeling of life is most heightened) cannot be determined by concepts, but only by feelings. Premise six states that since the accordance of the cognitive faculties is universally sharable (a conclusion drawn from premise two) the feeling of the accordance is also sharable; and premise seven finishes the argument by claiming that the universal sharability of a feeling presupposes a common sense, a point for which I have argued above. Conclusion? That the acceptance of a non-sceptical account of knowledge leads one directly to the existence of a common sense. 110 What are the fundamental presuppositions of this argument? Only one: that the cognitive capacities of all humans are similar enough so that they function in exactly the same way. And I take it that this is true by definition, for part of what Kant thinks it means to be human is to be in possession of a discursive intellect. To be sure, we can conceive of there being other ways of knowing objects - intuitively, for example - but they only belong to beings like God, and presumably our judgments of taste are not intended to be binding on God. Definitional closure may not be the most satisfying way of justifying this assumption, but 1 believe that it is the only thing Kant offers; and, all things considered, it is not too unreasonable. 1 think that we generally do assume, in the course of daily events, that the minds of others function in the same basic way as ours.108 Let us grant Kant this assumption, then, and proceed to the Deduction. THE DEDUCTION ITSELF The transcendental Deduction of the third Critique comprises one half of one page.109 It caps off the recapitulation, from §§30-37, of the basic arguments that appear through the first half of the Critique, and reads simply: If it be admitted that, in a pure judgment of taste, the delight in the object is combined with the mere act of estimating its form, it is nothing else than its subjective purposiveness for the judgment which we feel to be mentally combined with the representation of the object. The estimation, as regards the formal rules of its action, apart from all matter (whether sensation or concept), can only be directed to the subjective conditions of its employment in general (it is applied neither to a particular mode of sense nor to a particular concept of the understanding), and consequently to that subjective (element) which we can presuppose in all men (as requisite for possible cognition in general). Thus the agreement of a representation with these conditions of the judgment must be capable of being assumed as valid a priori for everyone. That is, we may rightly impute to everyone the pleasure or the subjective purposiveness of the representation for the relation between the cognitive faculties in the act of estimating a sensible object in general. (§38) The first sentence serves only to remind the reader of the Third Moment: that judgments of taste are directed solely towards the form of the object, and to its subjective purposiveness. The second sentence reminds us of the contention of §21 that the mental state which results from the act of I l l estimation is intersubjectively valid. As Kant remarks in his Remark, the Deduction "only maintains that we are justified in presupposing universally in every man those subjective conditions of the judgment which we find in ourselves; and further, that we have rightly subsumed the given object under these conditions."(§38-Remark) These two assumptions can also be found in a footnote to §38 - "that the subjective conditions of the judgment, as regards the relation of the cognitive powers thus put into activity to a cognition in general, are the same in all men. ... The judgment must merely have reference to this relation (consequently to the formal condition of the judgment) and be pure". Paul Guyer sees the Deduction as offering a strategy different from, and more successful than, §21; but as I have argued, this is only because he interprets §21 as defending the position that universal communicability be a condition of the possibility of knowledge. Such a requirement is absent from §38, but only because it has been argued before at §21. Indeed, there is nothing new offered in the Deduction itself - the bulk of the work has been done previously, and all Kant is doing here is reiterating his prior arguments. Guyer again concludes that Kant's Deduction fails, because "the psychological capacity to experience the free harmony of imagination and understanding goes beyond the minimal capacity for knowledge, and with respect to the latter, its occurrence both in general and particular cases is contingent."110 But, once again, Guyer's emphasis on proportion as a psychological capacity, and on pleasure