The Problem of Free Harmony in Kant's Aesthetics (SUNY 2008) - Kenneth F. Rogerson

The Problem of Free Harmony in
KANTS AESTHETICS
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The Problem of Free Harmony in
KANTS AESTHETICS
Kenneth F. Rogerson
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany 2008 State University of New York Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rogerson, Kenneth F., 1948 The problem of free harmony in Kants aesthetics / Kenneth F. Rogerson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7914-7625-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Kant, Immanuel, 17241804Aesthetics. 2. Aesthetics, Modern18th century. I. Title. B2799.A4R67 2008 111.85092dc22 2008019519
10
Contents
Acknowledgments / vii Note on Citations and Translations / ix Introduction / 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 Appendix Postscript Notes / 119 Index / 133 The Problem of Free Harmony / 7 The Doctrine of Aesthetic Ideas / 25 Natural and Artistic Beauty / 41 Free Harmony and Aesthetic Pleasure / 57 The Extensiveness of the Criterion of Beauty / 69 Beauty, Free Harmony, and Moral Duty / 83 The Meaning of Universal Validity in Kants Aesthetics / 101 The Argument for Universal Validity / 111
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the two anonymous readers for State University of New York Press. Their suggestions have greatly improved this book. I also thank my wife, Linda, and my son, Dylan, for their continued support.
vii
Note on Citations and Translations

Citations to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the standard A and B page numbers referring to the rst and second editions. Citations of all other of Kants works are to the volume and page number of the standard German edition of his collected works: Kants gesammelte Schriften (KGS). For citations to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, I have used the translation by Guyer and Matthews with one exception: For the appendix, which is a reprint of a much earlier article of mine, I use the Meredith translation as was the case in the original article. Also, I shall refer to the Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and the Critique of the Power of Judgment as the rst Critique, the second Critique, and the third Critique, respectively. Listed as follows are the original works and translations that I have used. A/B JL Kritik der reinen Vernuf (KGS 34). Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martins Press, 1965. Jasche Logik (KGS 9). The Jasche Logic, Lectures on Logic, trans. Michael Young. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 521640. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (KGS 4). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton. New York: Harper and Row, 1964. Kritik der Urteilskraft (KGS 5). Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Gr
KU
ix
Introduction
This book is a study of the rst half of Immanuel Kants Critique of Judgment (later translated as the Critique of the Power of Judgment) and hereafter referred to as the third Critique) entitled the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. My central concern is to give an interpretation of what is arguably the most important issue in Kants aesthetic theory, namely, the notion of a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. In the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant argues that an object is beautiful (is to be judged an aesthetically good object to appreciate) if and only if it gives us pleasure the source of which is a mental state similar to cognition entitled the free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. Kant believes that if and only if our aesthetic pleasure is based on such a mental state can our judgments of taste rise above mere subjectivity and make a claim that holds for all who properly appreciate aesthetic objects. This is Kants way of trying to justify a kind of objectivity about aesthetic judgments. Kant holds that judgments of taste occupy a special position between mere subjectivity and outright objectivity. He wants to argue, in a way perhaps unique to the history of philosophy, that aesthetic judgments are subjectively universal. They are subjective since they are based on our feeling of pleasure. However, according to Kant, aesthetic judgments are more than this. When we make an aesthetic judgment we claim not only that the object pleases us but also that the object is universally pleasing. It is this claim to universality that makes aesthetic judgment rather like objective, empirical judgments. But further, Kant holds, free harmony is the basis of this pleasure. Ultimately, Kants position rests on the claim that aesthetic judgments are universally valid since they are based on the universal pleasurableness of the free harmony of the imagination and understanding. This description of Kants theory is not particularly controversial. Virtually all scholars agree that this is Kants planto ground judgments of taste on the purported universal pleasure of free harmony. There are, however, two interpretative points that are quite controversial. Scholars will disagree concern1
Introduction
ing what, exactly, a free harmony of the imagination and understanding could mean within the Kantian philosophy. Further, it is a controversial interpretative issue concerning why Kant believes that such a mental state is universally pleasing. These two interpretative issues are the central concerns for this book. I want to give a good answer to the question of what a free harmony is on Kants account and why such a mental state is pleasing. Even a sketchy description of free harmony will be slightly complicated since this notion refers back to Kants position on epistemology and metaphysics. In the Critique of Pure Reason (Kants rst Critique) Kant represents cognition as a matter of applying concepts to a manifold of sense data. Further, it is a hallmark of the Kantian philosophy that concepts are considered to be rules for the organization of these sense manifolds. To oversimplify for purposes of illustration, to cognize an object as a dog is to use the dog rule to organize the sense data provided to me. All the leg perceptions, fur perceptions, tail perceptions, head perceptions, and so on, follow the concept/rule that we have for perceiving dogs. In general, Kant holds that judging objects as instantiating our concepts is a matter of recognizing that our sense data are organized by appropriate rules. This process of conceptualizing data from the senses is characterized in the Critique of Judgment as harmonizing the faculty of understanding (the faculty of concepts) with the faculty of imagination (the faculty of receiving sense data). So far so good. However, when Kant gives his account of aesthetic appreciation he claims that we harmonize the understanding and imagination in a way that is free of concepts. Somehow, he wants to hold, we can perceive a manifold of sense data and harmonize it with our faculty of concepts (rules) but in a way that is not actually conceptually rule governed. Supposedly we can appreciate (judge) a manifold of sense as being rule-like, but without applying a rule. One may very well ask how this can be so. Finding an adequate answer to this question is a theme that runs through each of the chapters in this book. Arguably the chief problematic of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is to understand how Kant can talk about a manifold of particulars that is somehow rule governed but without benet of rules. Each chapter is concerned in one way or another with making sense of a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. In the course of this book, I want to offer a solution to this basic problem. I argue that Kant himself has a solution to the problem of free harmony but it is only developed around his notion of the expression of aesthetic ideas. Kants doctrine of the expression of aesthetic ideas is more important for his broader aesthetic theory than is commonly thought. In the latter portions of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant gives an account of how art (and even nature) can be interpreted as expressing themes or ideas that would otherwise be
Introduction
difcult to communicatemuch more difcult to communicate than ordinary empirical concepts. I shall argue that only the doctrine of beauty as the expression of ideas gives Kant a plausible explanation of how we can see objects of beauty as free harmonies. For example, Kant holds that an artist must create a work that provokes us to make new associations that come together in such a way to illustrate ideas that go well beyond our ordinary experience. In this way, aesthetic appreciation gives expression to moral and religious notions that on Kants account can never be known by mere empirical cognition. Expression of ideas, I argue, makes sense of the otherwise paradoxical notion of a free harmony of the imagination and understanding. Aesthetic appreciation involves interpreting a manifold of sense as organized to express an idea which is not determinable by (free of) ordinary empirical concepts. Not only does expression of ideas play this explanatory role, but a normative role as well. I hold that expression helps to explain why aesthetic appreciation is pleasing to us and further it explains why aesthetic experience is of moral value to us. This, then, sets up the basic thesis of my project here. Free harmony is a deeply paradoxical notion that cannot be adequately explained under ususal interpretations of Kants theory. The doctrine of expression of aesthetic ideas will solve this paradox and as a result expression of ideas becomes crucial for Kants aesthetic theory. While the main thesis of this book is quite straightforward, there is quite a lot to do in order to show that the position is plausible. In the rst chapter I lay out the basic problem that a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding appears to be paradoxical by requiring us to contemplate orderliness yet without any dened order. I also survey and criticize interpretations that attempt to resolve this paradox. I argue that each such attempt comes up wanting. I further begin to develop my thesis that Kants doctrine of expression of aesthetic ideas will help us out of the paradox. Specically, an artwork (or natural object) that can be interpreted as expressing an aesthetic idea will accomplish this expression via a mental state that is free of concepts and yet orderly due to the fact that it expresses an idea. The topic of chapter 2 is Kants account of the expression of aesthetic ideas. Since I believe that expression of ideas is important to Kants broader theory of beauty, the point of this chapter is to look more closely at the doctrine of the expression of ideas and specically the doctrines connection to the requirement that beauty be the appreciation of a free harmony. I argue that expression of aesthetic ideas is not only consistent with the free harmony requirement but an extension and elaboration of that position. In the third chapter I consider a potential problem for my thesis that expression of aesthetic ideas plays an important role in Kants theory. It would be natural to think that expression of aesthetic ideas could play a signicant role
Introduction
in an account of artistic beauty while it would be quite out of place concerning natural beauty. But since Kant considers natural beauty at least as important as artistic beauty, the emphasis on expression of ideas might seem misguided. I want to argue that the art/nature distinction in Kant has been overdrawn by scholars and that there is not an important criterial difference between the two. Even further, as Kant himself indicates, I want to argue that natural beauty can be seen as expressive in a way similar to artistic beauty and, in this way, defuse the objection raised. Chapter 4 addresses the issues of free harmony and expression of ideas from a slightly different direction than the previous chapters. In this chapter I consider a question fundamental to Kants account of aesthetic value, namely the claim that free harmony is the source of a universal pleasure. Specically, I want to consider why Kant would regard free harmony pleasing at all, let alone, universally pleasing. This seemingly central question has not received sufcient attention in the literature. I argue that answering this evaluative question again leads to Kants account of expression of ideas. Chapter 5 concerns a problem that arises in chapter 1 and is connected to the proper interpretation of the free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. This chapter is largely critical of current interpretations of free harmony. I argue that if we were to accept current interpretations of free harmony, then Kant would be wedded to the thesis that every object we could appreciate would, in some sense, count as beautiful. This is a position that Kant clearly rejects and as such the current interpretations are awed. I also offer a solution to the problem that on many readings everything is beautiful for Kant. Again, I argue that appealing to the doctrine of aesthetic ideas will free Kant of this problem. Chapter 6 addresses what has become a controversial issue in the interpretation of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Beyond claiming that appreciation of objects as free harmonies is universally pleasing, Kant claims that such appreciation is also of moral value. My task in this chapter is to analyze the relationship between pleasure in free harmony, following on the discussion of the previous chapter, and draw out the implications this has for our moral life. I have appended to the above chapters my essay The Meaning of Universal Validity in Kants Aesthetics, as originally published with minor corrections, and have added a postscript to take into consideration current developments. In this appendix I argue for an interpretation of Kants grounding of judgments of taste that involves all of the elements discussed previously. I lay out a case an interpretation of Kants argumentative strategy for establishing the universal validity of aesthetic judgments of taste that centrally uses his doctrine of aesthetic ideas. In the postscript I go farther to consider and criticize
Introduction
current interpretations of Kants argument to the universal validity of judgments of taste. As described above, there is a central thesis that runs through each of the chapters in this book; namely, that the doctrine of expression of aesthetic ideas is needed to explain the possibility and the value of a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. However, the chapters that follow are also intended to be more or less self-standing essays addressing different aspects and problems in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. For example, chapter 3 can be read is an independent essay on Kants distinction between artistic and natural beauty or chapter 6 can be read as an independent essay on the relation of beauty and morality in Kant. In order that these chapters work as relatively independent essays, certain discussions will show up more than once in the book. I intended to give enough of the relevant discussion in each chapter to move the point of the argument forward and refer the reader to a fuller treatment in other chapters. Such redundancy is, hopefully, excusable given the nature of the project.
The Problem of Free Harmony

I want to consider a particularly troublesome problem internal to Kants theory of beauty. In the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant argues that an object is beautiful if and only if it is able to give us pleasure, the source of which is a mental state similar to cognition called the free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. And, an object that is able to occasion such a mental state of free harmony is said to exhibit purposiveness without purpose.1 The problem for Kant scholars is how to make sense of either a free harmony of the cognitive faculties or of a purposiveness not directed by a purpose. What I shall attempt here is rst to lay out the problem in its most troublesome form and argue, minimally, that there is a solution to Kants problems, at least for the case of artistic beautyperhaps for natural beauty as well.
1
What we learn from the Critique of Pure Reason (Kants rst Critique) is that the process of judgment is one of organizing a manifold of the imagination (a collection of sense particulars) by a concept of some sort. Further, it is characteristic of the Kantian philosophy that concepts are regarded as rules for how a manifold is governed. According to Kant, to judge that a manifold of sense particulars falls under a concept (the job of the understanding) is to recognize that the manifold conforms to a particular rulethat the manifold is rule governed.2 The rule, as it were, is presumed to provide a schema of what our perception of a specic empirical objects is to be. To have the concept of a dog is to know what sort of order a perceptual manifold will possess. Now, while this is the most general description of judging, it is important to note that for Kant there are two different species of judging: determinate judgment and reective judgment. Determinant judgments are ones where our predication of a concept to a manifold can be warranted on the grounds of experience (either directly in the case of empirical concepts or on the basis of the possibility of ex7
Chapter 1
perience in the case of the pure concepts). A reective judgment, however, predicates ideas of a manifold, and in Kants technical sense the predication of ideas cannot be grounded in experience. Ideas like God, freedom, and immortality are notions the application of which always outstrips our evidential base.3 For example, in the Critique of Judgment, (Kants third Critique) Kant is most interested to show that teleological judgments are reectivethey assert that nature is governed by purposes. And although, Kant argues, such assertions exceed our empirical evidence, it may be useful for doing science to act as if such judgments were true. This continues a theme from the rst Critique where Kant gave ideas of reason a regulative function.4 Having taken this brief excursion into Kants doctrine of judgment, we can now state the problem with the notions of free harmony and purposiveness without purpose. Kant wants to say that the pleasure of taste has its source in a mental operation similar to cognitive judgments. To make a cognitive judgment is to claim that an object (manifold of perception) instantiates a certain concept (the manifold is governed by a certain rule). However, unlike ordinary cases of judgment Kant insists quite strongly that the kind of judging that gives aesthetic pleasure is not governed by any type of rules. The interpretative question that arises here is, How can there be a species of judging that employs no rules? One would think that the very notion of judging requires the application of some kind of rule (either determinant or reective). More precisely, if Kants general characterization of judging is as a harmony between the imagination (responsible for gathering particulars) and the understanding (the faculty of giving rules), then free harmony would seem a contradiction. How can one have a harmony with the faculty of rules when one has no rule? Similarly, if we take the formulation of purposiveness without purpose, the question can be asked: How can we judge an object to be purposive if we do not attribute (even in an as if sense) some purpose to it?5 It will be useful here to consider what sorts of rules Kant thinks are inappropriate to the mental state of free harmony and roughly why aesthetic appreciation cannot be of these kinds. There are at least three sorts of rules that Kant thinks are inappropriate to aesthetic judging. Kant argues, in the rst moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful (the Analytic), that judgments of beauty cannot be ordinary, determinant (empirical) judgments roughly because beauty cannot be considered a class concepta concept naming an organization of perceivable properties.6 Kants argument against such a position is direct, if somewhat question-begging. Beauty cannot simply described a conguration of empirical properties since judging something as beautiful must, in part, be a matter of taking pleasure in the object. And for Kant pleasure is not an ob-
jective property that an object can possess. Pleasure is the subjective (aesthetic, Kant would say) response to an object. But dismissing such aesthetic objectivism does not end Kants complaints against rules used to make aesthetic judgments. In 9 of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant argues that while the pleasure of taste must be founded on a mental state of judging an object and such judging cannot be of the conceptual, determinant kind, neither can the judging be of the reective, teleological type. Generally, Kant argues that aesthetic judging is not a matter of claiming that an object suits any sort of end or purpose (even if our judgment is only an as if judgment). Specically, Kant considers two versions of this teleological position. We could take pleasure in recognizing that an object is good for some ordinary practical purpose we might have (a judgment of utility) or we could take pleasure in recognizing that an object is good as an x; that is, an object is judged to be a near perfect example of some class concept.7 For example, a picture may represent a paradigm case of a horsethis is the thesis of Leibnizean perfectionism Kant criticizes in 15. Similar to his complaint against aesthetic objectivism, Kant objects to perfectionism, in part, because it has no direct connection to pleasure. Kants criticism of grounding beauty on either judgments of utility or perfection is that in order for useful or perfect objects to give pleasure at all we must assume some merely contingent interests on the part of those who appreciate the objects. We will not take pleasure in something having use value unless we are interested in the end that the object serves. Nor, presumably, do we take pleasure in perfectionism unless we are interested in seeing near paradigm examples of class concepts. Further, Kant holds, we can never hope to get any sort of consensus about aesthetic value if we appeal to the whim of individual interests. Although the above is Kants ofcial criticism of reducing aesthetic judging to teleological judging, there is a larger point in the background. If judgments of taste could be reduced to judgments of utility or perfection, then we could formulate precise standards for either evaluating or constructing artworks. All we would need to know in order to evaluate a work as good (or create a good one) is the purpose the work should achieve. We could then set about to nd the meanswhich presumably can be pinned down with some accuracy. But this conicts with the notion (which Kant endorses) that aesthetic judging and aesthetic creation cannot be formulaic.8 If they were formulaic, then creativity would be of little concern in art, and aesthetic evaluation could be a precise scienceboth of which Kant disavows. Kant seems to have worked himself into a corner. He starts with the premise that aesthetic pleasure must come from an activity of judging. Judging is understood as organizing a manifold of particulars by a rule. But Kant seems to
10
Chapter 1
have taken away any candidate for a rule to organize the manifold. Aesthetic judging cannot be rule governed by a determinant concept or a teleological Idea. And these seem to be the only alternatives he has to offer. It appears that nothing is left and it seems that Kant is perfectly happy with this result. As Kant describes aesthetic judging it must be a recognition that objects are merely subjectively purposive where this seems to mean that the object occasions a harmony of the faculty of sense with the faculty of concepts (rules) but somehow without using any rules:
If pleasure is connected with the mere apprehension (apprehensio) of the form of an object of intuition, without a relation of this to a concept for determinate cognition, then the representation is thereby related not to the object, but solely to the subject, and the pleasure can express nothing but its suitability to the cognitive faculties that are in play in the reecting power of judgment, insofar as they are in play, and thus merely a subjective formal purposiveness of the object. (KU 5: 18990, 7576)
The problem is that it is very difcult to understand what sense there is in claiming that aesthetic contemplation is a kind of judging without rules when the very denition of judging in the Kant lexicon is that of a rule-governed activity.
2
There have been attempts to save Kant from the problem cited above. One rescue attempt turns upon a reading of mere subjective purposiveness and the strictness of the no rule requirement. There are some portions of Kants text that suggest that while a free harmony is rule governed without a rule, the crucial notion of without a rule should be understood in what might be called an abstractive sense. Specically, when Kant claims a free harmony is a harmony without rules, perhaps he should really say that the manifold is rule governed but when we engage in aesthetic appreciation we do not care which rule it is. And in this sense, we are only interested in the formal quality of mere rule governedness. We are only concerned subjectively that the manifold is rule governed. We are not interested in what rule prescribes the order of the manifold. The following passage would seem to support such a reading:
Now, if the determining ground of the judgment on this universal communicability of the representation is to be conceived of merely subjectively, namely without
11
a concept of the object, it can be nothing other than the state of mind that is encountered in the relation of the powers of representation to each other insofar as they relate a given representation to cognition in general. (KU 5: 217, 102)
On the basis of such passages, it could be argued that the problem of interpreting free harmony or purposiveness without purpose can be gotten around. We can talk about a manifold being rule governed (which seems to be a requirement of any version of judging) and yet insist that the harmony of the faculties is free in the sense that aesthetic judging abstracts from the specic rule employed to unify the manifold. Perhaps, we are only concerned with the closeness of t between manifold and rule. Such is suggested by Kants claim in 21 that a free harmony is also one that is opitimal for the animation of both powers of the mind (KU 5: 238, 123). Although the above would be a way of solving the puzzle of a free harmony, it is a route that Kant should not take. This solution cannot avoid Kants deeper arguments against utility and perfectionism. To say that an object occasions a free harmony in the abstractive sense entails that we can specify a rather precise formula for beauty: An object is beautiful if and only if there is a closeness of t between a manifold of imagination and a rule specifying a reective idea of utility or a rule specifying an empirical concept. At the very least this position is seriously inconsistent with Kants rejection of perfectionism. The theory of perfectionism would also seem to subscribe to a closeness of t criteria since there is no hint in the theory that an object is beautiful only if it measures up to some particular paradigmrather, any paradigm will do. One must assume, then, that the measure of perfection would be how well an artwork ts the paradigm concept it is intended to represent. Nor, do I think Kant would want to subscribe to a closeness of t criteria in the case of ideas of utility. If such a criteria were adopted, again we would seem to be able to formulate some precise standards for the creation and evaluation of beautya possibility antithetical to Kants enterprise. But beyond the charge of inconsistency, the abstractive interpretation would promote some very odd paradigms of beauty and ones that Kant explicitly rejects. If free harmony is taken to mean closeness of t to a rule (regardless of which rule), then well-drawn geometrical gures would be rst-rate artworks, for example, a well-drawn square. A well-drawn square is an object with a high degree of conformity to a concept (the square rule) and as such would be an excellent artwork. Yet, it is just such cases that Kant explicitly rejects because they are lacking in freedom.9 Similarly, if we assumed that free harmony should be understood in the abstractive sense and specically abstracting from teleological ideas (instead of determinant concepts) we would fare no
12
Chapter 1
better. On a teleological reading we would now have to admit that a well-designed wrench (the perfect water-pump pliers) is an excellent work of beauty. We appreciate that it ts well the orderliness required of a pair of water-pump pliers even though, of course, we not interested that the orderliness appreciated is water-pump plier orderliness. But here again, apart from the fact that such paradigms are unacceptable to us, it is very difcult to reconcile this position with Kants claim that objects must be purposive but without purpose. It would seem that under this reading, it turns out after all that beauty really has to do with what Kant calls objective purposiveness. Objects suit our subjective purpose of harmony of the faculties only by living up to some version of objective purposiveness. Again, if this is what Kant has in mind, his position is difcult to distinguish from the claim that aesthetic goodness can be reduced to either the goodness of utility or perfection. There is, however, another alternative sometimes pursued.10 From the remarks in 9 and 21 of the Analytic it could be claimed that Kant has a quite different way to recognize a harmony between the two faculties. That is to say, the problem we have had is one of understanding what a harmony between the imagination and understanding could be where there is no rule to account for the harmony. One answer to this question, suggested at 9 and 21, is that unlike usual cognition where recognition is achieved by the application of a rule, we recognize free harmony by means of a feeling. We simply feel the t of the two faculties:
The powers of cognition that are set into play by this representation are hereby in a free play, since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition. Thus the state of mind in this representation must be that of a feeling of the free play of the powers of representation in a given representation for a cognition in general. (KU 5: 217, 102)
There are difculties with taking this interpretation. First, were we to attribute to Kant the view that we can simply feel rule governedness without applying a rule, it would be a position quite unique to the critical philosophy and may well contradict some of the more important arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason. Specically, it seems to be important to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories that every manifold of representations be united by a rule.11 But even if we could admit such an unusual activity as feeling a conceptual t without using concepts, there are problems with this position intrinsic to the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. As most commentators agree, to get any version of the arguments of paragraphs 9 and 21 off the ground, Kant
13
must argue that free harmony is a mental state very much like mental state of ordinary cognition. Discussing free harmony Kant says:
. . . for we are conscious that this subjective relation suited to cognition in general must be valid for everyone and consequently universally communicable, just as any determinate cognition is, which still always rests on that relation as its subjective condition. (KU 5: 218, 103)
Roughly, Kant wants to argue that if ordinary cognitive states are universally communicable, then so is free harmony. Kant seemingly wants to argue here that, short of skepticism, we must assume that ordinary cognitive states are universally communicable and since a free harmony of the faculties is sufciently similar to a cognitive state, then it must be the case that free harmony is also universally communicable. This line of reasoning is thought to be crucial to Kants larger argument to show the universal validity of judgments of taste. But if free harmony and ordinary cognition are as radically different as the present account supposes, then Kants inference about universal communicability is clearly weakened. As Ralf Meerbote has convincingly argued, Kant is saddled with a nasty dilemma.12 Either he holds that free harmony is literally a harmony devoid of concepts, in which case he cannot draw a close parallel with cognition, or he admits that aesthetic judging uses concepts, in which case he loses the sense of freedom. Perhaps, as yet another possible interpretation one should understand free harmony not as abstracted from concepts or, somehow, simply devoid of concepts, but go in quite a different direction and claim that a free harmony is one whereby we can apply several different concepts to a manifold. This is what Paul Guyer has recently called a multicognitive interpretation of free harmony.13 Presumably, the sense in which a relationship of the imagination and understanding is suitably free of concepts is if it is free on any one determinate concept to pin down the order of the manifold. Instead we are free, as Guyer puts it, to it between a multiplicity of possible concepts. In addition to the problems that Guyer nds with this interpretation, let me add a couple more. This interpretation, like others we have seen in the aforementioned, will likely generate some odd paradigms. It would seem that a good candidate for an aesthetic object on this accounting would be one so constructed to make it easy and natural to conceptualize it under different concepts. One cannot help thinking that Wittgensteins duck-rabbit would come across as a prime candidate of an aesthetic object. However, as entertaining as duck-rabbit games are, few would put them forward as excellent aesthetic objects.
14
Chapter 1
There is, however, a deeper problem with the multicognitive interpretation that is internal to the argument of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. As mentioned above, many commentators interpret Kant as offering an argument for the universal validity of aesthetic judgments on grounds similar to the universal validity of ordinary cognitive states. Roughly, in order to account for shared cognition we assume that everyone conceptualizes manifolds in the same waythat is, everyone who is confronted with a Fido-like manifold sees that it is a dog-ordered manifold. Everyone, Kant seems to argue, must recognize orderliness in the same way. But, a free harmony denotes a kind of orderliness. Thus, presumably, if I recognize free harmony with a feeling of pleasure and I have a right to assume everyone must recognize orderliness in the same way, then I can assume that others will feel pleasure in free harmony as well. Again, we will have much to say about such an argument. But for now, notice how the multicognitive interpretation will make a mess of an argument like the one above. If by a free harmony of the imagination and understanding Kant means that for an appropriate aesthetic object we are free to see the object as displaying any number of orderings. But if this is the case, I have no reason to believe that anyone will share my recognition of order in an aesthetic object. And, thus, a key feature of the analogy between free harmony and cognition is brokena feature that was intended as a cornerstone of Kants argument to the universal validity of aesthetic judgments. There is one further interpretation that deserves close attention. Henry Allison in his recent book offers an interesting interpretation of free harmony that, if successful, will avoid the dilemma previously cited by Meerbote. To construct an argument for the universal validity of free harmony from paragraphs 9, 21, and 38, we must assume that appreciating a free harmony and applying a concept to a manifold are quite similar activities. Both are a matter of nding order in a manifold. Although both involve a kind of harmony between our cognitive faculties, there is an important difference. When we recognize the rule orderedness of manifold by the application of a concept, we do not simply appreciate an objects rule orderedness; we also assert that the manifold shows a rule orderedness similar to that of other objects. It is on the basis of this similarity that we classify an object as a certain kind. Appreciation of beauty, however, is not a matter of classifying objects by nding a common rule. We are only concerned, as Kant says time and again, with in the subjective purposiveness of objects. Subjective purposiveness can now be understood as an interest in orderliness for its own sake, not as a concern with the order an object may share in common with others. Henry Allison, following Carl Posy, interprets Kant as claiming that when we engage in aesthetic contemplation the normal concerns of cognition are
15
suspended.14 That is to say, free harmony judging is indeed looking for rule orderedness of a manifold but since our normal concerns of cognition are suspended we do not follow through by applying concepts. We are not concerned with comparing an objects rule orderedness to other, similar objects. This position seems to avoid the dilemma above. Aesthetic contemplation and ordinary empirical judgments are similar in that both are concerned with nding rule orderedness in a manifold. The difference between the two is that aesthetic contemplation is concerned with orderedness per se while an empirical judgment is further interested in determining a similarity with other objects. Having made this distinction, presumably, we can claim that free harmony is not conceptual and yet it describes a rule-ordered manifold. Paul Guyer has dubbed this type of interpretation a precognitive interpretation of free harmony since it considers a free harmony a recognition of an orderly manifold that is logically prior to conceptualization.15 I believe that there are yet problems with this attempt to free Kant of the difculties of free harmony.16 I suspect that this interpretation puts too little distance between a free harmony of the imagination and understanding and an ordinary, rule-governed conceptual judgment. Consider the judgment Fido is a dog. When I make such a judgment I notice that the manifold of imagination I am presented with possesses a certain order. It is the order dened by my concept (rule) dog. When I make the judgment I recognize that my manifold has a certain order and that this order is common to manifolds presented on other occasionsthis is the sense in which dog functions as a class concept for me. My judgments dene a class of objects in terms of common rule orderliness of their manifolds of perception. Aesthetic appreciation is presumably different from this. When appreciating an aesthetic object I judge the manifold to be orderly but do not compare this manifolds orderliness to that of other similarly orderly objects, if there are any. This seems to imply that we could very well say that an aesthetic object displays a rule orderedness; its just that we are not concerned as to whether or not that rule is instantiated anywhere else. For all we know or care, the rule could be uniquely instantiated in the case we are presently observing. This interpretation is fine as far as it goes, but there are problems. Consider again my experience of Fido. In an ordinary, empirical experience of Fido, I recognize that the present manifold of sense exhibits an orderliness shared with a certain class of objects (dogs). This is also to say that I recognize that Fido exhibits the dog rule shared by all dogs. Experience of Fido is rule ordered and it is rule ordered by the determinate dog rule. On the present interpretation, aesthetic appreciation of an object is very much like our Fido experience. Presumably, empirical experience and aesthetic appreciation are
16
Chapter 1
alike insofar as both involve the recognition of the rule orderness of the manifold of sense. Both the experience of Fido and the aesthetic appreciation of the Mona Lisa (for example) involve the recognition that the manifold of sense under consideration is ordered by a specific rule. The difference is that in the Fido case we also focus on the fact that the Fido rule has multiple instantiations whereas in the Mona Lisa case we do not concern ourselves with instantiations. If my understanding of the above interpretation is correct, then the distinction between free harmony and determinate judging is not a difference between a rule-ordered manifold (determinate judging) and a manifold that is not rule ordered (free harmony). Rather the distinction is between our recognizing a rule-ordered manifold that has multiple instantiations (determinate judging) and our recognizing a rule-ordered manifold but without reference to instantiation (free harmony). But if this is the difference, it is hard to see that it is much of a difference. Or, perhaps, it is difcult to see that this difference cannot be overcome. It seems entirely possible that we could consider any object aesthetically and that any object could suit Kants free harmony requirement.17 I see no reason, in principle, why we could not consider Fido for the rule orderness of its manifold in abstraction from our knowledge of whether this rule is multiply instantiated or not. To consider an object in such a way would, I take it, suit Kants injunction that we consider an object merely for its mere subjective purposiveness. That is to say, we are concerned only the extent to which an object is rule ordered, we are unconcerned whether this rule shows up elsewhere in our experience. But if it is possible to consider dogs and all manner of objects as aesthetic objects, Kant loses the distinction between ordinary objects and special aesthetic objects that the free harmony criteria seems to establish. Additionally, if any object could be considered aesthetically, in the fashion suggested, it is not obvious how one would distinguish between good aesthetic objects and those not so good. If we could make a distinction in kind between objects that were free harmonies and those that were not, then the distinction between aesthetic and nonaesthetic objects would be clear. But this is not the case. There is another attempt to resolve the dilemma that free harmony presents that is rather similar to the Alison/Posy solution. Hannah Ginsborg sees the free harmony issue bound up with an even larger problem in the Kantian philosophy.18 Kant has an account of empirical concept acquisition that is, unfortunately, rather sketchy.19 As we have seen, Kant regards all concepts as rules describing a certain order of perceptual elements in an experience. Further, his ofcial position as to how we come to form a new empirical concept is by way of comparison, reection, and abstraction. Kant gives an example:
17
I see, e.g., a spruce, a willow, and a linden. By rst comparing these objects with one another I note they are different from one another in regard to the trunk, branches, and leaves, etc.: but next I reect what they have in common, trunk, branches, and leaves themselves, and I abstract from the quantity, the gure, etc., of these; thus I acquire a concept of a tree. (Logik, para. 6, Ak IX, 9495; 592)
The problem with this account is that it seems one already needs a concept (rule) of tree in order to single out spruce, willow, and linden as appropriate candidates to engage in a process of comparison, reection, and abstraction. If we did not already have something like a tree rule in mind, it seems unlikely that of all the objects in the world we would pick these individuals to work our concept-forming labor upon. To put the matter differently, if we did not already have some rough concept of tree we wouldnt have picked out a spruce, willow, and linden as appropriate objects to hone our formal concept of tree. To solve the problem of empirical concept acquisition Ginsborg admittedly goes beyond Kants text to suggest an account that he could have (should have) given. In order to make coherent Kants account of empirical concept acquisition he needs to make a distinction between two ways in which one could have and use rules for the ordering of an empirical manifold. Ginsborgs suggestion is that initially when we consider objects like the spruce, willow, and linden we pick them out because we are using a process that is exemplary of rules, but only subsequently (by the process of comparison, reection, and abstraction) do we come up an explicit rule that is the concept tree.20 Ginsborg gives a useful analogy. Using the English language is a rule-governed activity in two senses. Simply speaking English is rule governed insofar as this activity is governed by lexical rules and rules of grammar.21 All of this is rather unstudied and even unconscious. However, this exemplary use of rules becomes the basis for subsequent, explicit rules of English usage. How we use English unreectively allows us the ability to extract explicit rules of usage. Ginsborg applies this analogy to empirical concept acquisition. Consider the rst time a person runs across what we would now call a tree. On that rst encounter our observer would not apply the conceptual tree rule to the perceptual manifoldno such rule is available. Nonetheless, claims Ginsborg, such a rst encounter may yet be rule governed in a primitive sense. Presumably, we can nd order in our rst tree experience that will set the standard for any future tree encounters. Our rst encounters with a tree are rule governed in a primitive way as opposed to subsequent experiences where we approach tree with the explicit concept well in hand. The model of primitive, rule-governed experiences as a key to the account of empirical concept acquisition sets the stage for an interpretation of the no-
18
Chapter 1
tion of a free harmony of the imagination and understanding in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Recall that the central interpretative problem with a free harmony of the imagination and understanding is trying to gure out how the imagination could harmonize with the rule function of the understanding and yet do so without rules (concepts). Ginsborgs primitive and exemplary rulegoverned experiences seem to t the bill. Kant claims that when we consider an object aesthetically we consider a manifold of imagination for its conformity to the rule-governed function of the understanding but yet without applying a rule. This may seem mysterious. But if Ginsborg is correct we do this sort of thing all the time in the process of empirical concept acquisition. When we approach a tree for the rst time we must be able to appreciate the rule governedness of the manifold in order to be able subsequently to nd other instances of a tree. But this is an ability to discern rule governedness without using a rule. And, Ginsborg holds, this is just the ability required in aesthetic cases of free harmony. An additional bonus of Ginsborgs account is that it adds coherence to what seems to be Kants central arguments justifying the universal validity of judgments of taste. As we have seen, it is commonly thought that Kants proof of the universal validity of judgments of taste crucially depends on the premise that the mental state of free harmony is sufciently similar to a conceptually determined cognitive state that we can regard aesthetic judgments to be as universally valid as an ordinary empirical judgment.22 Under most interpretations of free harmony this similarity between free harmony and empirical judgments is difcult to explain. How can a nonconceptually determined manifold be sufciently similar to a conceptual manifold such that we could draw inferences from one to the other? Ginsborgs interpretation seems to help this inference. If Ginsborg is correct, then part of the story of empirical cognition (the part involving concept acquisition) requires our ability to recognize the rule governedness of a manifold prior to our application of an actual rule. Thus, Kant is justied in thinking that aesthetic appreciation depends on an ability we can assume to be shared by all. Ginsborgs account may in fact go a long way in helping to understand Kants account of empirical concept acquisition; however, as an interpretation of free harmony it suffers from difculties similar to those found with the Allison/Posy interpretation. The danger with trying to argue a close similarity between free harmony and ordinary, conceptual cognition is that one may fail to distinguish adequately aesthetic appreciation from cognition. If, as Ginsborg seems to suggest, empirical concept acquisition requires us to experience the rule governedness of a manifold without applying a rule and that this activity is very much like (if not identical to) the experience of free harmony, then it would
19
seem that tree experiences are also aesthetic experiences. It would seem that we could approach a tree now and appreciate it as if we were experiencing it for the rst time and did not already possess a concept of tree. And, if we could do such a thing, then experiencing a tree would be an instance of free harmony of the imagination and understanding. And, as such, it would be an aesthetic experience. Ginsborg is aware of this difculty and tries to meet it.23 To distinguish the mental activity of free harmony from the act of empirical concept acquisition, Ginsborg claims that while each act of acquisition requires the recognition of a rule governedness with a rule (like free harmony) such acquisition cannot take place without also, at the same time, applying our newly acquired concept in the process. As Ginsborg puts it, (t)he act through which I acquire the concept tree is at the same time my rst act of judging something to be a tree.24 This seems to distinguish free harmony from empirical concept acquisition. It cannot be the case that every act of empirical concept acquisition is also an aesthetic experience of free harmony since, Ginsborg holds, each act of acquiring a concept is also an act of applying that conceptunlike a pure free harmony experience. Also, apparently, once we have applied a concept to a tree experience we cannot approach a tree as if it were not a conceptually determined manifold. Presumably we cannot abstract the primitive act of recognizing orderliness from the nal act of applying a concept. Ginsborgs position does seem to get her out of the problems noted above. However, there are further difculties here. Ginsborgs interpretation of free harmony depends on her admittedly speculative account of empirical concept acquisitionparticularly the claim that such concept acquisition requires a primitive recognition of a rule governedness without rules. But even if we were to grant this, the further claim that each act of acquisition is inseparable from an act of application seems, at best, ad hoc. I see no reason, other than a mere assertion, why in a Kantian account of original acquisition we could not recognize a something (a tree) as rule governed at one moment and only later after acquaintance with other somethings (trees) we start applying the concept tree. Nor do I see any reason in a Kantian position why we could not act as if we were seeing a tree for the rst time and recreate, as it were, that original moment of appreciating rule governedness per se. But maybe Ginsborg is right. Maybe empirical concept acquisition is very different from aesthetic appreciation. Specically, perhaps approaching a tree is so very different from approaching an artwork that the cognitive processes are very different. But if this is so, we fall on the other horn of the dilemma discussed earlier. If the processes are so very different, there is no reason to believe that any argument based on their similarity is going to succeed.
20
Chapter 1
3
There is, however, one portion of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment where Kant has a solution to how a manifold can be both rule governed and free. The relevant discussion is contained in Kants description of how artistic genius can create works of art that express aesthetic ideas.25 I want to argue: (1) the expression of aesthetic ideas gives a denite sense to the notion of a rulegoverned manifoldit is governed by an aesthetic idea; (2) this sort of rule governedness is compatible with the requirement for a free use of the imagination; and (3) more tentatively, that the expression of ideas is a general solution to the problem of free harmony (for both art and nature).26 While Kant understandably stresses the role of originality in artistic creation, at least as important is his claim that the artist must also combine his or her creativity with some sort of organization (as usual without constraint of preconceived rules). The problem Kant considers in his discussion of artistic creation looks very like the one that has been bothering us: How can an artist create a work that is free and yet organized? Kants explicit solution in these sections is that the artist can achieve the proper organization for his work only if he or she creates a work that expresses an aesthetic idea. Thus, expression of ideas seems to play the crucial role of explaining, in the admittedly narrow case of artistic creation, how an aesthetic object can be rule governed. In fact, Kant goes so far as to argue that expression of ideas is not just a way of organizing a manifold to meet the rule-governed requirement, but the only appropriate way for artistic creation:
To be rich and original in ideas is not as necessary for the sake of beauty as is the suitability of the imagination in its freedom to the lawfulness of the understanding. For all the richness of the former produces, in its lawless freedom, nothing but nonsense; the power of judgment, however, is the faculty for bringing it in line with the understanding. (KU 5: 319, 197)
The point Kant repeats often in these sections is that genius (which Kant denes in part as the faculty to produce aesthetic ideas) is able to create ne art only insofar as it can provide a rule to the free fancy of the imagination (KU 5: 307, 186). This is required since without genius organizing an artwork in order to express an idea, we would be unable to account for the works rule governedness. Kant argues in these sections that the genius who lacks the skill of organizing to express at best creates original nonsense (KU 5: 308, 186). Without such organization an artist cannot produce an artwork that remains purposive by introducing clarity and order (KU 5: 319, 197). Or more posi-
21
tively, the ability to present aesthetic ideas is that which purposively sets the mental powers into motion (KU 5: 313, 192).27 The evidence of these sections seems quite conclusive. Kant holds that expression of aesthetic ideas is a requirement for artistic creation and it is required because it explains rule governedness. And while Kant offers this thesis as part of an explanation of artistic creation it takes only a slight extension of his doctrine to see how it would apply to artistic appreciation as well. The artist is saddled with the task of creating a work such that when properly appreciated it stimulates the imagination in such a way as to express an idea. This, Kant claims, requires genius. But, we can suppose something similar goes on during aesthetic appreciation. The person who properly appreciates a work of art (or, I would maintain, natural beauty as well) must be able to interpret the elements of the work in such a way as to see that they come together to express an idea. As such, both the artist and the art appreciator must be able to experience an object as stimulating a free harmony of the imagination and understanding in such a manner that we interpret the object as expressing an idea. On the basis of these passages it might be granted that Kant can account for how aesthetic appreciation involves a rule-like harmony of the imagination and the understanding. Aesthetic appreciation involves our interpreting a manifold as organized in a way to best express an aesthetic idea. But perhaps it is more difcult to argue that expression of ideas is consistent with the restriction that the mental state of appreciation is free. Here I enlist the support of some important work on Kant by Paul Guyer. It has been argued, successfully I believe, that the mental state of appreciating an artwork that expresses ideas is one free from conceptual determination.28 It is crucial for this interpretation to notice that Kants description of the process of either producing or recognizing an aesthetic idea is a description of a free harmony. That is to say, recognizing an artwork as expressing an aesthetic idea is a case of freely harmonizing a manifold of sense with the rule faculty of the understanding:
In a word, the aesthetic idea is a representation of the imagination, annexed to a given concept, with which, in the free employment of imagination, such a multiplicity of partial representations are bound up, that no expression indicating a definite concept can be found for it. (KU 5: 316, 194)
The sense in which the expression of aesthetic ideas involves a free harmony seems to be that, as Kant understands aesthetic ideas, they refer to something that cannot be literally describedthey are notions of things too big for ordinary empirical description. Kants favorite examples are moral and religious notions (invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, heaven, eternity,
22
Chapter 1
creation, etc.) (KU 5: 314, 192). As a result, to express such an idea requires, Kant supposes, that we create works that stimulate the imagination to make all sorts of associations that substitute for a literal description of these elusive entities. And importantly, the process of expression is one that must be independent of all conceptssince no concepts can literally describe the notions involved. As Kant puts the matter, expression of ideas can be communicated without constraint of rules (KU 5: 317, 195). I shall save for the next chapter a more technical description of the expression of aesthetic ideas; here I only want to suggest how expression is a mental state compatible with the restriction that aesthetic appreciation is one of free harmony. Expression of aesthetic ideas is a free harmony since expression must be unlike ordinary cases of conceptual determination. In ordinary cases (either empirical concepts or teleological ideas) Kant supposes that we come to objects with a well-formed notion of what the thing is either presumed to be or what function it is presumed to serve. Judging an object to be the expression of an aesthetic idea is quite another matter. Since there can be no well-formed concept of things like heaven, hell, and so on, we give free reign to our imagination in order to interpret an object as expressing an idea of such things. This is not a matter of judging that an object falls under a given concept or serves some purpose. Neither a well-formed idea of an end nor a determinant concept is possible for the objects that art can supposedly express. As such, art cannot be governed by rules or standards in the ordinary sense. Rather, Kant claims, the artist can be said to create a new rule as a result of his free use of his cognitive faculties (KU 5: 318, 195). Regardless of how the process of expression is achieved (and Kant thinks here that genius is a mysterious gift of nature one which cannot be taught or learned), it cannot employ any concepts or teleological ideas (KU 5: 317, 194). Moreover, expression of ideas, as others have pointed out, may even be compatible with what some regard as Kants unfortunate doctrine of perceptual formalism. That is to say, it could be argued that my interpretation comes dangerously close to claiming that all beauty must express ideas, and this interpretation seems to conict with Kants supposed perceptual formalism. But, there need be no conict here since Kant holds the plausible enough position that the artists job is to manipulate perceptual elements in such a way as to achieve an expression of ideas.29 What Kant suggests is that formal unity of a manifold (even if this manifold is restricted to perceptible elements) can be achieved only if the artist works up his matter with some aesthetic idea in mind.30 As mentioned above, the claim that recognizing aesthetic ideas as a mental state compatible with free harmony is a fairly well-accepted interpretation
23
of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. However, I want to claim something stronger than mere compatibility. Expression of aesthetic ideas solves the problem of interpreting free harmony. And further, if expression is the only way to make sense of a free harmony, then we may be forced to conclude that expression is a necessary condition for beauty. Indeed, there are passages where Kant claims that expression is criterial for beauty (KU 5: 320, 197). However, it could be argued that we should discount such passages on the interpretation that although expression of ideas may be compatible with the free harmony requirement, expression is only one species of beautywhether an object expresses or not is quite contingent. However, if it is the case that expression is needed to explain the possibility of free harmony, then expression is far from contingent. And Kants pronouncement that all beauty is expressive can be taken more seriously. To be sure, there are several problems left if we try to argue that expression plays the central role I attribute to it. In spite of passages like the one just quoted, sometimes it seems that Kant holds that expression of aesthetic ideas is a feature only of artistic, not natural beauty. Thus, expression could not be criterial for all judgments of beauty. Strictly speaking, trying to argue that expression is criterial for all species of beauty goes beyond the argument of this chapter. If I have been convincing that expression solves the riddle of free harmony (even if this riddle can only be solved for artistic beauty), I have completed my task. But a little can be said in favor of assuming that Kant intends expression to be a general criteria. First, there are passages where Kant refers to beauties of nature as expressive.31 Second, some think that calling nature expressive is an odd thing to do since with nature, unlike art, we cannot strictly attribute the sort of intentionality seemingly required for expressiveness. Of art, we may say quite truly that the artist expresses something in his work, but even if we may interpret a sunset as expressing grandeur, literally it does not. Yet, trying to force such a distinction on Kant will not work for the simple reason that even in the case of artistic beauty, the recognition of expression does not depend on actually attributing intentions to a creator.32 As we shall see in more detail in the next chapter, Kant holds that art is created by genius that acts unselfconsciously. Thus, Kant seems able to say that with both art and nature we interpret objects as if created with the intention of expressing an idea. This leads to a more general point about Kants distinction between art and nature. For some time it was supposed that such a distinction was philosophically important to Kants aesthetics; however, this has been disputed recently in a number of ways.33 I shall not rehearse the arguments here but only point to one passage where Kant makes the distinction in order to show its relative unimportance for the issue of beauty:
24
Chapter 1 Beauty (whether it be of nature or of art) can in general be called the expression of aesthetic ideas: only in beautiful art this idea must be occasioned by a concept of the object, but in beautiful nature the mere reection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be, is sufcient for arousing and communicating the idea of which that object is considered as the expression. (KU 5: 320, 197)
Kant argues that for a work to be art it must be intended to conform to a concept of an Objectwhere this seems to mean that the artist must rst represent something by his art. And subsequently, after representing some object the artist can express an idea (say, painting a picture of a woman that expresses sadness). Yet, appreciation of nature obviously short circuits this process (there is no sense in which nature represents). Of course, Kant can be accused of being just wrong in thinking that all art must represent, but on Kants own grounds the fact that an object does or does not represent is irrelevant to its beauty. This is part of the lesson supposedly learned in the Analytic. And if this is the important difference between art and nature, it is difcult to see the relevance of the distinction for aesthetic judgment. We shall look into these matters more closely in the chapter 3.
The Doctrine of Aesthetic Ideas

In the rst chapter I suggested that Kants doctrine of the expression of aesthetic ideas may help to explain the problematic notion of a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. In this chapter I want to take a longer look at the notion of aesthetic ideas. After providing a description of what it is, for Kant, to express an aesthetic idea, I want to consider in more detail how this doctrine ts with and helps to explain his doctrine of free harmony. Also, I want to consider how expression of ideas may be of aesthetic value and, thus, how expression might play a role in support of the universal validity of aesthetic judgments. Much of the discussion of Kants aesthetic theory centers around his attempt to justify what he takes to be aesthetic judgments special status. Aesthetic judgments are, for Kant, judgments that claim a subjective, universal validity. Further, as we saw in the rst chapter, Kant argues that aesthetic judgments universal status can be justied only if certain objects give us pleasure the source of which is the mental state of free harmony. And since the mental state of free harmony is some kind of recognition of the order of a manifold of sense, then it is thought to follow (on traditional interpretations of Kant) that an objects aesthetic worth (its beauty) consists in its formthe way in which a manifold is ordered.1 Simply put, Kants substantive position on aesthetic value seems to be a formalism.2 None of this short description will come as any surprise to anyone familiar with the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. However, rather more confounding is Kants subsequent discussions, from 42 to the end, where he appears to adopt a position typically thought to be antithetical to formalism; namely, the position that art (and perhaps nature as well) ought to be in the business of expressing certain kinds of ideas. Kant goes so far as to claim, seemingly, that expression of aesthetic ideas is a criterion (perhaps even the only criterion) for beauty. At 51 Kant claims that (b)eauty (whether it be of nature or art) can in general be termed the expression of aesthetic ideas (KU 5: 320, 197). This apparently puts Kant in a bind. If Kant is indeed a formalist, it would appear to be inconsistent to also claim that beauty must be judged in terms of the content that an object has to communicate to its audi25
26
Chapter 2
ence. The goal of this chapter is to take a look at Kants discussion of expression of aesthetic ideas and see what role he may intend for the doctrine.
1
In this section I want simply to sketch out what Kants doctrine of expression of aesthetic ideas amounts to and follow up in the next two sections by considering how this doctrine squares with other parts of his account (notably his commitment to formalism) and, further, what role expression might play in Kants account of aesthetic value. Perhaps the most explicit description of an aesthetic idea comes in 49:
By an aesthetic idea, however, I mean that representation of the imagination occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e. concept, being adequate to it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible.One readily sees that it is the counterpart (pendant) of an idea of reason, which is, conversely, a concept to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate. (KU 5: 314, 192)
A little bit of background is appropriate here. In the description of aesthetic ideas Kant relies on a distinction developed in the Critique of Pure Reason (Kants rst Critique) between concepts (Begriffe) and ideas (Ideen)which, in turn, gives rise to determinant or reective judgments as discussed in chapter 1. Concepts, as Kant denes them, falls into two groups: ordinary empirical concepts and pure or a priori concepts. Empirical concepts like dog or tree are notions that can be tied directly to sense intuition (sense data). To simplify, an empirical concept species what we are to nd in our sense perception. The concept dog or a tree is dened by specifying the kinds of sense manifolds we would expect to experience and that could be appropriately called dog or tree. For short, dog or tree refers to types of manifolds of sense intuition. All of this is quite compatible with a fairly typical empiricists view of concepts. In fact, Kant would also agree with the empiricist that we come to form these concepts by rst looking at different conguration of sense manifolds, grouping them by similarities and, nally, naming the groups (by use of a concept).3 In this respect ordinary, empirical concepts are a posteriori; they are based on experience. There is, however, one important difference between Kants account of empirical concepts and those of the empiricists. Locke, for example, tends to look at concepts as paradigm cases of individualsDog would refer to a paradigm individual of the class of dogs. For Kant, as we saw in chapter 1, concepts are rules
27
for organizing manifolds of sense. For something to be a dog, the manifold of sense of that object must measure up to the dog rule. That is to say, the manifold must possess certain elementstail, head, etc.and all of those elements must be of the proper form or in the proper conguration. Pure or a priori concepts most certainly represent a great departure from traditional empiricists. It does not overstate the case to say that the central project of the rst Critique is to argue that there are concepts properly describing our sense-experienced world that are, nonetheless, logically prior to that sense experience. Such pure or a priori concepts are very limited in number. Kant argues primarily for the concepts of substance and causality as well as the two pure intuitions of space and time.4 Although there are obviously signicant differences between ordinary, a posteriori concepts and pure, a priori concepts it is nonetheless the case that a priori concepts are in a proper sense empirically determinant. That is to say, while a priori concepts are not derived from sense experience, they apply to sense experiencein fact Kant argues that they necessarily apply to sense experience. As such, like ordinary empirical concepts, a priori concepts are also rules specifying an order for an empirical manifold. For example, the a priori concept of causality requires that there be a necessary rule of temporal succession from one happening to another.5 Both a priori and a posteriori concepts are determinant as regards sense intuition insofar as we can specify, in both cases, what sort of sense manifolds fall under the concepts. However, both a posteriori and a priori concepts are to be distinguished from ideas according to Kant. In the rst Critique Kant is concerned to postulate a kind of representation distinct from concepts that applies to objects and states of affairs beyond the bounds of sense intuition and, hence, beyond the bounds of sense verication. Notably, in the rst Critique, Kant is primarily concerned with just three such ideas of reason: God, freedom, and immortality.6 None of these ideas is determinant according to Kant since we cannot specify the nature of the sense manifold that would count as instances of these ideas. We cannot do this since the objects or states of affairs are not objects of experienceare not the sort of things about which we can have sense knowledge. In the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant retains the basic distinction between ideas and concepts. It is still the case that concepts are concrete, determinant representations by which we can come to describe what an object would be like for sensible experience. Ideas, on the other hand, are representations (and no doubt problematic ones) that refer to objects and states of affairs beyond sensible experience. However, Kant wants further to distinguish between different kinds of ideasrational ideas and aesthetic ideas. Near the end of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant claims that aesthetic ideas are inexponible while rational ideas are indemonstrable. (Remark I, KU 5: 342,
28
Chapter 2
218.) Unusual language to one side, these labels are intended to reect the analysis indicated in the passage from above (KU 5: 314). Kant wants to claim that both aesthetic and rational ideas attempt to go beyond experience, but in different ways. Aesthetic ideas induce so much thought that concepts cannot be adequate to the job of representation. (They are inexponible.) Rational ideas, however, attempt to represent that which has too little intuition for a concept to get a grip on. (They are indemonstrable.) As is often the case when Kant attempts to make a technical distinction, he overdraws the difference between aesthetic and rational ideas. It seems to be Kants position that ideas attempt to represent objects and states of affairs that cannot be met with in ordinary sense experience. Ideas of reason, Kant now suggests, do this by way of abstraction. We might portray the idea of God, for example, by abstracting from mortal limitationsa being not limited by space and time, a being not nite in power, knowledge, or goodness. In an artwork, however, we may attempt to portray the very same idea of God, but this time we do so by giving some sense of God by suggesting, metaphorically or symbolically, that which cannot be directly experienced.7 Jupiters eagle, with the lightning in its claws brings to mind the mighty king of heaven because of certain analogies between the majesty of the bird and the majesty of God. Or, again using analogies, the idea of a monarchical state could represented by a body with a soul if it is ruled in accordance with laws internal to the people, but by a mere machine (like a handmill) if it is ruled by a single absolute will ( KU 5: 352, 226). Kant holds the position that artworks (and, as we shall see, natural objects as well) are able to express ideas of objects or states of affairs beyond our sensible experience by suggesting such things symbolically by way of an analogy.8 However, this account of expression is not without its problems. Even if we were to grant that objects and states of affairs beyond our sense experience can be suggested symbolically, it is an open question whether symbolism must always operate analogically. It seems quite likely that symbolism can function in a variety of ways to express ideasby making associations, by relying on certain conventions, and perhaps by other techniques. Further, unless symbolism is very broadly dened, it is quite likely that artworks express ideas by using techniques other than symbolism. For example an artwork might express a range of human emotions (often examples that Kant uses) by representing persons with outward demeanor characteristic of persons having those emotions. I would be hard pressed to call such a technique one of symbolism. In spite of these misgivings, Kants broad characterization of expression of aesthetic ideas seems plausible enough. An aesthetic idea is a representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking (KU 5: 314, 192). Or ex-
29
pression of an aesthetic idea is something else, which gives the imagination cause to spread itself over a multitude of related representations, which let one think more than one can express in a concept determined by words (KU 5: 315, 193). Kants general position here is that an artwork expresses an idea by stimulating the imagination to make associations that congeal into a notion of something that we cannot meet with directly in experience. This is an interesting account of expression even if Kant is mistaken about the specic details of how these associations are madenamely, whether they must all by analogical and symbolic.
2
At the very least Kant holds that artistic beauty can be a matter of expressing aesthetic ideas. We even have a rough description of how Kant believes that we come to appreciate that ideas are expressed. However, many questions about the doctrine remain. For example, most of Kants discussion of aesthetic ideas occurs, understandably enough, in the context of art and artistic creation. In fact, Kants primary explanation of how expression works is embedded in his account of how artistic genius creates an object that we come to appreciate as expressing an idea:
Genius really consists in the happy relation, which no science can teach and no diligence learn, of nding ideas for a given concept on the one hand and on the other hitting upon the expression for these . . . for to express what is unnameable . . . requires a faculty for apprehending the rapidly passing play of the imagination and unifying it into a concept (which for that reason is original and at the same time discloses a new rule, which could not have been deduced from any antecedent principles or examples), which can be communicated without the constraint of rules. (KU 5: 317, 19495)
Kants position seems to be the following. An artist through an exercise of genius is able to construct an object that stimulates a host of thoughts and associations (rapidly passing play of the imagination) and yet is able to shape these thoughts into a coherent whole suggesting a particular idea. More specifically, an artists genius is able to bring a new rule to organize his or her material in order to express an idea of an object or state of affairs that goes beyond our sense experience. Genius, in short, is intended as an account of how artworks are created such that they can be properly appreciated as expressing an idea. Given this account one may very well assume that expression of aesthetic
30
Chapter 2
ideas is something exclusive to art and artistic creation.9 Although this topic will be considered at length in the next chapter on art and nature, a little can be said here. At the very least, Kant does not hold the position that only art expresses aesthetic ideas. As we have seen above in 51, Kant quite explicitly holds that beauty of either art or nature can express aesthetic ideas (KU 5: 320, 197). One might complain that although Kant clearly says this, nonetheless, on his own grounds this makes no sense. Specically, it makes no sense to say that natural objects can express ideas. There certainly are some points against considering natural objects as expressing aesthetic ideas. Kants primary account of how objects come to express is given in terms of art. Artists through their use of genius create works such that when (properly) appreciated are understood to express an idea. But of course this account is unavailable to Kant for natural objects. There is no reason for Kant to believe that natural objects are created with the intention that it is appropriate for us to appreciate them as expressing an idea.10 Natural objects are not intentional objects. Since they are not intentional, it can be argued that it is mistaken to think that they could express anything. Only an account like the one Kant gives for artistic creation is appropriate to claiming that an object is expressive. That is to say, only if we can have reason to believe that an object is created with the intention that it communicate an idea, can we properly say of it that it expresses. Unfortunately, this way of understanding expression for both artworks and natural objects fails on Kants theory. As we have seen, Kants account of artistic creation relies on the notion of genius. Artists, through an act of genius, create their works. However, Kant has a quite Romantic notion of genius at work here.11 Creation of art by genius is not a self-conscious, intentional process. In fact, Kant holds that Genius is the innate predisposition of the mind (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art (KU 5: 307, 186). This position, again one familiar to the Romantic tradition, is that artistic ability is a natural endowment that the artist is neither well aware of nor much able to control. An artist, on Kants conception, is certainly not self-consciously planning to create a work that communicates an idea. There is a larger point here as well. Claiming that objects are products of intentions or purposes is particularly out of place in the Critique of Judgment (Kants third Critique). Kant makes it quite clear (for example, in the introductions to the third Critique) that the only appropriate kind of purposive judgments are ones that merely claim that we should regard objects as if designed for some purpose.12 To go farther and claim that an object is really designed to suit some purpose will often be beyond our powers to know. In the case of teleological judgments it may be particularly useful to interpret nature as if purposively designed, even though we cannot
31
determine whether it is in fact so designed. Kant takes the same position regarding aesthetic judging. In aesthetic appreciation we are required to look for purposiveness but, like teleological judgments, the purposiveness need only be on our interpretationwe need only be able to see objects as if designed for a purpose.13 If this is a correct account of expression for artworks, it has implications for both art and nature. First, it must be the case that we can properly appreciate an artwork as expressing an idea without knowing or even supposing that the artwork was created with an intention to express. (We need not, in the language of twentieth-century aesthetics, commit the intentional fallacy.) If interpreting an artwork as expressing an idea is not a matter of discovering the intentions of the artist, then it is plausible to say that we come to see an object as expressing an idea when we discern, attribute, or interpret an order to the elements of the work that add up to the expression of an idea. We may interpret an artwork as if designed by intention to express an idea. But if this is how we appreciate artworks in order to understand them as expressing ideas, then it is perfectly consistent for Kant to say that we can do this with natural beauty as well. We can also interpret nature as expressing an idea since interpreting an object as expressing does not require us to postulate an intentional creator. Also we can interpret nature as if intentional (purposive) (KU 5: 306, 185). For example, we can properly interpret a birds song as expressing joyousness and contentment. (KU 5: 302, 181) We can appreciate the beauty of trees by seeing them as majestic and magnicent or the beauty of the elds by seeing them as smiling and joyful (KU 5: 354, 354). Or quite generally, we can observe the cipher by means of which nature speaks to us in its beautiful forms (KU 5: 301, 180). We can do all of this without literally attributing intentionality to these natural objects. Each of these interpretations of the expressiveness of natural objects is properly made under the caveat that the object is seen as if intentionally created to express an idea. There is another problem that confronts Kants doctrine of expression of ideas. If it can be admitted that both art and nature are capable of being interpreted as expressing aesthetic ideas, it can yet be argued that beauty that expresses ideas is inferior to beauty that does not.14 The criticism here depends on a distinction Kant develops in 16 between free and dependent (or adherent) beauty with a decided evaluative preference for free beauty. Dependent beauty, as Kant denes it, is beauty that depends on a concept of what an object should be, whereas free beauty presupposes no such concept. (KU 5: 229, 114). Kant goes on to describe further this difference as one between beauties that do or do not have to signify something by themselves (KU 5: 229, 114). These characterizations have lead some to suppose that the free/dependent distinction is a dis-
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Chapter 2
tinction between beauty that does not express ideas (free beauty) and beauty that does express (dependent).15 If this is correct, then it can be argued that beauty as the expression of ideas plays a secondary role in Kant since as a species of dependent beauty it will always come out second best to free beauties. This reading of Kant blurs the distinction between ideas and concepts discussed earlier. Concepts, for Kant, are representations used to describe the world that can be given determinate, specic empirical content. Ideas, however, are just those problematic representations that cannot be captured by empirical, sense experience. In the earlier paragraphs of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant rejects the view that objects should be judged as beautiful according to how well they exemplify a conceptsuch is the doctrine of perfectionism.16 The free/dependent distinction, developed in 16, expands on Kants insistence that pure aesthetic judgments do not depend on concepts in the sense just sketched. The substance of the remark in 16 is that one should make a distinction between judging the beauty of objects that, by their nature, must depend on a concept and those that do not. For example, the beauty of a horse, of a building (such as a church, palace, arsenal, or garden-house), presupposes a concept of the end that determines what the thing should be, hence a concept of its perfection (KU 5: 230, 114). Alternatively, Kant believes that nonrepresentational art and at least some natural objects (owers, birds, and a host of marine crustaceans) (KU 5: 229, 114) are not appreciated as instances of some concept. They are for Kant free beauties. It would be a difcult task to defend completely Kants distinction between free and dependent beauty since it raises a host of problems.17 Fortunately, that task need not be addressed here. We need only notice that the issue of whether aesthetic appreciation depends on a concept is quite separate from the issue of whether an object expresses an idea. A free beauty like a ower could perfectly well express an idea. In fact, Kant uses the example of the white color of the lily seems to dispose the mind to ideas of innocence (KU 5: 302, 181). In this case the white lily expresses the idea of innocence and yet this has nothing to do with its dependence on a concept in Kants sense. This position can easily be expanded to rather un-Kantian examples of abstract art that would be nonconceptual, in Kants sense, but can clearly express ideas, particularly emotions. Alternatively, the architectural design of a church (a conceptually dependent object on Kants accounting) may yet express an idea. A Gothic church, one would hope, may express the idea of soaring spirituality. Seeing an object as, in part, the instance of a type (or representing the instance of a type) is a separate and distinct activity from appreciating an object as expressing an idea. Accordingly, it is not the case that objects that express ideas are necessarily also dependent beauties. The two categories are quite distinct.
33
3
Kant holds that aesthetic worth is determined by the pleasure we take in the formal aspects of an object. Even more narrowly he holds, at least in the Analytic, a doctrine of perceptual formalism. Aesthetic pleasure is to be found in the organization of an objects perceptible elements (as opposed to any cognitive contentany meaning): In painting and sculpture, indeed in all pictorial arts . . . the drawing is what is essential . . . not what graties in sensation but merely what pleases through form. And further, (a)ll form of objects of sense . . . is either shape or play: in the latter case it is either play of shapes (in space, mime and dance), or mere play of sensations (in time) (KU 5: 225, 226). It is hard to know what we should do with the doctrine of perceptual formalism. It is tempting to agree with Paul Guyer that Kant confuses a narrow doctrine of perceptual formalism with a wider position that follows from the free harmony requirement.18 The free harmony requirement does indeed entail a kind of formalism since, as we have seen, free harmony refers to the way a manifold is organized. However, at this level of generalization we need not specify what sort of elements comprise the manifold. It may be perceptual elements (perceptual formalism). It may be intellectual items (thought associations) or it may be even some third alternative. Unfortunately, as in the above quotes from 14, Kant sometimes seems to hold that only perceptual formalism follows from the free harmony requirement. This is surely mistaken since the free harmony requirement at most commits Kant to a formalism broadly speaking that is indifferent to the type of elements constituting the form. But further, as we shall see, it likely is not Kants intent to restrict free harmony to only a free harmony of perceptual elements. By his own examples, there are formal, free harmonies not comprised solely of perceptual elements. Regardless of where the truth lies in the above controversy, there is a problem for my interpretation. Kant seems committed to perceptual formalism, at least in a range of cases. If this is so, then one may argue that we cannot take seriously his claim that all beauty expresses aesthetic ideas. While it may be granted that expression involves a free harmony (as we saw perviously) and that this is a formal concern, it does not seem to be a concern with perceptual form. Expression of ideas requires a free play of various cognitive elements that add up to an idea. To take the aforementioned example, we can recognize that an artwork represents Jupiters eagle, with the lightning in its claws, by giving our imagination cause to spread itself over a multitude of related representations which results in the idea of the powerful king of heaven (KU 5: 315, 193). Expression, at least in this example, requires something quite different from perceptual form.19 As a result, it could be argued, expression of ideas is inconsis-
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Chapter 2
tent with perceptual formalism. Moreover, Kant clearly holds that objects can be beautiful in virtue of their perceptual form alone. Thus, expression cannot be a requirement for all beauty as Kant seems to claim. This criticism founders on one important premise. Expression of ideas is not inconsistent with perceptual formalism. First, setting aside textual considerations, it is easy to grant that an idea can be expressed through the appreciation of a perceptual form. We can attend to a perceptual form, a design a la grecque that may well signify nothing by themselves (KU 5: 229, 114) and yet can express any number of ideas. Further, as mentioned earlier, it seems to be the case with contemporary abstract art that we can attend to the perceptual form and yet claim that the work is expressive. And not only is this what we would say about form and expression, but Kant himself seems to offer just such a position later on in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. In 51 where he begins by asserting that, in general, beauty is the expression of aesthetic ideas, he gives a number of examples where art exemplies perceptual form and also expresses ideas. Kant gives the example of music where, as usual, the appreciation of perceptual form is all important. But he expands on this point in 53 where he claims that the the form . . . of these sensations (harmony and melody) serves only, instead of the form of a language, to express . . . the aesthetic idea of a coherent whole of an unutterable fullness of thought (KU 5: 329, 206). The upshot here is that Kant may well have overstated his case for perceptual formalism in the early stages of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. However, even if that is so, it does not rule out the importance of expression of aesthetic ideas. Expression is perfectly consistent with formalism, even perceptual formalism.20 We can take this point farther. Not only does it seem possible that a theory of expression can be compatible with formalism on the grounds that one could hold that we appreciate expression by attending to form; but also, there is every reason to believe that Kants own account of expression rests on precisely the same grounds as his supposed formalism. The core of Kants formalism, it will be recalled, is the claim that aesthetic appreciation involves a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. And, whatever exactly this harmony amounts to, it is an organization of a manifold of particulars. Harmonizing the imagination with the understanding involves the recognition of some kind of order of a manifold of particulars. I believe that there is a considerable amount of evidence that appreciating an object (whether art or nature) as expressing an idea is always achieved by a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. In the previous chapter we had a problem understanding how we could appreciate a manifold of particulars as freely conforming to the rulegovernedness requirement of understanding. We seem to be presented with the
35
dilemma that either a manifold is determined by a conceptual rule or it is determined by no rule at all. The rst horn of the dilemma is eliminated by Kants insistence that aesthetic appreciation is not a matter of recognizing a manifold as an instance of a concept. But, as we have seen, the second horn fares no better. If there are no rules at all, then it seems quite impossible to say that aesthetic appreciation is a matter of nding any sort of order in a manifold that is clearly the intent of Kants free harmony requirement. The doctrine of expression of ideas speaks to a number of difculties in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. As we saw in chapter 1, expression of ideas goes a long way to explain the possibility of a free (nonconceptual) harmony of the imagination and understanding. Appreciating beauty (either art or nature) as expressing ideas allows us to understand how we can appreciate a manifold as orderly yet without an order imposed by determinant concepts. The alternative is that we appreciate an object (as if) designed to express an ideas. In a strict sense, given Kants distinction between concepts and ideas, objects interpreted as expressing ideas are perfectly consistent with the requirement in the second moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful that aesthetic appreciation is a matter of taking pleasure in an object apart from a concept.
4
To claim that expression of aesthetic ideas helps to explain how we can perceive order in a manifold without violating Kants injunction against concepts may seem overly facile, overly technical. I want to suggest in this section that this technical discussion does have important implications both for Kants theory of aesthetics and the eld of aesthetics more generally. As we have seen, Kants principal complaint against judging objects aesthetically as instances of concepts stems from his rejection of perfectionism. That is to say, in the Second and Third Moments of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant argues that aesthetic appreciation must be something other that judging an object in terms of how well it approximates a perfect instance of a concept. Kants ofcial reason for rejecting concepts as the ground of aesthetic judgments is that there is no transition from concepts to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure (KU 5: 211, 97). It is virtually a rst principle of Kants position that aesthetic judgments are founded on pleasure felt by the subject. Kants complaint against seeing aesthetic judgments as some kind of conceptual judgment is that such judgments seem able to be made without involving any reference to pleasure in appreciation. Kant clearly holds that perfectionism is an implausible theory since it makes no reference to the pleasure we feel in appreciating an object. However,
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there is another quite frequent complaint that Kant has against perfectionism. Perfectionism allows little room for creativity or originality. Take the more obvious example of art. If the job of an artist is to create an object that is a near perfect instance of some determinant concept, then the process might be demanding but hardly original or creative. It is not creative since one knows full well what the artwork is to be like. It is not original since anyone striving to produce a work of perfection would presumably be going down the same path. In the latter sections of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant often contrasts beauty as expression of aesthetic ideas with a position like perfectionism on the grounds of originality. A key text in this regard is 46 with Kants discussion of Genius.21
The concept of beautiful art, however, does not allow the judgment concerning the beauty of its product to be derived from any sort of rule that has a concept for its determining ground. . . . Thus beautiful art cannot itself think up the rule in accordance with which it is to bring its product into being. Yet since without a preceding rule a product can never be called art, nature in the subject (and by means of the disposition of its faculties) must give the rule to art, i.e. beautiful art is possible only as a product of genius. From this one sees: That genius (1) is a talent for producing that for which no determinate rule can be given . . . consequently that originality must be its primary characteristic. (KU 5: 307, 186)
Kants criticism of using concepts here is a bit different from the original complaint in the Analytic; namely, that such a perfectionist doctrine does not adequately account for the pleasure at the base of an aesthetic judgment. In 46 (and elsewhere) Kant wants to stress the importance of originality of art and appreciation of beauty that is seen as breaking away from rules and concepts handed down. In the passage just quoted Kant appeals to genius as the ability to come up with new and original rules to produce artworks. And this account of genius and originality is further bound up with the expression of ideas. Kant goes so far as to dene genius as the ability to express ideas: Genius really consists in the happy relation, which no science can teach and no diligence learn, of nding ideas for a given concept on the one hand and on the other hitting upon the expression of these (KU 5: 317, 194). Even more, this faculty of genius is credited with the ability to be able to express these ideas by coming up with the sort of new rule referred to earlier. Genius is a faculty for apprehending the rapidly passing play of the imagination and unifying it into a concept (which for that very reason is original and at the same time discloses a new rule that could not have been deduced from any antecedent
37
principles or examples), that is communicated without the constraint of rules (KU 5: 317, 195). In the passages above Kant is rather loose with his use of concept. Given his distinction between ideas and concepts, he should have said genius is able to unify the imagination by use of a new rule (idea) and without the constraint of old rules (concepts). Despite Kants looseness concerning concepts and ideas (not uncommon, unfortunately), the doctrine of expression of aesthetic ideas plays an important role in his account of art and beauty more generally. With the doctrine of expression of ideas Kant can explain how he can talk about a harmony of the imagination and understanding that is free from concepts and original at the same time. Kants account of the expression of aesthetic ideas seems to be that ideas, by their very nature, attempt to refer to something beyond empirical experience. As such no ordinary concept will be adequate. Concepts, as we have seen, require determinant, empirical content. A proper empirical concept must describe the sort of thing to be met with in sense perception. This cannot be the case with the referent of an idea. If an object is constructed to express an idea we cannot construct the manifold in accordance with any given, empirical concept since concepts are not adequate to the job of referring to that which is beyond experience. Kant then suggests, but does not argue for, the claim that expression of an idea requires that one create an object according to some new rule. At rst glance this does not seem to be obviously true. To be sure, we can grant Kant the claim that representing objects and states of affairs beyond experience cannot be done by conceptthis is true by the very denition of concept. However, more would need to be said to defend the claim that expression of an idea must always be new and original and that this distinguishes expression of ideas from ordinary conceptualization. A couple of criticisms could be made here. First, it seems that even empirical concepts must have been, at some point, new rules.22 The concept of chair or dog was developed by someone at some time. Second, it does not seem that every time that someone creates an object in order to express an idea such expression must be original. If Jupiters eagle can express the idea of an attribute of the powerful king of heaven (KU 5: 315, 193) in one work of art, then it seems that anyone who subsequently (and quite unoriginally) uses this symbolic devise can also express the same idea. In spite of the above, Kants account of the originality of expression of aesthetic ideas can be defended. It is important to keep in mind that expression attempts to make sensible that which lays beyond sense experience (KU 5: 314, 192). This project, it can be argued, requires an originality not required for creating new concepts. One can very well have metarules for creating empirical
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conceptslook for common features among a group of objects you wish to group together under a new class concept. Ideas, since they are nonempirical in character, cannot work this way. Instead, Kant suggests that ideas can only represent symbolically by suggesting that which cannot be literally exemplied. This activity, plausibly, is one for which there are no guidelines. It may even further be true that there is no unique way in which to express an idea. Expression, unlike conceptualization, may be achieved in any number of ways. There are likely many ways to express an attribute of the powerful king. And, even if we were to grant that one could choose some standard and, by now, nonoriginal ways of expressing such an idea, it is nonetheless true that once upon a time originality was required in a way that it is never required for conceptualization.
5
In this chapter I have addressed several issues concerning Kants doctrine of aesthetic ideas. Centrally, I have wanted to give a description of what an aesthetic idea is for Kant and how an object is capable of expressing such ideas. But also, I consider some problems standing in the way of understanding the doctrine as applying widely to objects of beauty (both art and nature) while not depreciating the value of expression of ideas (not relegating expression to the status of mere dependent beauty). In this last section I want to make a few further remarks about the value of appreciating objects, aesthetically, for the ideas they express. It is clear that Kant believes that the expression of aesthetic ideas is valuable. It is, however, an open question how this value might gure into an aesthetic value judgment. This issue will be considered in the appendix. For now it will be sufcient to see why he thinks that the expression of aesthetic ideas is of value. It turns out that there are actually several reasons that Kant gives to support the value of expression of ideas. In 49, which contains the central description of aesthetic ideas, it is reasonably clear why the expression of aesthetic ideas is valuable. Kants position is that art and nature can give us some glimpse into objects and states of affairs that lay beyond experience. Kant gives the following example:
The sun streamed forth, as tranquillity streams from virtue. The consciousness of virtue, when one puts oneself, even if only in thought, in the place of a virtuous person, spreads in the mind a multitude of sublime and calming feelings, and a boundless prospect into a happy future, which no expression that is adequate to a determinate concept fully captures. (KU 5: 316, 194)
39
It seems quite clear that aesthetic appreciation of the expression of an idea is a valuable experience for Kant since such appreciation can do a job for us that can be done in no other way. Given Kants epistemological position in the rst Critique that knowledge must be limited by the bounds of sense, having any familiarity with that which lies beyond sense seems out of the question. Kant softens his position in the third Critique and the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, in particular. By way of aesthetic appreciation we get some sense of that for which we can have no empirical knowledge. The example Kant gives in the preceding quote illustrates the point. Presumably, we cannot form an empirical concept of the consciousness of virtue; however, the poet can yet give us some (metaphorical) sense of what such consciousness would be like.23 Expression of aesthetic ideas is valuable since it is the only way in which we can have some kind of representation of those objects and states of affairs that go beyond empirical knowledge. But there is a related point here as well. Presumably, Kants interests in the expression of ideas extends to representations of anything that might be said to be beyond the reach of empirical concepts; however, he is particularly interested in moral ideas. Kants examples of aesthetic ideas, although few in number, are often but not always examples of moral ideas. This leads to the claim that taste is at bottom a faculty for the judging of the sensible rendering of moral ideas (KU 5: 356, 230). This thesis, on the face of it, seems a bit narrow since, although it can be claimed as valuable that appreciation of beauty can give us insight into specic moral notions, it can give us a peek into other notions beyond empirical experince.24 There is a nal, and rather more difcult, argument to the value of aesthetic appreciation and one that also depends on Kants attempt to forge a link between aesthetic appreciation and morality. At 42 Kant claims that since it also interests reason that the ideas (for which it produces an immediate interest in the moral feeling) also have object (KU 5: 300, 180). This is part of an argument, which will be discussed in chapter 6, that proper aesthetic appreciation gives us reason to believe that the world (nature) is amenable to our acting on the basis of practical reason. That is to say, we are interested to know whether our ideas (of reason) can have an effect in what appears to be a mechanistically determined world. What is interesting about this passage is that Kant seems to be claiming that beauty as the expression of aesthetic ideas is able to engage this interest of reason. The passage cited above does not quite say this, but later in the discussion at 42 Kant describes how nature speaks to us in a language that seems to have a higher meaning and gives examples of aesthetic ideas like innocence, courage, and so on (KU 5: 302, 181). As such, one might read Kant here as arguing that beauty as the expression of aesthetic ideas is morally valuable to us since it gives us reason to believe that the world is
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Chapter 2
amenable to our efforts to act on practical reason. Again, I consider the question of the moral importance of aesthetic appreciation and its relation to aesthetic ideas in much more detail in chapter 6. What I want to argue here is that the doctrine of aesthetic ideas helps Kants general account of aesthetic in two important ways. First, it helps to ll out the difcult notion of a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. On my interpretation appreciation of an object as the expression of an aesthetic idea is not just compatible with nding aesthetic pleasure in a free harmony, it helps to explain how we can appreciate free harmony. Second, the doctrine of aesthetic ideas may also help to explain in Kant why aesthetic appreciation is of valuewhy we should take pleasure in free harmony and specifically free harmony as expression of ideas.
Natural and Artistic Beauty

In the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant makes a distinction between the aesthetic appreciation of artworks and natural objects. It is commonplace to suppose that the distinction has important evaluative consequences. For example, Kant is often understood to hold the claim that artworks are intrinsically inferior to natural objects and as such artworks should be judged by a different, and lower, standard than natural objects.1 It should be noted that just the opposite interpretation has also been proposed; namely, that natural objects are intrinsically inferior to artworks.2 The position for which I shall argue is that while Kant clearly makes a distinction between artworks and natural objects, it is a misreading of the text to suppose that he intends an evaluative preference for one category over the other. And, further, I hope to show that attempts to read Kant as having such an evaluative preference are based on misunderstandings of other key Kantian concepts and distinctionsespecially the distinction between free and dependent beauty, the notion of disinterestedness, and the relation between beauty and morality. In 45 of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment there is what I take to be a clear statement denying an evaluative distinction between objects of art and nature:
In a product of art one must be aware that it is art, and not nature; yet the purposiveness in its form must still seem to be as free from all constraint by arbitrary rules as if it were a mere product of nature. On this feeling of freedom in the play of our cognitive powers, which must yet at the same time be purposive, rests that pleasure which is alone universally communicable though without being grounded on concepts. Nature was beautiful, if at the same time it looked like art; and art can only be beautiful (schne) if we are aware that it is art and yet looks to us like nature. For we can generally say, whether it is the beauty of nature or art that is at issue: that is beautiful which pleases in the mere judging (neither in sensation nor through a concept). (KU 5: 306, 185) 41
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Kants position seems clear enough. There is a single criterion for beauty. Objects are beautiful when they are purposive but without purpose or, what is the same criterion, when they occasion the mental state of a free harmony of the imagination and the understandingthe criterion we considered in the rst chapter. Although the precise details of the notion of purposiveness without purpose or free harmony is subject to interpretative dispute as we have seen, broadly Kants position is that in order for an object to be judged as beautiful it must possess a certain orderlinessthe various elements must hang together in some fashion or other. However, the sort of orderliness displayed cannot be attributed to any actual purpose or concept. Kant excludes two sorts of orderliness as relevant to aesthetic evaluation. First, the orderliness of an object of taste should not be due to the fact that an object is an instance (perhaps a near perfect instance) of some general object. A horse (or a pictorial representation of a horse) will display an orderliness simply because all of the parts add up to a horse. As we have seen in previous chapters, this is part of Kants rejection of Leibnizean perfectionism. Second, an object may be orderly because each of the parts help serve some denite purpose. An automobile (or a pictorial representation of an automobile) will appear orderly because its parts contribute to the purpose of a vehicle. It has wheels, an engine, seats, and fenders, each of which contributes to the telos of an automobile. But again, Kant argues that such organization of purpose is not the kind of organization appropriate to aesthetic evaluation. Kants broad reason for why each of the above sorts of organization fails is connected to this claim that the pleasure at the foundation of a proper judgment of taste must be disinterested. The pleasure we take in an orderliness lent by a determinate concept (like horse) or a teleological idea (like automobile) is an interested pleasure. To oversimplify Kants argument, an object that is a good example of a horse pleases us because we are interested in possessing and using a horse. Or an object that serves the purpose of being a vehicle pleases us when we are interested in a means of conveyance.3 All of this is background for Kants position in 45, which seems straightforward enough. Both art and nature must live up to the same criterion: purposiveness without purpose (a free harmony of the imagination and understanding). Further, Kant gives no reason to believe that one kind of object regularly does a better or worse job at meeting this criterion. To be sure Kant recognizes differences between art and nature but apparently ones that are irrelevant to their consideration as aesthetic objects. Kant makes the double claim that we must approach art as if it were a product of nature and nature as if it were a product of art. What he has in mind is this. Artworks insofar as they are human artifacts are most certainly intentional objects. They are objects cre-
43
ated by humans with some intentionif only the intention of producing an aesthetic object. However, proper aesthetic consideration requires that we abstract from the fact that artworks are intentional and in this respect treat it as if a natural object. We should not be looking at artworks as designed, for example, to exemplify a concept or a teleological idea. But further, Kant claims that the proper aesthetic way to consider natural objects is as if they were works of art. Again, a good aesthetic object is one that displays purposiveness without purpose. Natural objects easily meet the without purpose requirement since, we suppose, they are not intentionally created. However, to consider an object aesthetically we must view the work as if created by an intentional agent in order to fulll the purposive requirement. In order to derive aesthetic satisfaction from appreciating a natural object, the object must seem as though all of its elements work together as though it were intentionally produced for the elements to function in this way. This is not to deny that there are differences between art and nature, even differences of some aesthetic signicance. For example, it could be said that when artworks fail to meet Kants criterion it is often due to the fact that the works are too studied in their appearancean artists intentions are too much in evidence.4 Alternatively, natural objects may characteristically fail to be aesthetically good because we have difculty considering them as if purposivewe can nd little rhyme or reason to their organization. But even though individual artworks and natural objects may have different relative strengths and weaknesses as aesthetic objects, the passages we have been considering insist on a single standard. Further, I see no prima facie reason to believe that one category of objects is incapable of meeting this criterion or even that one category of objects is less likely to meet the criterion.
1
In spite of the evidence given here Kant has been interpreted as making a strong evaluative distinction between art and nature. One attempt at a stronger reading depends on Kants further distinction between free and dependent (or adherent) beauty. In 16 Kant distinguishes between beautiful objects that do not presuppose a concept of what the object ought to be (free beauties) versus objects which do presuppose such an concept (KU 5: 229, 114). Kant seems to claim that the best we can do for a dependent beauty is to make an impure judgment of taste, while with a free beauty we can make a pure judgment.5 But further, this is thought to imply that objects capable of pure judgments of beauty (free beauties) are aesthetically superior to those capable only
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of an impure judgment (dependent beauties). The reason the latter are depreciated harks back to Kants arguments in the rst moment of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment that aesthetic judgments must be disinterested. Specifically in 2 Kant argues that aesthetic judgments must be free of conceptual interestedness. Kants point is that aesthetic judgments, based on felt pleasure in appreciation, are distinct from conceptual judgments. As we have seen, Kant is particularly concerned to distinguish aesthetic judgments from judging objects to be good representatives of a kind of object that does a good job of realizing some teleological end. Both of the latter judgments are, in Kants view, conceptual judgments, viz. judgments of how well an object ts a kind concept or how well an object meets a teleological concept (strictly speaking teleological judgments use ideas in Kants taxonomy). All such conceptual judgments are instances of interested judgments to be distinguished from properly disinterested aesthetic judgments. The claim in 4 is that conceptual judgments are interested in the sense that to judge an object to be good because it instantiates a kind concept or it suits a teleological idea assumes some prior concern with what kind is being realized or what end is being met. Kant claims that this sort of thing is antithetical to a contemplation of an object as good in itself (KU 5: 207, 93). Although there is much more to be said about Kants doctrine of disinterestedness, this is enough to set up the connection with free and dependent beauty (and additionally, the connection with artistic and natural beauties). According to Kant dependent beauties depend on a concept of what sort of thing the object is. One of Kants examples of such a dependent beauty is a church (KU 5: 230, 114). Simply put, in order to consider a churchs beauty our appreciation of the object is, in some sense, constrained by the fact that in order to be a beautiful church it must live up to minimal criteria for being a church (its not important here whether we consider church a kind concept or a teleological idea). However, it can be argued, to consider what sort of thing an object is (or what purpose it serves) amounts to taking an interest in the object and, given Kants cautions against interestedness, such a consideration will infect the purity of an aesthetic judgment. The partial conclusion here is that dependent beauties are aesthetically inferior to free beauties because our judgments of dependent beauties are tainted by conceptual interests. Kant seems to suggest as much when he distinguishes free beauty from beauty that is merely dependent or adherent (my emphasis, KU 5: 229, 114). Given this ammunition, an argument can be mustered for the aesthetic superiority of natural versus artistic objects. In 48 Kant draws the art/nature distinction in the following way: A beauty of nature is a beautiful thing; the beauty of art is a beautiful representation of a thing (KU 5: 311, 189). Further,
45
Kant seems to think that art is necessarily representational. To recognize something as an artwork is to understand what it represents. And, most contentiously, to evaluate an artwork is, at least partly, to evaluate the extent to which it is a good representation. But, so the argument goes, this entails that artworks are all dependent beauties, since they depend on a concept of what kind of thing is represented. Finally, from the above, since dependent beauties are inferior to independent beauties, the artworks are aesthetically inferior to natural objects.6 The free/dependent distinction is problematic, even without the questionable application to the art/nature distinction. It seems inappropriate on Kants own accounting to talk of objects as free or dependent beauties as opposed to evaluations (judgments) that are free or dependent. Any object, as Kant seems to admit, could be judged dependently, if one wanted. A vase could, in part, be considered for the extent to which it serves the purpose of holding owers. Or, Kants own example, a botanist might consider the extent to which a particular ower is a good example of the species, and so on (KU 5: 229, 114). Or, on the other side of the coin, it would seem that any object could be judged independently of whether a concept applies to it or not. One could consider the vase without regard to its being a vase and one could consider a ower without regard to its species. In fact, it is arguable whether Kants category dependent (or impure) judgments of beauty is coherent. According to the earlier arguments of the Critique a proper judgment of taste ought never consider exemplication of a concept or purpose as part of an aesthetic evaluation. One might say that proper aesthetic evaluation should always be independent of the application of concepts. As such, it could be argued that socalled dependent judgments of beauty are at best a proper aesthetic judgment plus an aesthetically irrelevant conceptual judgment. Whatever we make of the free/dependent distinction, it will not establish that natural objects are aesthetically superior to works of art. The discussion of 16 seems to imply that both artworks and natural objects can be considered as either dependent or free beauties. As such, the art/nature and free/dependent distinctions are not coextensive. We can have artworks that are free beauties and natural objects considered as dependent beauties. Even if Kant has a preference for free beauties over dependent beauties, it does not follow that this would necessarily support a preference for natural objects over artworks. As we have seen, Kant holds the unfortunate view that artworks (at least generally speaking) involve representation; subsequent developments in the history of art (notably abstract art) make this claim seem quite doubtful. According to Kant, artworks employ concepts because they represent something (exemplify a concept). However, even Kant is willing to admit that it is not universally true that all artworks are representational. He cites examples in 16 of
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designs a la grecque, foliage for borders or on wall-papers . . . are free beauties. Similarly, Kant holds that all music without a text would be considered free beauty (KU 5: 229, 114). These examples of nonrepresentational aesthetic objects are also clearly examples of artworks. However, even in cases of artworks that are representational it does not follow that our judgments of them must always be dependent and as such judged inferior to free judgments concerning natural objects. It seems entirely possible that an artwork, which represents an object, can do so in such a way that it achieves purposivenes without purpose or free harmony of the imagination and understanding and accordingly can be judged (purely, if you will) according to Kants general criterion. Just this position is implied by Kant in 48: So much for the beautiful presentation of an object, which is really only the form of the presentation of a concept by means of which the latter is universally communicated (KU 5: 312, 191). And Kant goes on to explain that the ability to pick the right form in which to present a concept requires taste. Taste, Kant describes elsewhere as a faculty able to recognize purposiveness without purpose (free harmony of the imagination and understanding).7 The point of these admittedly obscure remarks seems to be that artworks are representational, yet they are aesthetically meritorious when and only when the form of their presentation is purposive without purpose. But this implies that artworks, like natural objects, must adhere to the same purposiveness without purpose criterion. Thus, even if we must admit that artworks are representational, this does not imply that they will always end up lower on the aesthetic scale than natural objects.
2
There is a variant of the claim that the art/nature distinction corresponds to the free/dependent distinction. As we have seen in the last chapter, much of the latter portions of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment has to do with the notion of expression of aesthetic ideas (see 49 and further). It has been suggested that Kant has two quite different criteria for beauty: the formal criterion of purposiveness without purpose (or free harmony), seen in the early section of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and a substantive criterion of expression of ideas, found in the later sections. An explanation of these two, seemingly incompatible, criteria is that the rst applies to objects of nature while the latter applies to artworks.8 Further, it is often supposed that to express an idea is to represent a concept and anything that represents a concept is an inferior, dependent beauty. This line of interpretation goes awry on at least three separate accounts: (1) If my analysis of the free/dependent distinction is roughly correct, it does not
47
follow that representational art objects are necessarily inferior to nonrepresentational natural objects. The free/dependent distinction does not match up to the nature/art distinction. (2) Kants text does not support the claim that only artworks can express aesthetic ideas. In 51 he claims quite the contrary: Beauty (whether it be beauty of nature or art) can in general be called the expression of aesthetic ideas: only in beautiful art this idea must be occasioned by a concept of the object, but in beautiful nature the mere reection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be, is sufcient for arousing and communicating the idea of which the object is considered as the expression (KU 5: 320, 19798). Here, again, Kant assumes that artworks are (generally) representational; they assume a concept of what the object ought to be whereas natural objects do not. But, nonetheless, whether representational or not each sort of object can express ideas. Expression of ideas and representation of concepts are, on Kants accounting, two distinct enterprises. Further, Kant reinforces this point by giving examples of natural (nonrepresentational) objects that are properly regarded as expressing ideas. The white color of a lily expresses the idea of innocence and The song of the bird proclaims joyfulness and contentment with its existence (KU 5: 302, 181). The upshot is that it seems quite possible for natural objects as well as artworks to express aesthetic ideas. As such, one cannot make an evaluative distinction between artworks and natural objects on the basis of whether one or the other is capable of expressing ideas. (3) There is another problem with the interpretation under consideration. This interpretation assumes that representing by means of a concept is the same thing for Kant as expressing an idea.9 This is not so. The white color of the lily can express innocence without representing anything. Or an artist can produce a painting that represents Jupiters eagle but expresses the idea of a powerful king of heaven (KU 5: 315, 193). Or statues may represent humans, gods, animals, etc. but express all sorts of ideas (KU 5: 322, 199). The general point that expression of ideas and representation of concepts are not identical is implicit in the passage cited previously from 51. After asserting that both art and nature express aesthetic ideas, Kant goes on to mark the difference between art and nature by claiming that art expresses through the medium of a concept of the Object while natural objects express by bare reection upon a given intuition. On this accounting, art expresses ideas by rst representing something or other through a concept. For example, an artist may represent a nude in a painting and by means of which express the idea of gracefulness. Alternatively, Kant claims that we can appreciate the expressiveness of natural beauty without rst seeing it as representational. Again, we could quarrel with the sort of distinction Kant makes between art and nature here, but it is clear that he does not regard representation through a concept as equivalent to expression of ideas.
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3
There is one nal strategy that is sometimes used to make an evaluative distinction between artworks and natural objects. Toward the end of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant attempts to draw a connection between aesthetic judgments and an intellectual or moral interest in the objects judged. It is argued that Kant makes an important distinction between art and nature on the issue of moral or intellectual interest. Curiously, this line of argument is used alternatively to support the superiority of art over nature or nature over art.10 One way this argument can go is to claim that either art or nature promotes a moral or intellectual interest. But, given Kants commitment to disinterestedness, such objects must be inferior to the others that do not depend on an interest.11 In this respect the criticism is rather like the one based on dependent beauty. Some objects (and it is argued variously either art or nature) depend for their value on their ability to satisfy some moral or intellectual interest. But such objects are aesthetically inferior to the other group of objects that have no such dependence because, in general, Kant claims that genuine aesthetic merit should not depend on interests.12 This argument from disinterestedness wrongly assumes that the disinterestedness criterion rules out a moral or intellectual interest in beauty. If this criterion were to apply to moral interests, then it should not be permissible to consider an object disinterestedly and also take a moral interest in it. Yet, Kant holds just such a position: It also interests reason that the ideas (for which it produced an immediate interest in the moral feeling) also have objective reality, i.e., that nature should at least show some trace or give a sign that it contains in itself some sort of ground for assuming a lawful correspondence of its products with our satisfaction that is independent of all interest (KU 5: 300, 180). Here Kant claims that taking an interest in objects that are capable of producing in us a disinterested delight is akin to a moral interest. And, further, he apparently believes that taking the appropriate moral interest in objects is perfectly consistent with also considering them as a source of disinterested delight. In fact, Kant suggests that our moral interest is engaged just because the objects give us a disinterested delight. Rather obviously Kant means to distinguish aesthetically inappropriate sorts of interests criticized under the tag of disinterestedness from an appropriate interestnamely, a moral interest.13 There is a quite different attempt to distinguish the relative value of artistic and natural beauty on the basis of moral interest. In fact, it is the mirror image of the strategy just considered. Instead of condemning one sort of object because it promotes a moral interest, it is praised for just that reason. Specically, if one holds that promoting a moral interest is an important component to aes-
49
thetic value, then one could argue that any category of object that fails to promote such an interest (or promotes the interest poorly) is decient as an aesthetic object.14 Further, Kant has been interpreted as claiming that natural beauty satises an intellectual, moral interest while art does not.15 And, further, since satisfying such an interest is aesthetically valuable, then natural beauty is superior to artistic beauty. The text typically used to support the superiority of nature over art (on the basis of a moral interest) is 42. There Kant claims: Now I glady concede that an interest in the beautiful of art . . . provides no proof of a way of thinking that is devoted to the morally good. . . . By contrast . . . I do assert that to take an immediate interest in the beauty of nature . . . is always a mark of a good soul (KU 5: 298, 178). This position is difcult to maintain in light of other portions of the text. In the nal section of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (namely, the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment), Kant claims that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good, seemingly referring to both art and nature (KU 5: 353, 227). Specically, it is claimed that we often designate beautiful objects of nature or of art with names that seem to be grounded in a moral judging [my emphasis] (KU 5: 354, 228). If we take Kant seriously in 59, neither the superiority of art over nature or nature over art can be justied by their differing moral importance. Both, it seems, are of moral importance since both are equally able to symbolize morality. The passages at 42 and 59 seem to stand in sharp contrast. Or, more properly, 42 seems inconsistent with Kants more general claim that art and nature live up to the same evaluative standard as well as the more specic claim in the Dialectic that both art and nature can symbolize morality. Yet, we must take care to see precisely what Kant has to say in 42. He does not say that art is devoid of moral interest or that only nature promotes such an interest. Actually, the claim is not about the objects of taste but, rather, about people who take an interest in either art or nature and what can be inferred about their moral disposition. Kants point is that an interest in nature shows the mark of a good soul, whereas an interest in art does not show this. But this is consistent with the position in 59that both art and nature are of moral interest. It could be that Kant holds that both art and nature, if properly appreciated, are capable of satisfying a moral interest. Yet, it does not follow that people who contemplate art are as likely to recognize the moral worth of these objects as are those who contemplate nature. In fact, Kant seems to think that those who appreciate nature cannot miss natures moral signicance, while art lovers are apparently more easily distracted. There is another, and possibly better, explanation for the apparent conict between Kants position in 42 and later in 59. In the latter sections of the
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Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (4458) Kant makes a distinction between beautiful or ne art (schne Kunst) and merely agreeable (angenehm) art.16 Agreeable art is art intended to be agreeable to our sensesto please us immediately. Specically, agreeable art is intended to play on our emotions. Beautiful art, alternatively, is the higher category of beauty with which Kant is primarily concerned. It is the art that pleases through reection on the harmony of our faculties. To put the contrast in more contemporary terms, agreeable art might be the art of a soap opera calculated to provoke certain emotions; whereas, beautiful art is the art of the (much more thought-provoking) Greek tragedy. In light of this distinction it can be argued that Kants complaint in 42 is against agreeable art and is not intended to apply to beautiful art. There is yet one further reason, to doubt an important evaluative distinction between art and nature. As odd as it may seem, it can be argued that art (beautiful art) is indirectly a product of nature after all.17 Properly understood, the distinction between artistic and natural beauty collapses on the side of nature. This seemingly odd position comes to light in Kants discussion of artistic genius, which we discussed in the previous chapter. Art is produced by a creator who is not self-conscious of what he or she is doing: He himself does not know it and thus cannot teach it to anyone else either (KU 5: 309, 188). The artist, Kant claims, gives the rule to art although he or she is never conscious of what that rule is. Specically, what an artistic does not do is to bring a pre-given, conceptual rule to bear on his or her creation. This would be in direct violation of the Kantian requirement that beauty not depend on concepts. Instead, genius inarticulately and unselfconsciously comes up with a new rule for his or her creation that does not depend on preestablished, ordinary rules. Important to our present discussion Kant attributes creation of such unintended, beautiful art by genius to nature:
Genius is the talent (natural gift) that gives rule to art. Since the talent, as an inborn productive faculty of the artist, itself belongs to nature, this could also be expressed thus: Genius is the inborn predisposition of the mind (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art. (KU 5: 307, 186)
Beautiful art, according to Kant is a product of genius. But genius, it turns out, belongs to the workings of nature. Artistic creation by genius is, in fact, nature working through a human agent. The distinction between natural beauty and artistic beauty falls on the side of nature. Artistic beauty is a species of natural beauty. On the face of it there is a sharp conict between the position in 42 where Kant seems to assert that nature, but not art, is of moral value and the
51
position in 59 where he seems to claim that both art and nature equally have moral value. My position is that 42 does not advocate the strong view that it seems to. Only an inferior version of art is not able to lay claim to moral worth. There is, however, an alternative interpretation that has the apparent advantage of taking both 42 and 59 at face value and rendering them consistent. Henry Allison argues that Kant makes two distinct claims about the moral value of beauty.18 In 42 Kant wants to establish an intellectual, moral interest in beauty. This is the strongest, most important connection Kant makes between beauty and morality. In 59, however, Kant makes a weaker claim that beauty can be the symbol of morality. Thus, it is Kants consistent position that only natural beauty can satisfy a moral interest, while both natural and artistic beauty can play the lesser role of symbolizing morality. In chapter 6 we will be looking much more closely at Kants connection between beauty and morality, but we must venture a little way into the issue for present purposes. First, we need to have some idea why Kant holds in 42 that (natural) beauty can satisfy an intellectual, moral interest. On Allisons reading appreciation of (natural) beauty gives us a hint that nature might be amenable to our reective judging activityfree harmony is thought by Kant to be a species of reective judging. As we have seen in our earlier discussion, free harmony is a reective activity rather like the sort of reection we use when we attempt to see the world as instantiating ideas of reason. Specically, aesthetic reective judging is rather like the moral enterprise of realizing our moral idea (the moral law) in the world. As such, our appreciation of (natural) beauty gives us a hint that nature is amenable to our efforts to realize our moral ideas in the world. And this insight is of great moral interest to us.19 As we saw in our discussion of aesthetic ideas in the last chapter, the basis of this interpretation can be found in the passage at 42:
But since it also interests reason that the ideas (for which it produces an immediate interest in the moral feeling) also have objective reality, i.e., that nature should at least show some trace or give a sign that it contains in itself some sort of ground for assuming a lawful correspondence of its products with our satisfaction that is independent of all interest . . . this interest is moral. (KU 5: 300, 180)
To simplify this interpretation, Kant seems to be claiming that appreciation of natural beauty is, in part, noticing that objects are organized in such a way as to satisfy the purpose of reective judgment. This seems to be what Kant has in mind when he frequently claims that aesthetic appreciation presumes a certain subjective purposiveness of its objectsaesthetic objects satisfy our purpose to see the world as conducive to our reective judging efforts. But now
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Kant claims that nding nature subjectively purposive engages our moral interest since it suggests that nature is amenable to our moral ends. This is particularly pressing in the Kantian philosophy since according to the Critique of Pure Reason, strictly speaking, we cannot know that nature will allow us to impose our moral ends on the world. For all we know nature may be nothing but mechanical determinism and our efforts to shape the world by our ideas are in vain. The lesson of 42 is that appreciation of natural beauty engages our moral interest since it is a sign that nature is conducive to our moral will. However, so the interpretation goes, the point of 59 is quite different. In 59 Kant wants to show that beauty (either art or nature) can symbolize morality in the sense that judgments of beauty are similar in several respects to moral willing or moral judgments.20 For example, both aesthetic and moral judgments must be disinterested and the freedom of the imagination in aesthetic appreciation is rather like the expression of freedom in willing by the moral laws, and so forth. And, Kant is reasonably clear that both art and nature can symbolize morality in these ways.21 However, this is perfectly consistent with his claim in 42 that only natural beauty, not art, can satisfy an intellectual, moral interest. Lets grant for the sake of argument that Kants claim in 42 is that (natural) beauty is morally valuable because it allows us to see nature as amenable to our moral projects. Lets further grant that Kant makes other claims about the connection between beauty and morality that are less important than this one.22 Even granting all of this I want to argue that in paragraphs just prior to 59 Kant reasserts his claim from 42 that beauty requires us to see nature as conducive to our ideas. And, most important for our present purposes, Kant construes beauty in this context to include both nature and art. Further, it is even possible to see 59 itself as claiming that one of the reasons beauty (of art and nature) can symbolize morality is that both kinds of beauty can reinforce our belief that nature is amenable to the realization of our ideas. In the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment (5560) Kants ofcial task is to explain how to resolve the apparently conicting claims of judgments of taste. On the one hand such judgments seem to have a sort of objectivity and yet, on the other hand, they are based on subjective pleasure. Kant attempts to solve this dialectic in a fashion supercially similar to the dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant will argue that the Dialectic can be solved only by postulating something about a supersensible while also asserting an idealism concerning this supersensible.23 To put it a bit more simply, Kant claims that the solution to the dialectic requires us to consider that the world may have features hidden from our senses while at the same time appreciating that we can have no knowledge of such things. Fortunately, we need not go into detail concerning the solution to the Dialectic, but we do need to be a bit clearer about how Kant is using super-
53
sensible and idealism in these sections. Kant tells us in Remark II following 57 that he is dealing with three senses of the idea of a supersensible:
First, that of the supersensible in general without further determination, as the substratum of nature; second, the very same thing, as the principle of the subjective purposiveness of nature for our faculty of cognition; third, the very same thing, as the principle of the ends of freedom and principle of the correspondence of freedom with those ends in the moral sphere. (KU 5: 346, 22021)
Admittedly, this passage is not a paradigm of clarity. However, Kant seems to be dealing with the following three senses of the supersensible. First, there is the bare idea that under the appearance of experiences there is a supersensible substrate. But second, and most relevant to our present discussion, there is an idea of the supersensible of nature as suiting the purposes of our cognitive facultiesnotably, as mentioned in 57, the power of judgment (reective judgment) itself (KU 5: 340, 216). And nally, Kant includes the supersensible in the explicitly moral sense of realizing ends of freedom. The second use of supersensible seems to be making just the same point as that made in 42. At the very heart of the aesthetic experience and the aesthetic judgment is the sense that nature is subjectively purposive in the sense that we are able to see nature as conducive to our higher cognitive aims (a claim that exceeds our sense experience). Kant is arguing that the dialectic of aesthetic judgment can only be solved if we assume that aesthetic experience is based on the supersensible idea that nature is conducive to reective judgmentthat nature is conducive to our ideas. But this, Kant suggests in the passage above, is very much akin to our project as moral agents of realizing our moral ideas in the world. The upshot here is that in the Dialectic (55f) Kant continues the theme, begun in 42, that appreciation of beauty allows us (perhaps requires us) to see nature as subjectively purposive, as responsive to our attempts to impose our ideas on it. There is a shift in terminology, however, this way of looking at nature is now described as regarding nature as having a supersensible underpinning. This theme continues in 58. In 58, however, Kant wants to insist that the notion that nature is subjectively purposive is only ideal. We only regard nature as if purposive for us. We can have no empirical evidence of this supersensible design. What is interesting in the discussion of the Dialectic (at least from 5558) is that Kant believes that beauty of both art and nature tells us something about the supersensible. For instance, Kant includes in the discussion of beauty and the supersensible the example of artistic genius and the expression of aesthetic ideas (KU 5: 344, 219). Art produced by genius is given as an example of how beauty points to the supersensible in the way described
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above. But, perhaps most explicitly, in 58 where Kant insists that the purposiveness of nature that we seem to observe in aesthetic experience is to be regarded as ideal, he claims that the idealism of the purposiveness in judging of the beautiful in nature and in art is the only presupposition under which we can explain the possibility of taste, which demands a priori validity for everyone (KU 5: 351, 225). This is about as clear as Kant can be. Aesthetic appreciation is a matter of appreciating nature as if purposive for our higher cognitive abilities (applying ideas to the world). This is the sort of thing that engages our intellectual, moral interest. (The same position as 42.) And now, Kant claims that this role applies to both art and nature. When Kant turns to the issue of beauty as the symbol of morality in 59, he lists four ways in which beauty is analogous to (symbolizes) morality. Admittedly, the notion of an interest in nature being purpose for our higher faculties is not included in the list (KU 5: 354, 22728). However, in the paragraph immediately preceding the list Kant again makes reference to the supersensible and the idea of nature harmonizing with our higher cognitive goals (KU 5: 353, 227). It is very tempting to conclude that nding nature to harmonize with our higher faculties is intended here to be an important element in beauty symbolizing nature. And, as Kant asserts in the same context, this is something that works with the beautiful objects of nature or of art (KU 5: 354, 228). It is uncontroversial that the Dialectic makes connections between beauty and morality that are intended to include both art and nature. However, contrary to Allison, I see that one of these connections is precisely the same as the one advocated in 42, which presumably applies only to natural beauty.24 In the end it is 42 that seems the anomaly in Kants position on the moral interest in beauty. Perhaps, as suggested above, the best explanation for the anomaly is that, without being terribly clear about it, Kants complaint against art in 42 pertains only to mere agreeable and not to serious beautiful art, which stands on all fours with natural beauty.
4
Kant makes a distinction between artistic and natural beauty. In addition to the obvious point that artworks are human artefacts and natural objects are not, he holds that artworks presuppose a concept of what the object ought to be (KU 5: 229, 114). This position is best understood, I believe, as a claim that artworks are representational. This seems to be Kants basic distinction between art and nature in Kants aesthetics. But this slender difference, I maintain, does not yield an important evaluative distinction between art and nature. Instead, Kant
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should be taken seriously at 45 that there is a single criterion for either artistic or natural beauty: That is beautiful which pleases in the mere judging (KU 5: 306, 185). That is to say, aesthetic judgments are based on pleasure the source of which is a kind of judging and, as we know, that judging is the problematic state of a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. Both art and nature are subject to the same criterion, but further there is no reason to believe that one or the other category is better at suiting this criterion. There is no reason to believe that art is always or generally superior to nature or the reverse. More specically, I have taken to task attempts to map other seemingly evaluative distinctions Kant makes to the art/nature distinction. One cannot say, for example, that the art/nature distinction maps onto the free/dependent distinction. Specically, one can make free aesthetic judgments about artworks, even representational artwork. Further, there is no good argument to show that artworks and natural objects fare differently as regards their ability to engage a moral or intellectual interest. To the extent that such an interest is engaged because beauty shows nature to be subjectively purposive, I argue that yet again both art and nature are equal to the taskas indeed Kant himself seems to hold in the Dialectic. Kant has a single criterion for beautythat an object must please by means of engaging a mental state of free harmony. Apparently either art or nature can do this so long as we are careful to attend to each sort of object properly. And further, I believe that if Kant is carefully read he does not assert the evaluative superiority of either art or nature as has been suggested by some authors. As such, while Kant distinguishes between artistic and natural beauty it is unlikely that the distinction will play a substantive role in Kants overall argument in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.
Free Harmony and Aesthetic Pleasure

The purpose of this chapter is to concentrate on the foundational issue of pleasure in free harmony. We need to know why Kant believes that free harmony is pleasing and, to a lesser extent, what possible grounds there are for claiming that it is universally pleasing. I will argue against a current interpretation that focuses on the early sections the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and holds that pleasure is the way we recognize the quasi-cognitive state of free harmony. As an alternative I will offer an interpretation, which I call an evaluative interpretation, that emphasizes the latter sections of Kants work where he develops his doctrine of the expression of ideas. This is additional support for my position that a full understanding of Kants notion of a free harmony of the imagination and understanding requires the aid of his doctrine of aesthetic ideas.
1
Kant holds that judgments of taste, as subjectively universal, are based on the supposed pleasure of free harmony. This is not a controversial interpretation; however, lling out the details of this sketch is considerably controversial. Problems in interpretation begin early in the third Critique. In 9 and 21 of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant questions whether the feeling of pleasure is prior to or posterior to the judging (der Beurteilung) of the object (KU 5: 216, 102). Kants position is that pleasure must be posterior to (and based on) such judging. His argument is that if the pleasure were prior to judging, the pleasure could only be mere subjective pleasure with no claim to universality. But further, since Kant has already argued that concepts are inappropriate to beauty, the sort of judging in which we take pleasure cannot be the ordinary kind of judging we run across. Normally, judging is a matter of applying a concept (from the understanding) to a manifold of sense (from the imagination). However, since concepts are ruled out, we must assume that the judging involved here is (somehow) free of concepts. That is to say, there must be a free harmony of
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understanding and imagination. But now we have a problem. Kant argues that a judgment of beauty must be founded on pleasure and that, in turn, the pleasure must be founded on judging the object. This apparently says that a judgment of beauty must be based on the pleasure of judging an object to be beautiful. This surely looks like a vicious circle; namely, this position seems to be that one must base a judgment of beauty on a preceding judgment of beauty. There is a way to avoid this circularity. Donald Crawford, Paul Guyer, and others have argued that Kant is best read as referring to two acts of judging in our experience and assessment of beauty.1 One act is the ofcial judgment of beauty. To judge an object to be beautiful we claim that it gives us pleasure and that this pleasure is universally valid or universally shared. But further it can be argued that to claim universal validity it must be assumed that the pleasure is based on another, distinct act of judging. This second act is characterized by a free harmony of the understanding and the imagination. Distinguishing two different acts of judging avoids the circularity. It has been argued recently that the two-act interpretation is awed. For instance, Hannah Ginsborg claims that there is but one, perhaps complex, judgment.2 Under this recent interpretation we judge an object to be freely harmonious. That is to say, we judge a manifold of sense to be generally orderly but without applying any denite concept (rule) to specify that orderliness. However, so the interpretation goes, if we look carefully at the text of 9 and 21, we nd that pleasure is not something separate from the free harmony judgment. Indeed, Kant seems to claim that we recognize free harmony only by a feeling of pleasure. Accordingly, there is no need for another judgment that free harmony causes or occasions pleasure. Pleasure is part and parcel of the singular act of judging an object to be freely harmonious.
The powers of cognition that are set into play by this representation are hereby in a free play, since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition. Thus the state of mind in this representation must be that of a feeling of the free play of the powers of the representation in a given representation. (9, KU 5: 217, 102)
This point is restated in 21 where Kant is again discussing the free play or free harmony of the imagination and the understanding: this disposition cannot be determined except through the feeling (not by concepts) (21, KU 5: 239, 123). Kants reasoning in 9 and 21 seems to be this. Typically, we recognize the orderliness of a manifold by applying a concept. However, since free harmonies are free precisely because they do not involve the application of a concept, there must be some other way to recognize them. Kant suggests (with lit-
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tle argument) that a feeling of pleasure will do the recognitional job: We can (pleasingly) feel when our faculties are freely harmonious. On this interpretation there is no reason to distinguish between judging a manifold to be freely harmonious and accounting for aesthetic pleasure. Moreover, there is no need for another judgment of beauty beyond this free harmony judging. We judge a manifold to be freely harmonious. This requires using a feeling of pleasure to recognize the free harmony. And if we reect on the source of this pleasure, we realize that we have the right to expect such pleasure to be felt by anyone who cares to appreciate the object. This latter claim is again made in 9 and 21.
Now this merely subjective (aesthetic) judging of the object, or of the representation through which the object is given, precedes the pleasure in it, and is the ground of this pleasure in the harmony of the faculties of cognition; but on that universality of the subjective conditions of the judging of objects alone is this universal subjective validity of satisfaction, which we combine with the representation of the object that we call beautiful, grounded. (9, KU 5: 218, 103; see also 21, KU 5: 238, 12223)
Kant argues that we must assume that cognitive abilities are universal among mankind. Further we must appreciate that cognition, on Kants account, is a matter of organizing manifolds of the imagination by the understanding. Thus, so the argument goes, since recognizing free harmony (by the feeling of pleasure) is also recognizing a relation between understanding and imagination, we have good reason to suppose that this recognition will also work in the same way for all persons. Thus, we have good reason to suppose that all persons will recognize free harmony by the same feeling of pleasure. As such, we have shown that free harmony is universally pleasing. But this, then, is just the ofcial judgment of beauty. Again, we have no need for two acts of judgment. There clearly are differences between the Crawford/Guyer interpretation on the one hand and the Ginsborg account on the other hand. However, it is my position that these differences are not best explained by counting the number of judgments involved. It seems overly subtle to distinguish between two distinct acts of judging versus one complex act. On the Crawford/Guyer interpretation there is one free harmony judgment producing pleasure and a second judgment of beauty claiming that the pleasure is universal. On the Ginsborg interpretation there is a single judgment where we pleasurably discern free harmony and, at the same time, realize that this pleasure is universal. The differences here seem less than earthshaking. Although there are differences between the two interpretations, they tend to be obscured, not illuminated, by the one-act/two-act debate. A genuine dif-
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ference between the two interpretations concerns the nature of the connection between free harmony and pleasure. The Ginsborg interpretation focuses on 9 and 21, where Kant seems to argue for an epistemic connection between free harmony and pleasure. Presumably the only way we can know when there is a free harmony is by a feeling of pleasure. On the Crawford/Guyer interpretation, we judge an object to be freely harmonious and, as a separate issue, we nd this activity to be pleasurable.3 (Or, on some species of the interpretation, it is claimed that free harmony causes pleasure.) The Crawford/Guyer interpretation maintains some distance between free harmony judging and pleasure. Judging a manifold to be freely harmonious is one thing; nding free harmony to be pleasurable is quite another thing. On the Ginsborg interpretation this distance reduces to zero. Free harmony neither causes pleasure nor is found to be pleasurable; instead, pleasure is the very way in which we recognize free harmony. Given the close connection between free harmony and pleasure it makes no sense to talk about a further judgment to determine what is the source of aesthetic pleasure. Claiming that pleasure is the way we recognize free harmony may, in fact, understate the tightness of the connection. Presumably, the feeling of pleasure does for the free harmony relation between understanding and imagination what concepts do for a determinate relation between these faculties. From the rst Critique of Pure Reason (Kants rst Critique) we know that what makes a relation determinate is the conceptual ordering of the manifold of the imagination. A concept does not merely recognize an orderliness but constitutes the order. There is no order without the rule ordering provided by a concept. There can be no manifold of sense representations constituting dog order unless we apply the dog ordering rule (concept). If we were to push the analogy here between free and determinate harmonies, then we would have to say that pleasure doesnt simply allow us to recognize the free harmony between understanding and imagination, but somehow makes the harmony possible. This begins to look very odd. We can comprehend how a manifold can be ordered by rules. It is difcult to understand how a manifold may achieve orderliness by applying (if this is the right term) a feeling. I am far from certain whether the last bit makes any sense at all.
2
The contested issue between the two interpretations is one central to Kants aesthetics. The issue is a proper explanation of the claim that free harmony is universally pleasing. Only if we can explain and justify this, can we ground the universal validity of aesthetic judgments since universal validity requires the
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universality of our feeling of pleasure.4 However, my position is that the Ginsborg interpretation fails, for several reasons, to give a good explanation of this key point. To begin with, it is far from clear that a recognitional interpretation is consistent with Kants position in the rst Critique. In the rst Critique Kant argues that knowledge of objects requires our organizing a manifold of sense by a conceptwhere concepts are construed as rules. The importance of being able to rule-order a sense manifold and, correspondingly, the importance of grounding concepts in sense experience is expressed by Kant in a notable passage: Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind (A51/B75). Kants point is that we must be able to show that our thoughts have application to the world and, important to our present issue, we must also be able to show that a collection of sense data (intuition) adds up to something. That is to say, we must be able to show that we can apply a concept to such a collection. Lamentably, the recognitional interpretation seems to violate the second half of Kants dictum. Quite surprisingly, on the new interpretation we seem able to recognize (make sense of) a manifold without applying a concept, rule, or principle of any kind. But it would seem that, by the light of the rst Critique, we ought to be blind to such a nonconceptualized manifold.5 The rst Critique passage is not easy to dismiss. There is an important reason why Kant insists that intuitions require concepts. A cornerstone of transcendental idealism is the claim that sense data by themselves yield no knowledge of the world. To wrest knowledge from an otherwise bewildering array of input to our senses we must be able to organize the data in some fashion. This notion plays a large role in the Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts in the rst Critique of the Understanding, where Kant argues the general claim that all objects, in order to be knowable, must be organizable in terms of certain key concepts: pure concepts like substance and causality. But even if one could allow for a nonconceptual relationship (harmony) between imagination and understanding, it is far from clear that a feeling is the sort of thing that could establish and recognize this peculiar relationship. As we have seen above, a feeling seems particularly ill suited to provide the kind of organizing that is required.6 Actually, there are two problems here. First, it is difcult to understand, on any interpretation, how there can be a harmony between understanding (the faculty of rules) and imagination without employing any concepts (rules).7 Second, there is a specic problem with the role of feelings. If one were to cast about for an alternative to concepts for bringing order to a manifold, a feeling would seem a very unlikely candidate. It is very difcult to understand how a feeling could lend order to a manifold of sense. However, these are not the only problems with the recognitional interpretation. Although difcult to understand, lets grant that we know how to rec-
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ognize a free harmony by a feeling. And lets further grant that a feeling is the only way to make this recognition. We still have a long way to go in order to reach the desired conclusion. Kant needs to conclude that free harmony is the source of a universally valid pleasure. What is needed from the argument of 9 and 21 is not merely the claim that the only way we recognize a free harmony is by a feeling but by two additional, and not obviously true, claims. It must also be argued that every one of us recognizes free harmony by the same feeling. And further, it must be argued that this common feeling is pleasure and not some other feeling. Lets look at these additional claims. From the simple argument that free harmonies can only be recognized by some feeling nothing follows about the nature of that feeling other than its ability to recognize free harmonies. Specically, it does not follow, without further argument, that the feeling in question is pleasure. It would seem that nausea or tingling or vertigo or any old feeling could function as my free harmony recognitional feeling. Each of these are feelings, not concepts, and on the basis of the recognitional argument alone each could be a way of recognizing a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. However, it is important for Kant that the feeling that grounds judgments of beauty is pleasure. Pleasure is not just any old feeling. There is a considerable evaluative difference between claiming that experiencing aesthetic objects is pleasurable versus nauseating. Kants aesthetic theory would be considerably less plausible if he were to argue that objects that stimulate a feeling of nausea are the beautiful ones. The recognitional interpretation does not take into account the fact that to claim that something is pleasurable is to make a positive evaluative claim. This evaluative implication does not attend to just any feeling. There is a further complication with the recognitional interpretation. Even if Kant could argue that the feeling by which we recognize free harmony is pleasure, this would commit him to a position that he may very well not want to hold. It is common, and I think correct, to say of Kant that the feeling of pleasure taken in appreciation of beauty is not qualitatively different from other pleasures. To hold that beauty is that which gives us a qualitatively unique feeling of pleasure is to hold a position that, for Kant, is too subjective and thus too close to the empiricists position of his time. Rather, and here I agree with other commentators like Paul Guyer, Kants true position is that aesthetic pleasure is to be distinguished from other pleasures not because it is qualitatively unique, but because it has a different source from other pleasures.8 Unfortunately, the recognitional interpretation cannot take this line; it must assume a qualitatively unique feeling. On the new interpretation the only way we can identify a free harmony is by a feeling. However, if a feeling is the only way to identify free harmony, then the feeling must be qualitatively unique.
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We must be able to say, on each occasion, that we know that we are experiencing a free harmony because we are having a pleasurable feeling unlike any other: Our recognition must be based on the quality of the feeling since the alternative of distinguishing pleasures based on where they come from is not available on this interpretation. We cannot take this latter route since it would require us to be able to independently recognize a free harmony.
3
There are problems with building an epistemic connection between free harmony and pleasurethe claim that pleasure is the way in which we recognize an occurrence of free harmony. However, while I believe that there are problems in making this connection, I do not want to insist on the exegetical claim that Kant never intended to forge such a link. He may well have irted with some such argument, but there are other strands of argument in the text as well. My claim is simply that Kant has another and better strategy for grounding aesthetic judgments.9 Lets reconsider the central question of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. The question is, Why should we believe that free harmony is universally pleasurable? There is an alternative to the epistemic, recognitional interpretation. I shall call it the evaluative interpretation. It will help us to understand how free harmony can be pleasing, if we rst appreciate that pleasure has evaluative implications. Typically, but not always, objects please us because they satisfy our desires. It is an obvious bit of folk psychology to observe that people have aims, desires, and purposes and that the realization of these aims gives pleasure. In fact, we commonly value our aims and this is why we take pleasure in their attainment. In the published introduction to the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant makes just such an observation: The attainment of every aim (Absicht) is coupled with a feeling of pleasure (KU 5: 187, 73). This is no idle remark. Kant has a strategy of arguing that free harmony is (universally) pleasing just because it represents the satisfaction of a (universal) aim. The kind of interpretation I am offering has been called a causal account of pleasure.10 That is to say, a remark like the one cited previously is understood to mean that the attainment of an aim causes a feeling of pleasure. Specifically, one would argue that free harmony, as the attainment of an aim, causes pleasure for all of us. I believe that this is not what Kant intends and, independently, it is a poor account of the relation between pleasure and the attainment of aim. When we satisfy a desire, attain an aim, or realize a goal it is likely mistaken to say that these activities cause us to have pleasure. Scratching an itch may cause me pleasure, not realizing a goal. It is simpler and more accurate
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to say that we take pleasure in attainment of aims because we value these aims. There is a good analogy here between the relation of pleasure and free harmony in Kants aesthetic theory and the relation between moral feeling and the categorical imperative.11 Often persons are merely caused to have various feelings; however, Kant at least hopes that rational creatures can also take an interest in the moral law and have a positive feeling for the law because of our perception of its value. This is what Kant describes as a feeling of respect. I believe that a similar, noncausal account of pleasure is at work in the aesthetic theory of the third Critique of Judgment (Kants third Critique). It should be clear enough that Kant wants to associate pleasure in free harmony with the broader account of pleasure in attainment of aims. But we need to be a bit more specic. It is useful here to consider Kants often repeated point that the mental stare of free harmony is subjectively purposive or subjectively nal (subjective Zweckmassigkeit). The claim is that free harmony suits the general purpose of judging that, as we have seen, consists in bringing order to a manifold of particulars. Recall that a free harmony is a free (nonconceptual) relationship between the understanding and imagination. As a relation between the two faculties free harmony presumably qualies as a successful judging activity. Perhaps the best passages for this interpretation are 6 and 7 of the published introduction. In these sections Kant makes a general connection between pleasure and the satisfaction of judgmental aims.12 He argues that all of us have a need to employ our understanding to naturea need to bring order to manifolds of sense. Insofar as we are able to achieve this ordering, we satisfy one of our aims. And, nally, we take pleasure in this satisfaction:
If pleasure is connected with the mere apprehension (apprehensio) of the form of an object of intuition without a relation of this to a concept for a determinate cognition, then the representation is thereby related not to the object, but solely to the subject, and the pleasure can express nothing but is suitability to the cognitive faculties as they are in play, and thus merely a subjective formal purposivesness of the object. (KU 5: 18990, 7576)
The outlines of Kants position are comparatively clear. Objects that occasion a free harmony satisfy the general aim of judgment by nding sense experience amenable to our organizational efforts. To the extent that such objects satisfy this aim, we take pleasure in them. And further, Kant argues, everyone shares this judgmental aim. The universality of this aim is thought to follow from our universally shared cognitive abilities. Given the proper interpretative context, I believe that we can see this argument at work even in 9, the supposed locus of the epistemic interpretation: On that universality of the subjective
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conditions of the judging (beurteilen) of objects alone is this universal subjective validity of satisfaction, which we combine with the representation of the object that we call beautiful, grounded (KU 5: 218, 103). Kant holds that we all share the same conditions for judgment. This can be understood as the claim that we all share the same judgmental goals and the same judging abilities. Granting these shared goals and abilities, we can all come to agree that a particular object engages our free harmony and that the harmony is satisfying. Finally, we can all agree that the object is pleasing because it satises a common aim. And, as such, the object is a source of universal pleasure. The details of Kants position need some work. Specically, there is a danger that the explanation for why free harmony pleases covers too much ground. If Kant claims that free harmony pleases because it satises the general aim of harmonizing imagination and understanding, then it is difcult to comprehend why paradigm objects of beauty occupy a special status. Any object, it would seem, will be pleasing on this account. Any ordinary empirical object is capable of harmonizing these faculties in several ways. Empirical objects are subsumable under the rst Critiques pure concepts of the understanding (substance, causality, etc.).13 Such objects are also subsumable under ordinary empirical concepts (table, chair, rock, bottle, and so on). Further, objects or collections of objects can be interpreted teleologically, which is yet another way to attribute orderliness to a manifold of particulars. If Kant wants to say that a free harmony is pleasing simply because it satises our organizing aim, then all objects (of experience) are pleasing because all objects satisfy this aim in various ways. Seemingly everything is beautiful for Kant.14 The concern that pleasure in an objects subjective purposiveness may be all encompassing is a problem that an interpretation like mine must face. In fact, we shall consider it in the next chapter. However, what I want to point out is that Kant recognizes this problem and the fact that he addresses it is indirect evidence for my evaluative interpretation. In the introduction to the third Critique Kant seems to admit that the application of the categories constitutes a harmony of the faculties and, as such, demonstrates subjective purposiveness. However, he attempts to avoid the conclusion that such objects are pleasing. Kant argues that applying the categories to objects is such an ordinary and pedestrian instance of subjective purposiveness that we no longer detect any noticeable pleasure (KU 5: 187, 74). I suspect that this argument will not stand much scrutiny; however, it shows that Kant is concerned with the problems that follow from nding pleasure in free harmony to be the satisfaction of a judgmental aim. It should be noted that there is a better strategy toward the end of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment for distinguishing free harmonies from other harmonies that satisfy our judgmental aims. As I have suggested in earlier chap-
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ters, the doctrine of the expression of aesthetic ideas can help to ll out Kants position. Kant holds in the latter sections of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (4243) that certain ideas like hell, eternity, creation, envy, love, fame, and others (KU 5: 314, 192) can be expressed in works of art and even by interpretation of natural objects. It is Kants position that such aesthetic ideas (like their cousins the rational ideas) are too big to be represented by ordinary empirical concepts. There are a couple of important points about expression of aesthetic ideas, discussed in chapter 2, that are relevant here. First, the act of interpreting an object as expressing an idea is an instance of a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. Moreover, it is a harmony that is both free of concepts and yet displays an organizationan organization that adds up to an idea. Further, it may well be that in this particular instance free harmony is valuable (pleasurable) for everyone because it fulls the special role of expressing notions that cannot otherwise be portrayed. Potentially, then, the account on offer here will solve several of the problems left dangling by the recognitional interpretation. The appeal to expression of ideas can explain how we are able recognize a manifold as constituting a harmony of the faculties (i.e., showing an orderliness) without using concepts. The order is lent by ideas. And further, unlike the recogntional interpretation, we can explain why a certain species of free harmony gives pleasure. Free harmonies that express ideas are satisfying or pleasurable because of the valuable job they perform of expressing ideas otherwise difcult to convey. Each of these points has been discussed in previous chapters and they will only be summarized here. Lets rst consider the claim that expression of ideas involves a free harmony of the faculty. Notions like hell, eternity, and creation so exceed the capacity of mere empirical concepts that they can be portrayed only in a symbolic fashion by imaginatively bringing to mind a host of associations that suggest the larger idea. Expression is nonconceptual in the strict sense that no ordinary concepts are quite adequate to the big ideas that are conveyed. Nonetheless, as we have seen in our early discussions, Kant gives an account of how we can come to appreciate a manifold as possessing an order. Certain objects are able to stimulate our imagination to produce a host of associative thoughts in such a way as to suggest a larger idea. To be sure this is only a brief sketch of Kants admittedly contentious account of expression of ideas.15 However, the account makes clear, in a way that the recognitional interpretation does not, how free harmony as the expression of ideas can satisfy the broad aim of nding objects purposive with respect to judgment (nding objects subjectively purposive). An object that expresses an aesthetic idea is purposive for judgment in the sense that we are able to interpret the object as organized in a rule-like fashionspecically, as organized to express an idea.
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While there is agreement that expression of aesthetic ideas is an instance of free harmony and that such a free harmony is subjectively purposive for judgment, it could be argued that it is not necessary here to bring aesthetic ideas into the discussion of how free harmony is pleasing. Perhaps, it is even possible to incorporate the notion that aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in subjective purposiveness with an updated version of the recognitional interpretation and avoid an appeal to expression of ideas. What I have in mind is this. It could be argued that what makes a free harmony of the imagination and understanding pleasing is that such a harmony is subjectively purposive. However, since free harmonies are free of concepts and concepts are the usual way of recognizing that a manifold of sense harmonizes with the understanding, pleasure plays the recognitional role.16 There are problems with this view. First, if aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in nding an object purposive for judgment, then it surely seems that we must rst recognize that the object is purposive for judgment and then take pleasure in the object because it is purposive for judgment.17 Again, hopefully the doctrine of the expression of aesthetic ideas will explain how we can recognize that a manifold is (freely) purposive for judgment and take pleasure in the object for that reason. Second, earlier we found that there was a problem with Kants holding that aesthetic pleasure is simply pleasure in the furtherance of the judgmental aim (subjective purposiveness). The problem was that such an account would allow for any object to be aesthetically pleasing since, it seems, any object satises this broad aim. This is the so-called everything-is-beautiful problem we will consider in the next chapter. To anticipate, we may be able to free Kant of such a charge if beauty is restricted to the satisfaction of the particular judgmental aim of expressing an idea. But there is a third problem with trying to combine a recognitional interpretation with an evaluative interpretation of free harmony. Presumably, the importance of claiming that pleasure is the way we recognize free harmony was that it served an argument for the universality of pleasure in free harmonyand, ultimately, grounding the universal validity of judgments of taste. This argument, which we shall consider in more detail in the appendix and postscript, is roughly that free harmonies, since they are like cognitive states, must be recognized in the same way. Free harmonies can be recognized only by a feeling (concepts wont do). I recognize free harmonies by a feeling of pleasure and, thus, must assume that all others will also. Accordingly, free harmonies are universally pleasing. However, if it will explain why free harmony is pleasing for me on the grounds that free harmony displays a subjective purposiveness for judgment, then the argument from shared recognition is irrelevant to Kants goal of establishing the universal pleasure of free harmony. If the appropriate explanation of my feeling of pleasure in free harmony is its subjective purposiveness for judgment, then
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this will also explain everyones feeling of pleasure in free harmony. Free harmony is universally pleasing because of its subjective purposiveness for judgment. Establishing pleasure as the feeling by which we recognize free harmony seems irrelevant to the task of showing that it is universally pleasing. I suspect that the above will go some distance toward answering the objection that for Kant all objects are beautiful. If it is largely correct, then only objects that satisfy the specic judgmental aim of expressing an idea will count as beautiful. Nonetheless, while expression of ideas goes a long way to addressing this problem, other sorts of difculties crop up. If the best interpretation of pleasure in subjective purposiveness turns out to be pleasure in expression of ideas, then it follows that expression of aesthetic ideas is criterial for beautya position not widely held by commentators.18 If expression of ideas were criterial, then it would further entail that both artistic beauty and natural beauty are beautiful because they express aesthetic ideas. However, there are those who will resist the idea that natural beauty can be considered as expressive,19 although Kant himself claims: Beauty (whether it be of nature or art) may in general be termed the expression of aesthetic ideas (KU 5: 320, 197). I believe that none of these problems are insurmountable and I refer the reader to the other relevant chapters in this book. I shall conclude with a brief reconsideration of the issue that motivated the current discussion, namely, the number of judgments involved in the assessment of beauty. An obvious point of difference between my interpretation and the recognitional reading is that I do not think that a feeling of pleasure can constitute or recognize a free harmony of the understanding and imagination. Instead, I believe that the most plausible way to explain the link between free harmony and pleasure is to say that we take pleasure in free harmony because it satises an aim we have.20 But this implies that we can distinguish between recognizing an object to be freely harmonious and taking pleasure in that object because it is freely harmonious. Further, this also implies we can distinguish both of these activities from judging that we nd an object pleasing because it is freely harmonious. Now while we can make these distinctions it is an open question whether we should regard these activities as separate acts of judgment or perhaps a single, but complex, act. I suspect not much turns on an answer to this latter question. However, it is important to be clear about the connection between free harmony and pleasure. On this issue I hold that the connection is best explained within the context of Kants broader discussion of teleology as a pleasure in the realization of an aim. This should come as no surprise since the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment sits side by side with the Critique of Teleological Judgment to make up the third Critique.
The Extensiveness of the Criterion of Beauty

The central task of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is to justify the subjective universal validity of aesthetic judgments by nding some plausible source for a pleasure in aesthetic contemplation that can also lay legitimate claim to universality. As we have seen in the rst chapter, Kant believes that he has found the appropriate ground with problematic notion of a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding.1 While free harmony causes problems, it is an uncontroversial, straightforward interpretation of Kant to say that an object is properly judged as beautiful if and only if it can produce in us a mental state of free harmony when we appreciate the object. Kant takes us to this conclusion by arguing (in 9 and 21) that a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding is the only appropriate ground for a judgment of taste. He argues that when (and only when) objects occasion free harmony they give us pleasure that could lay claim to universality.
1
To better understand the kind of problems that befalls Kants account of judgments of taste we need briey to rehearse Kants argument to the end that a free harmony of the imagination and understanding can be the only ground of a universal pleasure.2 Early on in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (9) Kant argues that the judgment that an object is aesthetically good (beautiful) must itself be founded on a prior act of judging the object and that this judging activity is the source of a universal pleasure3 The argument here is rather quick. As is characteristic of Kant, it is an argument from elimination of alternatives. Either the pleasure of taste is founded on the mental activity of judging or it is a simple sensuous pleasure. A simple sensuous pleasure cannot support a claim to universality. Thus, the only possible candidate for the pleasure at the basis of an aesthetic judgment of taste is a pleasure in judging the object.
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Although there is quite a bit to question here, lets grant that Kant has shown that the only possible candidate for a universal aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in a mental state of judging an object, we surely need to say more about this. As we have seen in earlier chapters judging has a very special meaning in the Kantian philosophy. To make a judgment is to apply a concept to a particular: for example, Fido is a dog. However, Kants account of what is involved in predicating a concept of an object is rather novel. For Kant concepts are rules, rules that specify the order of a manifold of sense perceptions.4 To predicate a concept of a particular involves the ability to recognize that a manifold of sense intuition has a certain rule orderedness. Concepts are rules of organization and it is the faculty of understanding that is responsible for making sense of this order. So, for example, to make the judgment Fido is a dog is to recognize that a manifold of sense (given by the faculty of imagination) is ordered by the dog rulefour legs, a tail, a head, and all in the appropriate locations.5 This is a thumbnail sketch of judging as it occurs in the Critique of Pure Reason (Kants rst Critique); however, the judging involved in aesthetic contemplation cannot be this sort of ordinary conceptual judging. Kant has already ruled this out with his rejection of perfectionism.6 Aesthetic judging cannot involve the use of concepts. For reasons discussed earlier, Kant rejects the view that aesthetic judging is a matter of determining how well an object measures up to some particular conceptsfor example, how well a painting might represent the paradigm instance of a dog. Neither, as we have seen, can aesthetic judging use teleological ideas. Aesthetic appreciation, plausibly enough, is not a matter of admiring the cutting qualities of the perfect pocketknife. As a result, Kant argues that since aesthetic pleasure can only be grounded in judging an object and yet cannot be grounded on the conceptual judging of an object, the only possible ground of aesthetic pleasure is a nonconceptual, free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. Although, as we have seen, this is difcult to interpret, we can characterize a free harmony as the judging activity where we nd a manifold of particulars to be orderly, but without insisting on a particular order determined by a particular concept (rule). Kant describes this paradoxical notion of a free harmony in a number of ways as free lawfulness, lawfulness without law (KU 5: 24041, 125), or purposiveness without . . . the representation of an end (KU 5: 236, 120). The argument so far has been that the only possible ground for a universal aesthetic pleasure is a free harmony of the understanding and imagination. This argument gets off the ground only if we grant the big assumption that there is a universal aesthetic pleasure. This style of argument is known by Kant scholars as a regressive or analytic argumentmuch in the way the argument of the Prolegomena proceeds from the assumption that geometry is synthetic a pri-
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ori and reasons back to the claim that space must be ideal; whereas, the synthetic argument of the rst Critique will attempt to support the claim that geometry is synthetic a priori. Kant clearly needs a progressive or synthetic argument as well. He needs an argument to show not simply that free harmony is the only possible candidate for a universal pleasure but further that there is some credible reason to believe that free harmony actually gives us (all of us) pleasure. The interpretation I put forward in the previous chapter is that Kant has such an argument that is developed from a broader account of pleasure.7 In the introduction to the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant makes the following general claim about pleasure: The attainment of every aim is combined with a feeling of pleasure (KU 5: 187, 73). This seems a quite pedestrian claim. People have aims, desires, purposes, and when their aims, desires, purposes are satised, they are pleased. Simpler yet, we take pleasure in the satisfaction of our aims. This general account of pleasure as the satisfaction of aims becomes relevant to the case of aesthetic pleasure when Kant goes on to argue that a harmony of our faculties, even a free harmony, is subjectively purposive for judgment. The claim is that objects that engage a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding also satisfy an aim we all havethe aim of being able to judge objects. It is, then, tempting to see Kant as arguing that a free harmony is pleasing to everyone since it satises a common aim. Here is the relevant passage, complete with characteristic Kantian obscurity:
If pleasure is connected with mere apprehension (aprehensio) of the form of an object of intuition without a relation of this to a concept for a determinate cognition, then the representation is thereby related not to the object, but solely to the subject, and the pleasure can express nothing but its suitability to the cognitive faculties that are in play in the reecting power of judgment, insofar as they are in play, and thus a merely subjective formal purposiveness of the object. (KU 5: 18990, 7576)
Lets take a look at the claim that free harmony is subjectively purposive for judgment. To consider an object insofar as it is subjectively purposive for judgment is to consider it insofar as it suits our purpose of judging alone, not for the judgment that is achieved. Presumably, to take satisfaction in an object because it suits our judgmental aim is not to take pleasure in the fact that the object instantiates some specic concept. For example, Kant wants to rule out pleasure we may take from judging that an object is a good example of a dog or some other class of objects. And, further, Kant also wants to rule out pleasure we may take in teleological judgingfor example, judging that all the parts of an object
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are well organized to contribute to the function of being a barn, a staple remover, or a pocket knife.8 In each case taking an interest in an object because it conforms to a concept or conforms to an end would be to go down the wrong road of perfectionism. Either would be tantamount to praising an object because of the judgment it achieves, not praising it subjectively for the judging per se. A proper account of pleasure in judging per se is pleasure in nding manifolds of particulars to be amenable to our organizing effortsagain regardless of what the principle of organization might be.9 The upshot of this interpretation is the following. What makes free harmony pleasing is that it is subjectively purposive for our cognitive powers. That is to say, objects that provoke free harmony are ones that suit our (subjective) purpose of cognizing objects where this purpose, presumably, is to nd order in manifold of sense. When we are lucky enough to nd an object that suits cognitive purpose, we take pleasure in our success. This is an explanation for why free harmony is pleasing. But further, in 9, 21, and 38 Kant argues that since aesthetic pleasure in free harmony depends only on our cognitive abilities and purposes and since, short of skepticism, we must assume that all persons share the same cognitive abilities, then we may properly conclude that pleasure in free harmony is universal. (See KU 5: 217, 102103 and KU 5: 238, 12223.) Since this is often thought to be central to Kants deduction of judgments of taste, we need to say a little more about this argument.10 Presumably, Kant wants to argue in 9, 21, and 38 that we are justied in assuming that a free harmony is universally pleasing since free harmony judging is sufciently similar to ordinary cognitive judging. If we are not skeptics, then we must assume that all of us will (or can) make the same cognitive judgments on the same occasions. When each of us is presented with a certain manifold of sense we will all receive the same sense data and all judge it to be governed by the same conceptual rule. For example, we will all judge the same manifold of fur, legs, and tail as an instance of a dog. As such, we will all be able to discern that this manifold is governed by the dog rule. This is also to say that each of us obtain the same relation of our manifold of imagination with our faculty of understanding. If we could not assume that such judging is done similarly in similar cases, then there could be no claim to objective knowledge of a shared world. There could be no common point of reference between us. Accordingly, in ordinary cases of cognition we must suppose that each of us judges the same manifold as suiting the purpose of judging in the same way. But, further, if we now hold that aesthetic objects give us pleasure due to their purposiveness for judgment, then short of skepticism we must all, pleasingly, nd the same objects subjectively purposive. This seems to follow in two steps. First, if aesthetic appreciation depends on nding a manifold of sense to be purposive for judgment, then from
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the above we must in principle agree in specic cases whether a manifold is purposive. This follows, since the nonskeptic must assume that we judge similar cases similarly. But, second, it is also the case that each of us will take pleasure in a manifold that suits the purpose of judgment. This presumably follows from the description of pleasure cited earlier where it is assumed that we all share the aim or purpose of nding a manifold of sense conformable to our faculty of understanding. Thus, if I nd an object that suits my subjective purpose of judgment, then I will take pleasure in it. And further, I am justied in believing that everyone else will also nd the same object as satisfying their subjective purpose of judgment and as a result everyone else will also take pleasure in the object. In the end, this ambitious argument attempts to show that, short of skepticism, we must believe that when we appreciate an object as engaging our free harmony of the imagination and the understanding we will nd this pleasing. And, importantly, the argument presumably also shows all other persons who properly appreciate the same object will nd it pleasing as well.11 This seems to further Kants argument that not only is free harmony pleasing, but we have good reason to believe that it is universally pleasing and this in turn grounds the central claim of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment: to show that judgments of taste are universally valid.12
2
There is much more to be said about the argument sketched above; however, we need go no farther to understand the nature of the problem that besets Kant. On this interpretation, Kant argues that a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding is universally pleasing since all of us will take pleasure in the satisfaction of our judgmental aim to organize to a manifold of sense. Again, this need only meet our subjective judgmental aim since we are not interested in the nature of the orderliness achieved. Unfortunately, as it stands, Kants criteria covers far too much ground. If Kant claims that free harmony pleases because it satises the general aim of harmonizing imagination and understanding, then it is difcult to explain why traditional paradigms of beauty occupy a special status. Any object, it would seem, will be pleasing on this account, since any object will suit the subjective purpose of judgment. Any ordinary, empirical object is capable of harmonizing the imagination and understanding in several ways. For example, according to the rst Critique all empirical objects are subsumable under the pure concepts of the understanding (substance, causality, etc.). Every manifold of the imagination that we are able to experience as an empirical object must be organizable by the pure concepts.
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To this extent, every object of experience must suit the subjective aim of judging. But further, empirical objects are also subsumable under some a posteriori concepts (table, chair, rock, bottle, and so on). In fact, it seems to be Kants position that every empirical object is subsumable under at least one empirical concept. And further yet, objects or collections of objects can be interpreted teleologically. A teleological judgment is yet another way to attribute orderliness to a manifold of particulars and, of course, the subject of the second half of the Critique of Judgment (Kants third Critique). This is an embarrassment of riches. If Kant holds that the pleasure that grounds judgments of beauty is pleasure due to an objects satisfying our organizing, judgmental aim, then all empirical objects are beautiful since all empirical objects satisfy this aim in a number of ways. Seemingly, everything is beautiful for Kant. As evidence that we are on the right interpretative tract, it is useful to note that Kant himself worries that pleasure in subjective purposiveness may well cover too much ground. In section 6 of the introduction where the idea of pleasure in subjective purposiveness is introduced, Kant tries to avoid the everything is beautiful chargeall the while tacitly admitting that theres a problem:
In fact, although in the concurrence of perceptions with laws in accordance with universal concepts of nature (the categories) we do not encounter the least effect on the feeling of pleasure . . . because here the understanding proceeds unintentionally . . . by contrast the discovered uniability of two or more empirically heterogeneous laws of nature under a principle that comprehends them both is the ground of a very noticeable pleasure. . . . To be sure, we no longer detect any noticeable pleasure in the comprehensibility of nature and the unity of its division into genera and species by means of which alone empirical concepts are possible . . . but it must certainly have been there in its time, and only because the most common experience would not be possible without it has it gradually become mixed up with mere cognition and is no longer specially noticed. (KU 5: 187, 7374)
Kant attempts to rule out three cases of subjective purposiveness as candidates for aesthetic pleasure: (1) harmony due to application of the categories; (2) harmony due to application of teleological ideas; and (3) harmony due to the application of empirical concepts. The latter two points are connected, Kant believes, since to determine an empirical concept of a kind of thing we must subscribe to the teleological notion that nature sorts itself into such kinds. To address the rst case, Kant claims that we do not (or cannot) feel pleasure in the categorial harmony between understanding and imagination since, pre-
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sumably, this result is unintended and occurs in the course of our ordinary experience. The satisfaction at being able to apply the pure concepts of the understanding to every object of experience does not give pleasure since, presumably, we do not in any way intentionally aim at this goal. Kants answer to the teleological idea/empirical concept case is different. In these cases he is willing to speculate that while persons may have at one time taken pleasure in applying empirical concepts or teleological ideas to experience, such an activity has become so commonplace that it no longer gives pleasure. On the one hand, categorial harmonies are not pleasing because they are unintended. On the other hand, application of empirical class concepts is not pleasing because it is so commonplace. The strategy of these arguments, I believe, is to support the claim that aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in nding a manifold organizable without making every object t this criteriawithout Kants opening himself to the everything is beautiful charge. The brief arguments cited here (which are the only ones Kant gives) are not terribly strong. The rst argument depends on the claim that, since we do not seek that our judging aim be satised, its satisfaction will not give us pleasure. I am far from certain that this is a believable claim. It surely seems that in other cases I can take pleasure in the satisfaction of my aims even if that satisfaction comes easily and unintendedly. If it has been a lifelong goal of mine to be rich and I receive as a gift a lottery ticket that turns out to yield a fortune, then I would nonetheless be quite pleased. Im sure other similar examples could be cited. The second argument is that teleological judging or judging by means of an empirical concept is no longer pleasing (if it once was) since such judgments have become so commonplace. There are a couple of problems with this argument. First, it seems that it could also be argued that appreciation of paradigm cases of beauty (paradigm free harmonies) could just as easily wear thin over time. One might think that by appreciating the same work of art or natural beauty over and over my freely judging it would, by like reasoning, become commonplace and hence not pleasing. But further, a problem we have considered before, I see no reason why we could not consider an ordinary empirical object, like a dog or a house, in abstraction from its classifying empirical concept (or a teleological object in abstraction from its end or purpose) and appreciate the its rule orderedness per se.13 And, if I were to appreciate an objects rule orderedness per se, then it would seem that on Kantian grounds I would feel aesthetic pleasure. Further, if I could appreciate the rule orderedness per se for a dog or a house, then it seems that I could do it for any object. And if I could appreciate the rule orderedness of any object per se, then again everything is beautiful for Kant.
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There is a another answer to the everything-is-beautiful charge that has been offered in Kants defense. It has been argued that the everything is beautiful charge is a nonstarter since this criticism neglects the unique status of a free harmony of imagination and understanding in Kants account of judgments of taste.14 Recall that Kant wants to argue that only free harmony is a likely source for a universal aesthetic pleasure and if we emphasize the free (nonconceptual) character of the harmony, then such a requirement will disqualify all sorts of garden-variety objects as candidates for aesthetic pleasure. All of the garden-variety objects mentioned above harmonize the understanding and imagination by applying an empirical concept or a teleological idea to a manifold of the imagination. But, presumably, free harmonies dont work this way. And, thus, free harmonies are quite unique. This rejoinder surely goes in the right direction by attempting to show that free harmonies are somehow unique, but more needs to be said to be convincing here. The problem with the rejoinder as stated is that it fails to come to terms with the explanation offered previously concerning what makes free harmonies pleasing. On this interpretation Kant argues that free harmonies are pleasing since they satisfy our general aim of nding order in a manifold of sense. But, if this is all there is to Kants argument, then it will do no good to emphasize the uniqueness of free harmonies. If free harmonies give pleasure simply because they exhibit organization in a manifold, then any organized manifold (free or conceptual) ought to do the job. In fact, it could be argued that a well-dened conceptual ordering might do a better job at exhibiting organization than a free harmony can do.15 In the rst chapter we considered an interpretation of free harmony offered recently by Henry Allison and Carl Posy that can be employed to solve the everything-is-beautiful criticism.16 On this interpretation, both appreciating free harmony and applying a concept to a manifold of sense are a similar activity of nding order in a manifold. Although both involve a kind of harmony between our cognitive faculties, there is an important difference. When we recognize the rule orderedness of a manifold by the application of a concept we do not simply appreciate an objects rule orderedness; we also assert that the manifold shows a rule orderedness similar to that of other objects. There is a difference, then, between applying a concept to a manifold of sense and merely appreciating the harmony between the imagination and the understanding (free of concepts). In the free harmony case we merely consider the orderliness of the manifold; whereas, in the case of applying empirical concepts we are further engaged in drawing a similarity between the order found in a particular instance of a manifold and other like instances. We assert that an object is one of a kind. And, as such the normal concerns of cognition are suspended.17
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Assuming that we could make such a distinction between aesthetic contemplation and empirical judgment, then perhaps this distinction will allow us to say that not all objects are to be judged as beautiful. When we experience ordinary empirical objects we proceed to apply a concept dening the orderliness of the manifold and, at the same time, we recognize how the particular object is related to others of like kind. This is not aesthetic contemplation, and the object is not considered an aesthetic object. However, when we approach a true aesthetic object, we judge the orderliness of the manifold per se with no concern to classify the object. Presumably, then, we can distinguish between experience of ordinary empirical objects and genuine aesthetic objects. This is a very interesting reply to the everything-is-beautiful criticism but I believe that there are still problems. Earlier I made the broad criticism that this interpretation fails to make a distinction in kind between applying concepts and free harmony judgings. That general criticism seems to apply more specically to the everything-is-beautiful charge. If aesthetic appreciation is to be understood as judging an object to be rule orderly but without applying a rule (concept), then it would seem that all empirical objects are still live candidates for beauty. After all, it seems quite possible to appreciate the rule orderedness of a dog or a house by considering the rule orderedness of these manifolds while putting aside any comparisons of its orderliness to other, similar objects. I see no reason why we could not abstract from the concept-forming job of comparing our orderly manifold with other similarly ordered manifolds. Arguably, there have been cases in the art world that seem to encourage this sort of idea. One could see someone like Duchamp encouraging us to consider a urinal as an aesthetic object and not just as one of a kind of object. If this sort of thing is possible, then the everything-is-beautiful criticism returns. We can appreciate the rule orderedness of any object per se, if we abstract from any further comparisons to other like objects. We approach a urinal not as one of a kind, but we consider it for its internal orderliness. Perhaps this response is wrong headed. Perhaps, we cannot simply abstract from an empirical concept (or teleological idea) to appreciate the rule orderedness of any empirical object. That is to say, perhaps we cannot set aside consideration of comparisons to like objects once this comparison has been made in the process of forming an empirical concept. And, as such, we cannot say that all objects are beautiful. However, even if Kant (under this interpretation) could avoid the criticism that everything is beautiful, he may be faced with the equally challenging criticism that at some time in the past everything was beautiful everything has been beautiful for someone at some time. Consider again the way that the Allison/Posy interpretation goes. A free harmony of the imagination and the understanding is similar to ordinary empirical cognition insofar as our
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judging an object invites the application of a concept.18 But unlike ordinary cognition we do not actually follow through with the process of applying a concept to the manifold.19 Aesthetic contemplation (judging) of the object according to Allison/Posy is antecedent to the application of a concept.20 This seems to explain how an empirically conceptualized object will fail to be beautiful. Presumably, if I consider a dogs rule orderedness as a dog, then I will not feel aesthetic pleasure. I am, as it were, focusing my attention on a particular dog compared to other similar animals for the purpose of applying my class concept. Further, lets grant that we cannot consider a dogs rule orderedness per se by abstracting from the concept dog, although I am not convinced that this is so. If we grant this, then it will follow that ordinary objects that t into our empirical-concept schemes will not be proper objects of aesthetic consideration. However, there was a time when there was no empirical concept of dog. There was a time when someone approached a dog and they could appreciate its rule orderedness for its own sake. They could appreciate a dogs rule orderedness free of any concepts since their appreciation was quite literally antecedent to the application of a concept. At one time every object someone encountered was antecedent to the application of an empirical concept. But since every object subsequently was found to be rule governed (by the appropriate conceptual rule), every object at one time could have been appreciated as rule orderly but without the application of a rule. Thus, at one time every object was beautiful. But the claim that everything was beautiful seems just as implausible as claim that everything is beautiful. Again, as we saw in chapter 1, Hannah Ginsborg also tries to distinguish between the activity of applying a concept to an ordinary empirical object and appreciating the beauty of an aesthetic object, while at the same time insisting on the important similarities between the two enterprises. For the reasons discussed earlier, Ginsborg argues that for Kant to build a coherent description of empirical-concept acquisition he must have a two-step account of how we come to recognize order in an empirical manifold. In order to create an empirical concept, we must compare various objects with an eye to grouping them according to similarities in the orderliness of their sense manifolds. In the end these similarities make up the general rule of orderliness dening a Kantian empirical concept. Again, as we saw in the rst chapter, concepts are rules dening the order of manifolds of sense. However, Ginsborg agues, to make this account coherent, Kant must assume a primitive notion of recognizing the order of a manifold that is logically prior to the explicit recognition of an order that is specied by an empirical concept (rule). This primitive ability seems to be needed since we could not begin to compare the similarities in orderliness of manifolds (needed to form a concept) unless we had a way of recognizing orderliness prior to the
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use of concepts. Moreover, this primitive (nonconceptual) ability to recognize the orderliness of a manifold, Ginsborg speculates, must be the same ability that we have when we appreciate a free harmony of the understanding and imagination. Free harmonies, as we have seen, require us to recognize an orderliness of a sense manifold without applying a concept. But now we seem to be able to distinguish between recognizing free harmonies and making an empirical judgment. Both activities are a matter of recognizing orderliness in what Ginsborg calls a primitive, nonconceptual way.21 This is the extent to which free-harmony judging and conceptual judging are thought to be similar activities. However, similar to the Allison/Posy interpretation, conceptual judging differs from the mere primitive form of judging by going on to compare the orderliness of the present object with other like objects for the purpose of classifying as a kind of object. I believe that Ginsborgs interpretation suffers from a fate similar to the Allison/Posy account. If each act of applying an empirical concept to a manifold requires a rst step of primitively recognizing orderliness, then it would seem that we could approach any empirical object and appreciate it for its primitive orderliness in the same way we approach paradigm cases of aesthetic objects. Such appreciation would be a case of free harmony. Ginsborg attempts to block this move. She seems to think that we cannot approach ordinary empirical objects in this way. She claims that anytime we experience an ordinary empirical object, we (necessarily?) apply a concept at the same time. I dont nd much of an argument for this point. But lets grant it for the moment. Nonetheless, even if it is true that for an empirical object for which we have an empirical concept we cannot appreciate its orderliness without also applying a concept; nonetheless, there must have been a time when we could. Once upon a time, before we acquired the concept of dog, we could appreciate the orderliness of a particular dog without applying the concept dog. Thus, prior to our acquiring the concept dog, we could appreciate the free orderliness of a dog manifold and this is indistinguishable from aesthetic appreciation. But, similar to our argument above, there must have been a time when this was true of all objects. And, thus, on this interpretation, once upon a time, everything was beautiful.
3
Given the problems we have seen with current interpretations of Kants account of aesthetic pleasure, I will suggest a more fruitful approach to the everythingis-beautiful charge, one consistent with the results of my earlier chapters. I want to suggest that pleasure in subjective purposiveness for judgment generally is not an appropriate criterion for Kants account of aesthetic pleasure because it
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covers too much ground. The criterion for aesthetic pleasure needs to be qualied in order to avoid the everything-is-beautiful charge. Kant needs to argue that of all the objects that suit our general, judgmental aim, some objects suit it in a unique and interesting way. And when objects satisfy our judging aim in this unique and interesting way, they give us a pleasure suitable to be called aesthetic pleasure. I believe that Kant does develop such a position later on in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Beginning with 42 Kant can be read as arguing for the additional requirement that beauty be able to express aesthetic Ideas. This additional requirement, as I have argued in chapters 1, 2, and 4, is perfectly consistent with Kants claim that we trace our aesthetic pleasure to a free harmony.22 Expression of ideas, it is generally held, can be achieved only through a free harmony of the imagination and understanding. But if we emphasize this aspect of Kants position, then we can escape the everything-isbeautiful charge. Kant does in fact hold that the only appropriate candidate for aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in nding order in a manifold (subjective purposiveness). However, not just any ordering will do since it is not simply the ordering that gives us pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in nding order in a manifold that can do a most important jobit can allow an object to express ideas. It is this additional requirement that objects express ideas through a free harmony of imagination and understanding that allows Kant to avoid the kinds of criticisms we have been considering in this chapter. This interpretation has the added benet of meshing well with the issue brought up in the previous chapter and that will be discussed in length in chapter 6namely, the connection Kant sees between beauty and moral value. In the previous chapter we considered seriously the interpretation, again stemming from 42, that a good explanation of why Kant believes that beauty can engage our moral interest is that beauty is subjectively purposive for judgment in the specic sense that objects of beauty can realize ideas of reason. This is of moral interest to us since it leads us to believe that the world is amenable to our moral efforts. Accordingly, if we understand Kant as arguing that the pleasure at the base of aesthetic judgment is pleasure in nding objects as organizable in a way that suits our purpose (as stated in 42) of seeing objects as exemplifying ideas of reason, then this will explain why it is not the case that every object that is organizable by some rule will qualify as beautiful. Simply being purposive for any kind of judging will not do. Not every object is beautiful. And, further, if we adopt this interpretation, then we can better understand why objects that are beautiful on this criteria are also of moral interest. Objects that are interpretable as expressing ideas satisfy our moral interest in giving us a hint that nature is amenable to our moral projects. We will go into Kants connection between beauty and morality in considerable detail in the next chapter.
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There is a downside to the interpretation that I am proposing here. Recall that one of the reasons that the everything-is-beautiful criticism is generated is that some interpretations put considerable emphasis on the argument from skepticism traced out earlier. Presumably, Kant wants to argue that the mental state, at the basis of aesthetic appreciation is sufciently similar to an ordinary cognitive state that we must assume that our responses to states of appreciation are as common and sharable as our cognitive beliefs are common and sharable. If I feel pleasure in the aesthetic appreciation of an object, then I can expect that all others will feel the same pleasure given the close similarity of aesthetic appreciation and ordinary cognitive judging. The problem with promoting this argument from skepticism is that it leads very quickly to the everything-is-beautiful charge. The tighter the similarity between aesthetic appreciation and ordinary cognition, the harder it is to avoid the everything-is-beautiful charge. Alternatively, if one argues, as I have, that the grounds of aesthetic appreciation are rather different from ordinary cognition, then this will weaken any such argument from skepticism for a common response to aesthetic appreciation. While we may be safe in assuming that we will have similar responses to applying concepts to the world for cognition, we may not be permitted to conclude that we will have shared responses to the activity of interpreting the world as amenable to our ideas of reason. However, I am not overly concerned that my interpretation weakens an argument from skepticism since, on independent ground, I believe that this argument is problematic.23
Beauty, Free Harmony, and Moral Duty

One topic that has garnered considerable attention in the scholarship on Kants aesthetics is the connection he attempts to make between aesthetics and morality. Kant wants to hold that our appreciation of beauty is important for our moral life. Beyond this broad characterization there is much that is unclear about the connection between aesthetics and morality. It is unclear why Kant believes that aesthetics is important for morality and it is further unclear how (or if) the moral importance of aesthetics advances the central argument of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. These are two distinct issues that need to be sorted out; however, before doing so I want to make some preliminary remarks. Since Kants general account of beauty is based on the subjective experience of appreciation, I believe that a good way to approach the issue of the moral importance of beauty is to ask why, according to Kant, is aesthetic experience morally valuable?1 Broadly, the answer seems to be that the experience of beauty is, in some fashion, similar to our experience of determining our actions by the moral law.2 Quite a lot will need to be said to make this claim either clear or convincing. However, assuming for the moment that we knew how to make the connection between aesthetics and morality there is a further question. What does Kant want to achieve by the connection? What argumentative goal is furthered by showing that aesthetic experience is morally important? Here, as elsewhere, there is little consensus by commentators. One interpretation, which I favor, is that the connection of aesthetics with morality furthers Kants central argument justifying the universal validity of aesthetic judgmentsthe claim that aesthetic judgments warrant a kind of objectivity. A more common interpretation is that Kant rst establishes universality of aesthetic judgment and then goes on to show how there is a moral interest in aesthetic appreciation.3 A twist on the latter strategy is to suggest that there is a relationship between aesthetics and morality but it is not that morality is enlisted to support the legitimacy of aesthetic experience. Rather, the support is the other way around. Aesthetic experience helps to support an interest in morality.4
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Both of the issues described above are important to a proper interpretation and evaluation of Kants position on aesthetics. However, for the purposes of this chapter I will consider only the rst issue. I want to give an interpretation of Kant concerning the moral importance of aesthetic experience. While I have chosen to work on the rst issue, the second question is far from unimportant. Clearly, Kant believes that establishing the moral importance of aesthetic experience is relevant to the extended argument in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Nonetheless, the rst question has priority. We must be clear about the moral importance of beauty before we can speculate about the kind of argumentative job it is intended to do. I do, however, take up the issue of the argumentative role of the moral importance of beauty in the appendix and the postscript.
1
A proper interpretation of the connection between aesthetics and morality is complicated by the fact the Kant is all too generous with suggestions concerning the nature of this connection. For example, there is an argument in 41 to the effect that developing an interest in beauty increases our sociability. Throughout the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant argues that the pleasure we nd in beauty must be communicable or sharable by all others. In 41 it is argued that developing an interest in communicable pleasures forges a bond with our fellow man such that each expects and requires of everyone else a regard to universal communication, as if from an original contract dictated by humanity itself (KU 5: 297, 177).5 And, in turn, this bond will make us more disposed toward respecting our fellow mans interests. This is one way Kant connects aesthetics to morality; but not the only way. Kant also holds that beautiful objects are capable of expressing specic moral ideas and this is what makes aesthetics morally important.6 At 60 Kant claims that taste is at bottom a faculty for the judging of the sensible rendering of moral ideas. . . . It is evident that the true propaedeutic for the grounding of taste is the development of moral ideas and the cultivation of moral feeling (KU 5: 356, 230). Here it seems that aesthetic appreciation is morally important if and only if beautiful objects achieve the didactic goal of expressing moral ideasbeauty, presumably, is valuable for the moral notions it can teach us. There can be little doubt that Kant develops both of these strategies for linking aesthetics and morality. However, I do not believe that either of these positions represent the most central and sustained point Kant wants to make. They are at best icing on the cake. As evidence for the secondary role of these
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positions, the claim that aesthetic appreciation leads to sociability is offered as an empirical interest in the beautifulsuch is the very title of 41. It is fair to say that any time Kant describes something as having only an empirical (as opposed to a pure or a priori status) it is likely that we have not gotten to the heart of the matter. This attitude is borne out in the text of 41. Referring to the propensity toward sociability Kant claims that this interest, which we indirectly attach to the beautiful through our inclination to society and which is therefore empirical is of no importance to us here, since we must concern ourselves only with what may have reference a priori, even if only indirectly, to a judgment of taste (KU 5: 297, 177). Kants suggestion that our appreciation of beautiful objects is morally important because such objects express moral ideas is, I believe, much more plausible. There is something very plausible about this position both on interpretative grounds and on the broader grounds of aesthetic theory. To the broader point, it is interesting to note just how often works of art and beauties of nature either have explicit moral themes or are described in moral language. Novels, movies, paintings, and sculpture often feature themes speaking to how we conduct ourselves in the world. As such, it is very tempting to think that aesthetics home turf is to comment on our moral life. And, as we have seen from the text of 60 Kant seems to be making a very strong claim for the importance of expressing moral ideas.7 Although, in the end, I want to hold that expression of ideas is important for Kant, the specic interpretation that beauty must express moral ideas is problematic. First, there is a long-standing interpretation of Kant as an aesthetic formalist. Presumably, Kant holds that aesthetic value (beauty) resides in the appreciation of an objects form, not its contentand surely appreciating an object for the moral ideas it expresses seems to be advocating content over form. An extreme position on Kantian formalism would have it that expression of ideas should never count as relevant to the aesthetic experience. A more moderate view may allow objects to be expressive so long as they meet the appropriate formal criteria.8 On the moderate view, it may well be that appreciating an object as expressing an idea is achieved through the appreciation of an objects form. However, even if we grant that expression of ideas is compatible with appreciating form, Kant would have a tough time claiming that it is expression of moral ideas that gives beauty its moral value. Recall that in the end Kant wants to claim, presumably, that all cases of aesthetic appreciation are of moral importance and, presumably, all cases of aesthetic appreciation are morally important for the same reason. Now, if expression of moral ideas explains the moral importance of aesthetic appreciation, then it must be the case that all ob-
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jects of beauty express moral ideas. To be sure, many of Kants examples of expression are examples of moral ideas, but not all. Kant talks about expressing the idea of the monarchical state when it is either ruled by a single absolute will or in accordance with laws internal to the people (KU 5: 352, 226). He also gives an example of the expression of ideas as diverse as the mighty king of heaven (KU 5: 315) or invisible beings . . . eternity . . . death (KU 5: 314, 192). Not only does Kant not limit aesthetic ideas to moral ideas, but we would surely worry about him if he did. There are any number of works of art that are expressive but do not t neatly under the category of expressing moral ideas: the existential angst of Kafkas Castle, the enchanting smile of Mona Lisa, or the stark simplicity of Mondrians Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow. Again, it may well be reasonable to hold that aesthetic objects be seen as expressing some sort of ideas, but it is questionable to attribute to Kant the view that all aesthetic objects must express moral ideas. This is a position that is textually and philosophically dubious.
2
I believe that the strategies previously explored do not represent Kants best attempt to connect aesthetics to morality. However, I do not deny that Kant holds that sociability or expression of moral ideas are morally important features of aesthetic experience. Quite the contrary, there is clear evidence that he holds these positions. Nevertheless, it may well be the case that Kant has several reasons for why beauty is morally importantsome reasons more philosophically promising than others. This is not to suggest the Critique of Judgment (Kants third Critique) is patchwork of several views as has been argued of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kants rst Critique).9 Yet, it would be a mistake to think that everything Kant has to say on the connection between aesthetics and morality can be t into a single, highly unied argument leading to a well-dened thesis.10 My intention in this chapter is to offer an interpretation connecting aesthetic experience and morality that can be genuinely attributed to Kant and that is philosophically viableeven if it is not the only way Kant makes such a connection. I believe that the key to nding a viable link between aesthetics and morality lies in Kants notion of the free harmony of the imagination and understanding. As we have seen in earlier chapters, despite considerable interpretative disagreement on many of the issues in Kants aesthetics, there is consensus on the following broad outline of his position. Aesthetic judgments of taste are based on the pleasure found in a free harmony of the imagination
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and understanding. As we have seen in the earlier chapters, making sense of this position is no mean feat. Pleasure in free harmony is the very foundation of Kants judgments of taste. Given the centrality of pleasure in free harmony for Kant, I propose that we formulate the issue of morality and beauty in the following way. Kant needs to show that, intrinsically (necessarily), aesthetic experience is morally important. But, if pleasure in free harmony is the aesthetic experience, then Kant needs to show that taking pleasure in free harmony is important to our moral life. Assuming that he gives such an accounting, and that it is credible, he will have gone a long way toward making a rm connection between beauty and morality. According to Kant, pleasure in free harmony is a requirement for all beauty. And, if it can be shown that such pleasure is morally important, then it follows that all beauty is morally important. As we shall see this is a more than slightly controversial interpretation of Kant since it is sometimes argued that only natural beauty is capable of engaging our moral interest in any important way. The question of why pleasure in free harmony might be morally important is central to Kants project. However, there is an antecedent question here. Before we can answer this central question we need to know why Kant would think that free harmony is pleasing at all. Fortunately, we have covered this ground in chapter 4 and I will only summarize the results of that discussion as it is relevant to the present question. In chapter 4, I argued that there are two fundamentally different approaches to the issue of why free harmony should be considered (universally) pleasing. The most common interpretation is one that I am calling the recognitional or epistemological interpretation. This view has Kant arguing, specically in 9 and 21, that the only way that we can recognize the peculiar free harmony of the imagination and understanding is by a feelingand the feeling of pleasure in particular. In chapter 4, I discussed the several problems with interpreting Kant as claiming that pleasure is the way in which free harmonies are recognized. I shall concentrate here on the problem most relevant to the current discussion. The recognitional interpretation cannot do an adequate job of explaining why free harmony is pleasing. