Abstract
Kant holds that there are three powers of the mind: cognition, feeling and desire. The power of cognition is established as a basic power of the mind in the Critique of Pure Reason, and the power of desire is established as a basic power of the mind in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant establishes that feeling is also a basic power of the mind by showing that reflective judgment supplies an a priori principle, the principle of purposiveness, and that this is a principle for feeling. In this chapter I turn to Kant’s arguments for these claims. Kant’s arguments provide the key elements for showing that feeling orients rational cognitive beings in a sensible world. In arguing that we require a principle of reflective judgment, Kant illustrates why rational beings have difficulty in meeting their cognitive goal in a sensible world. And in showing why this principle is a principle for feeling, Kant shows how feeling can help prepare understanding to meet its goal. In addition, in showing the relationship between feeling and the goal of cognition, Kant answers a question remaining from the last chapter: Why is a free harmony of the cognitive powers purposive for cognition in general?
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Notes
C3, 181 [20].
C3, 181 [20–21].
This argument appears in various forms in both Introductions. See, for example, FI, 203–4 [392–93] and 208–9 [397], and C3, 179–80 [19].
FT, 216 [403–4].
C3, 180 [19].
FI, fn. 13, 203–4 [393].
See, for example, C3, 185 [25].
Michael Kraft suggests that the principle of purposiveness is a condition of experience, but not a minimal condition of experience, as the categories are. But later he goes on to suggest that it has a regulative status, in which case it seems that it would not simply be a nonminimal condition of experience. See Kraft, “The Moral Interest in Aesthetics,” 594–96.
FI, 208 [397].
FI, translator’s f n. 17 [397].
See also Fl, 208–9 [397–98] and 204 [393].
H, 203 [392] and 210 [399].
C3, 184 [23].
Passages at C3, 186 [27] and FI, 205 [394] could be construed in this way.
Cl,A650–51/B678–79.
See, for example, Fl, 203 [393], 205 [394], 210 [401] and212 [399–400]; C1, A651/ B679.
Fl, 204 [393] and 211 [399]. Guyer points out that it is possible that we might just come across such connections that inspire us to search for more, even though we are not guaranteed of success in our endeavors. That we might find such systematic connections is theoretically enough to pursue scientific investigation.
C3, 182 [21–22]; C1, A656/B684.
See C3, 182 [21]; FI, 213 [401]; C1, A651–52/B681–82.
C1,A651/B680[538].
C3, 179 [18]. See also C3, 182–84 [21–22].
Guyer, “Reason and Reflective Judgment: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity” (hereafter “‘Reflective’“), 40–41.
See, for example, John H. Zammito, The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, 158–69.
In “Reflective,” Guyer argues that in the third Critique, Kant suggests that the principle of purposiveness is required for the application of the categories to experience. He argues that this principle is required not only for the systemization of laws, but also in order to find intermediate empirical concepts and laws in virtue of which the categories are then applied to experience. Guyer points out that the result of this view would be that the categories would no longer be constitutive of experience, but would have a regulative function: although our goal would be the application of the categories, this application would only succeed insofar as nature cooperated with our understanding. However, there are enough passages in Kant’s text that outright contradict this interpretation to make one skeptical of Guyer’s conclusion. Guyer recognizes these passages, but contends that Kant is “hedging his bets” or coming as close to an admission of the regulatory status of the categories as he can. Ginsborg also sees the discussion of the principle of purposiveness as questioning the possibility of empirical cognition in general, not just the systemization of nature. There is a possibility that objects might not be able to be brought under empirical concepts at all. But Ginsborg sees this as being consistent with those objects being objects of a possible experience in general, and hence, unlike Guyer, does not question the outcome of the deduction of the first Critique. See Ginsborg, “Role” 180–81. Rolf-Peter Horstmann also compares the principle of purposiveness in the Critique of Judgment to the treatment of the topic in the first Critique. Horstmann attempts to understand the changes that led Kant to regard the principle of purposiveness as a logical principle in the first Critique and a teleological principle in the third. Reinhard Brandt is critical of Horstmann’s view, arguing that the principle of purposiveness is transcendental in both Critiques. See Horstmann, “Why Must there be a Transcendental Deduction in Kant’s Critique of Judgment?”; and Brandt, “The Deductions in the Critique of Judgment. Comments on Hampshire and Horstmann” (hereafter “Deductions”). This topic is also taken up in a more systematic way in the following works. Wolfgang Bartuschat attempts to show the unity of the Critique of Judgment as well as its systematic place in Kant’s thought. Bartuschat investigates the role of judgment in the first and second Critiques in order to see what Kant must still do in the third. Bartuschat emphasizes that in the third Critique Kant still must investigate the relationship of judgment to the particular qua particular, and that this has not been achieved in either of Kant’s other Critiques. Bartuschat de-emphasizes the role of the Introductions in his study because he sees them as merely providing a sketch of Kant’s project which doesn’t show how systemization is achieved. See Bartuschat, Zum systematischen Ort von Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft. Helga Mertens and Joachim Peter build on this work. In Mertens’ commentary to the First Introduction she discusses the relationship between the regulative ideas of reason in the first Critique and the principle of purposiveness in the First Introduction. Mertens sees some overlap between the two projects, but argues that the principle of purposiveness goes beyond the regulative ideas of the first Critique in that judgment can relate directly to particulars and reason cannot. See Mertens, Kommentar zur ersten Einleitung in Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft. Unlike Mertens, Peter sees the First Introduction as repeating Kant’s views in the first Critique but argues that the published Introduction introduces a genuinely novel role for judgment. In both its teleological and aesthetic forms, judgment mediates between the heterogeneous powers of understanding and sensibility. Only when this principle is introduced can reason then succeed in its regulative function. See Peter, Das transzendentale Prinzip der Urteilskraft: Eine Untersuchung zur Funktion und Struktur der reflektierenden Urteilskraft bei Kant. On the comparison between the first and third Critiques, see also Makkreel, “Regulative and Reflective Uses of Purposiveness in Kant.”
FI, 216 [403–4].
Brandt notes that Kant does not mention “purposiveness” in the context of the presupposition of reason in the first Critique. But he argues that Kant’s claim that reason’s principles accord with nature is a suitability of nature for reason, and that suitability is to be equated with the claim that nature is purposively organized for our cognitive faculties (“Deductions,” 180). But the principles according with nature itself is different from nature having our understanding as its purpose. While I am sympathetic in general with Brandt’s interpretation of Kant on this point, I would argue that the change from the principle of reason to the principle of judgment is not merely a change in name, but a shift in thinking of nature as purposive.
FI, 214 [402]. Kant tells us that nature is assured to be “purposive” rather than “a purpose” because we don’t assume that the purpose is in the object. Rather, the objects are supposed to meet our subjective purpose.
C3, 180 [19].
C1, A651/B679.
FI, 209 [397].
FI, 213 [401].
FI, 216 [404].
FI, 216 [404].
FI, 202 [392].
FI, 218 [406].
See, for example, FI, 209–10 [398].
FI, 216 [404]. It has been suggested by several commentators (including Mertens, Peter, Bartuschat, Mikkelsen, and Guyer) that reason cannot provide the principle of purposiveness because reason applies only to products of understanding, and the principle of purposiveness can apply to nonconceptualized sensibility. Kant does not mention this reason for excluding reason as being the source of the principle of purposiveness.
FI, 208 [396].
C3, 193 [33].
See, for example, Kulenkampff, 41–43. Ginsborg addresses this difficulty by arguing that reflective judgment is a faculty that not only makes possible higher-order laws and concepts, but also makes it possible to bring objects under empirical concepts in the first place (“Reflective Judgement and Taste,” 65). She then argues that “to be capable of bringing objects under empirical concepts is to be capable of claiming one’s perceptions are universally valid with respect to the particular objects that occasion them. The act of reflection in a judgment of taste is the act of taking one’s perception of the object to be universally valid” (“Reflective Judgement and Taste,” 70; see also Role, Chapter Four). One problem with this view is that in both Introductions, Kant seems to suggest that ordinary empirical cognition is possible without the principle of purposiveness. So it would appear that the principle of purposiveness is not required for cognition of any object. Further, on this view, we can only find objects beautiful, not ugly. Ginsborg thinks that this is all Kant’s theory is supposed to account for. Further, Ginsborg’s solution turns in part on making sense of section 9. I think there are other ways of making sense of this section (see Chapter I).
FI, 211 [400].
H, section V, 216 [404].
C3, 359 [235], translation modified.
C3, 359 [235].
FI, 220 [408].
FI, 220 [408].
H, 220–21 [408–9].
C3, 316 [185].
FI, 210 [399].
Sarah Gibbons argues that aesthetic ideas in art can help achieve reason’s goal of systematic unity of knowledge by proliferating conceptualizations of the material, demonstrating connections, and even allowing us to dimly grasp what seems to lie outside of experience (Kant’s Theory of Imagination: Bridging Gaps in Judgement and Experience, 112–14). In contrast, I focus on the state of mind in aesthetic judgment as the kind of state that allows for new connections, connections to be found within the empirical world.
C3, 359 [235], translation modified.
C3, 193 [33].
C3, 246 [99].
C3, 193 [33–34].
C3, 267 [126]. Makkreel argues that Kant’s conception of aesthetic form and harmony can be cognitively purposive in two ways. The harmony is purposive with respect to what is required for all determinate knowledge (an accord or attunement). The harmony is also purposive with respect to cognition in general “which includes the reflective concern with the systematization of knowledge” (Imagination, 62). In the latter case, there must be a mutual agreement of the faculties. Specifically, the pleasing form gives us hope that nature as a whole can be systematized because the forms can be regarded as individual systems “that are like microcosms of the overall order of things” (64). In this respect beautiful forms are like ciphers that “suggest the overall systematic structure of the world” (63). In beautiful objects we have ahint “that nature may be in general agreement with the needs of reflective judgment” (64). (In general, see 58–66.) I think that Makkreel is right that we must in some way distinguish between the condition of empirical cognition and a harmony of imagination and understanding that indicates a purposiveness for a system of nature. I am not sure that there is evidence for Makkreel’s specific suggestion that beautiful forms are ciphers that suggest the overall systematic structure of the world, although they may do this. Kant introduces the idea of the beauty of nature as a cipher in section 42 when he inquires into our moral interest in beauty. We have a moral interest in nature’s harmonizing with our disinterested (moral) liking for the good. Because of this, we take an interest in other ways that nature harmonizes with our liking. Natural beauty is a cipher because it gives a hint that nature may harmonize with our moral end (not our cognitive end). In order to set up the analogy so that we think of beauty as a cipher, beautiful objects must harmonize with the purposive state of free play of imagination and understanding, but this state need not be purposive because the object is a cipher that suggests the overall structure of the world (C3, 300–1 [167–68]).
Fricke, “Explaining the Inexplicable. The Hypotheses of the Faculty of Reflective Judgement in Kant’s Third Critique” (hereafter “Explaining the Inexplicable”), 60–62.
“Explaining the Inexplicable,” 61.
C3, 242 [93].
FI, 244 [434].
C3, 191 [31].
One reason Guyer opposes using the principle of purposiveness for aesthetic judgment is that it would seem to apply to objects of nature, but not art. See Guyer, Kant, 60. My reading indicates otherwise.
Ameriks argues that it is not clear why pleasure cannot be referred to the object (“Objectivity,” 12–14). I am sympathetic to this claim. Conversely, Guyer questions the assumption on the basis that other sensations, like sweetness, might not be referable to the object (Kant, 75–76). But I think Kant can make the connection between purposiveness and pleasure without making this assumption. Kant can make the argument with the claim that pleasure (or displeasure) is the sensation whose primary function is to expresses the object’s relationship to the subject.
C3, 224 [413].
Guyer raises this question in Kant, 77.
C3, 187 [27].
Thomas Nenon notes about Kant’s deduction that even if there were a proportion of imagination and understanding necessary for cognition in general, it is not clear it would have to be directly perceptible (“Progressive and Regressive Arguments in Kant’s Third Critique,” 152–53). I take the above argument to be Kant’s reply to that objection: the form of harmony that occurs in aesthetic judgment is perceptible through feeling because it is purposive for cognition in general.
FI, 225 [414].
FI, 232–33 [421–22].
FI, 243 [432].
C3, 347 [221].
Ameriks distinguishes between Makkreel’s view according to which there is a postcategorial extra-fit between the subject and the world according to which the object hints at a system of nature, and a precategorial extra-fit with cognition which can be described objectively as the object’s being especially apt for our mind (see Ameriks’ review of Makkreel’s Imagination, 230–34). In contrast, the sort of fit that I have in mind focuses on the forms of particular objects, but evaluates those forms on the basis of their aptness for producing a state of mind that furthers our cognitive goal of systematizing experience.
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Matthews, P.M. (1997). Cognition and Feeling. In: The Significance of Beauty. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 44. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8967-3_3
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