as arising from a fulfilled objective, renders his interpretation flawed. Kant may well conclude that his Deduction is "easy", for it doesn't really do anything. All of the arguments have been made before: the first condition laid out by his footnote to §38 is merely a reiteration of his argument at §21; and the second condition merely recapitulates his argument through the third Moment that judgments of taste are based on subjective purposiveness. If our judgments of taste are indeed based upon what is formal in a representation, then their content is universally valid - for the fact that form is universally valid is something which Kant has maintained ever since the First Critique. He also argued there that the conditions under which 112 knowledge is possible are likewise universally valid because they are based on universal rules. In the Third Critique, he modifies the relation of the cognitive faculties, so that they may freely co-operate with one another, yet in a way that is universally valid. Our acts of estimation, he argues at §21, are universally valid because they are based on the same procedures and the same cognitive faculties that guarantee the universal sharability of our knowledge. A pure judgment of taste, an act of reflection upon the form of an object, is likewise universally sharable, for it is a universally valid procedure on universally available material. If the mental faculties of humans are all the same, then a judgment which occasions pleasure in one subject will occasion pleasure in every other subject who judges in the same way. Since, per hypothesi, all other subjects reflect upon the same form (and not, by mistake, on the matter of sensation), and since their acts of reflection will proceed in exactly the same fashion towards the same result, an object which occasions pleasure in me will occasion pleasure in everyone else who judges of it. Thus from my own feeling of pleasure, I can judge that everyone else should also feel pleasure, and can judge so a priori. The transcendental justification of judgments of taste is guaranteed by showing that the act of estimation is universally valid; and this is done by showing that estimation is a consequence of the conditions which are necessary for knowledge. If we are to have knowledge, certain conditions must obtain. Thus says the First Critique. The conditions of knowledge are also the conditions of aesthetic reflection. Thus says the Third Critique. The only way out of this conclusion is to argue that we have no knowledge - to take the sceptic's route. For anyone who wants to maintain that we do have knowledge, Kant says, they must also maintain that we can make judgments of taste - that judgments of taste are as fundamental a part of human life as knowledge of objects. P A R E R G O N 113 I trust that I have now completed the task which I set out for myself at the outset: to defend the Third Critique against the (mis)interpretations and accusations which it has garnered from many philosophers today. Kant's Third Critique would indeed be riddled with problems, if the interpretations of these commentators were legitimate - most of them, however, are not. Kant's arguments are fairly simple: aesthetic pleasure is without interest - this simply means that it depends on no faculty of the mind apart from the imagination and the understanding. No purposes, no desires, no concepts. It is based upon what is available to all - the form of the object - and hence is universally valid. Since it is based upon form, the resulting pleasure can only be based on mental activity. The form appears as though its purpose was to harmonize with our cognitive faculties; the object has the form of purposiveness, without a purpose actually being attributed to the object. Finally, because the pleasure is based solely on those mental functions that can be known a priori to be necessarily possessed by all, the pleasure in the object has a necessary connection to pleasure. To say that an object is subjectively purposive is simply to say that appears as though it were designed to harmonize with our cognitive faculties. To say that an object harmonizes with our cognitive faculties is to say that it sets the imagination and understanding into free play. To say this is to say that the imagination apprehends the manifold of intuition of the object and schematizes it in such a way that the resulting schema has the qualities of order and unity required by the understanding - qualities that are ordinarily guaranteed and provided by conceptual determination. In the case of aesthetic reflection, however, no determinate concept is present. The schema is compared rather with the indeterminate concept of the supersensible substrate of nature, providing a universally valid reference point with which the estimation of all judging subjects must concur. The resulting schema is thus a free product of the imagination, which accords with the understanding. 114 Free play is born. When confronted by a beautiful object, the subject feels a certain pleasure. Upon reflection, she realizes that her pleasure is not based on any interest that she might have in the object, but is rather the product of the result of mere estimation of the representation of the object. Having concluded that her pleasure is not based on anything private or idiosyncratic, she judges the object to be beautiful, postulating that others will feel the pleasure, and demanding that they concur with her judgment. In order to justify this judgment she must presume only that the minds of other people are constructed and function in the same way as her mind does. The object can be so schematized because it has spirit - like a living organism, the object has an organizing principle which grants to the object a fundamental unity. This organizing principle is an aesthetic idea, a product of the imagination about which an unending wealth can be said: the idea is reducible to no concept, and hence one can continue to speak of it forever.111 When this object is a product of human endeavour, it might seem as if a definite purpose is at work - it seems plausible to argue that the object has been constaicted so as to harmonize with our cognitive faculties, and so it does not lack a purpose. But a deeper reading of the third Critique reveals that human creation of beautiful objects is only possible if the 'creator' has no inkling where her ideas come from. As artist, she is under the control of... what? Her muse? Her genie (and thus hence the word genius)? Something speaks to her and gives her ideas - this divine inspiration cannot be taught, and cannot be learned; it is a gift from nature, and hence products of human endeavour are actually products of nature. The subject realizes that her pleasure is in response to the form of the object, and not any interest which she might have in it - to its representation and not to its real existence - to what is phenomenal and not what is noumenal. The representation of this object appears as though it were designed to harmonize with her mental faculties, her imagination and her understanding, the very conditions of the phenomenal world. The phenomenal world, through this particular object, reveals 115 that it appears to have been designed so as to harmonize with the transcendental - this single object reveals that the empirical world exists in such a way that it is possible for the transcendental world, and in particular, freedom, to have an effect within it. And now Kant has crowned his critical philosophy. His problem was that of determining how freedom can interrupt the empirical causal chain established by Newtonian physics. If every single state is caused by a prior state, then how can human freedom exist as a causally efficacious force? If it cannot, then there can be no morality. Through beauty, Kant has shown that the phenomenal world exists in such a way that there is a connection between it and the transcendental world - that the empirical realm conforms to the requirements of the possibility of the efficacy of freedom. With this, Kant's project is at an end - and so is my thesis. ENDNOTES 116 'Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979) 209-210. 2Dieter Henrich, Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992) 3Kenneth Rogerson, Kant's Aesthetics (Lanham: University Press of America, 1986) 4Theodore Greene, "A Reassessment of Kant's Aesthetic Theory", The Heritage of Kant, ed. George Whitney and David Bowers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939) 346. 5Mary A. McCloskey, Kant's Aesthetic (London: MacMillan Press, Ltd, 1987) 110. 6Ralf Meerbote, "Wille and Willkiir in Kant's Theory of Action," Interpreting Kant, ed. Moltke S. Gram (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1982) 76. 7Paul Guyer, "Pleasure and Society in Kant's Theory of Taste," Essays in Kant's Aesthetics. Eds. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) 26. 8Werner Pluhar, "How to Render Zweckmafiigkeit in Kant's Third Critique," Interpreting Kant, ed. Moltke S. Gram, (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1982) 94. Francis X.J. Coleman, The Harmony of Reason (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974)35. 10Donald Crawford, Kant's Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974) 37. "Guyer, 1979, 122. 12Anthony Savile, Kantian Aesthetics Pursued (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993) 5. 1 3Salim Kemal, Kant's Aesthetic Theory (London: Macmillan Academic and Professional, 1992)31. 1 4Ted Cohen, "Why Beauty is a Symbol of Morality", Essays in Kant's Aesthetics, eds. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 15Cohen, 225. 16Indeed, this is Donald Crawford's interpretation of the passage (p.40) 17Guyer, 1979, 174-5. 117 18 ibid., 175. 1 9ibid., 182. 20Indeed, it is dubious whether such a thing could be possible, for one would have to maintain that the state of pleasure is an object - and Kant refers to it as that which must remain purely subjective. 2 1ibid., 179. 2 2 ibid. , 181. 2 3 ibid. , 180-1. 2 4Ibid., 183. 2 5Richard E. Aquila, "A New Look at Kant's Aesthetic Judgments", Essays in Kant's Aesthetics, eds. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) 96. 2 6ibid., 97. 2 7ibid. 2 8ibid., 97. 2 9ibid., 98. 3 0ibid., 96. 31 Guyer, 1979, 171. 3 2ibid., 172. 3 3ibid., 109. 3 4Aquila, 96. 3 5Guyer, 1979, 106-7. 36 ibid., 79. 3 7ibid., 106-7. 38 ibid., 109. 3 9Aquila, 95. 4 0ibid„ 96. 41Rogerson, 89. 118 4 2See Guyer, 1979, and Crawford. 43Rogerson, 142. 4 4Cohen, 227. 45Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., The Notion of Form in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (The Hague: Mouton&Co., 1971) 60. 46Robert L. Zimmerman, "Kant: The Aesthetic Judgment" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. X X I (Spring 1963) 340. 47Meerbote, 79. 4 8ibid., 72. 4 9ibid., 72-3. 5 0Guyer, 1979, 91. 51Meerbote, 81. 5 2 Makkreel squares off against Heniy Allison regarding this distinction. Allison's position, briefly, is that the B edition of the Deduction in the First Critique has two components: the first attempts to show the objective validity of the categories - that they hold for the logical conception of an object (Objekt); the second, to show the objective reality of the categories - that they hold for a real object (Gegenstand). Makkreel argues that, while Kant does contrast Objekt and Gegenstand by reference to logical and real objects, he also uses the term Objekt to refer to "whatever is given to me as mere material. ... Thus anything either merely thought or merely sensed would be an Objekt and becomes a Gegenstand - an object of experience - only through the mediation of the imagination. The difference between Objekt and Gegenstand is between an unmediated object and an object mediated by the schemata of the imagination. "(Makkreel, 40-1) "Makkreel, 56. 5 4ibid. "There is also a second kind of schematization, one which corresponds to the second level of estimation involved in aesthetic judgment -1 will speak more on this in the next section. 5 6See the above quote from §53 where he describes the faculty of aesthetic judgment "as a sort of schema" for the supersensible. "Guyer, 1982, 25. 5 8ibid., 26. "Presumably the difference between reflection and aesthetic reflection is that aesthetic reflection does not concern itself with the "concept which is thereby made possible" but only with the 119 formal aspects of comparison. 60Meerbote, 56. 61 ibid., 72. 6 2Guyer, 1979, 97. 6 3Makkreel, 55. 6 4Even this is not problematic, for Kant is not concerned in the Third Critique with objective validity: the judgment of taste "has no need to justify the objective reality of any concept, for beauty is not a concept of the object and the judgment of taste is not cognitive." (Remark - §38) 65 And, at the second level, the unification in inner sense of the estimate of the object and the feeling of pleasure. 66Crawford, Gotshalk, Guyer, Schaper, Rogerson, Henrich, and Uehling, among others. "Makkreel, 97. 68Immanuel Kant, What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff trans. Ted Humphrey (Abaris Books, Inc.: New York, 1983) 91-93. 69 Dada.) One wonders what Kant would have made of early 20th century art (e.g. surrealism and 7 0Guyer, 1979, 336. 71Schaper, 1992, 380. 7 2For example, McCloskey, Kemal, Uehling, and Rogerson. 73Schaper, 1992, 380. 7 4Guyer, 1979, 348. 75Zimmerman, 385. 7 6Uehling, 81-2. 7 7Guyer, 1979, 338. 7 8ibid., 337-8. 7 9Savile, 60. 8 0Guyer, 1979, 343. 8 1ibid„ 349. 120 82Savile, 61-2. 83Guyer, 1979, 262, and Eva Schaper, "Taste, sublimity, and genius: The aesthetics of nature and art", The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 376. 8 4ibid. 85Crawford, 67. 8 6Barrows Dunham, " A Study in Kant's Aesthetics" (Lancaster: no publisher, 1934) 8 7Guyer, 1979, 286. 8ibid., 287. 8 9ibid., 288. 9 0ibid., 288. 9 1ibid., 289. 92 ibid., 289. 9 3ibid., 297 9 4ibid. 9 5ibid., 295. 96 ibid., 319. 9 7ibid., 295. 9 8This is, in fact, the argument of §21. "Crawford, 128. 100Mmm...fudge. 1 0 1 B y the seashore? 1 0 2Crawford, 129. 1 0 3Guyer, 1979, 321. 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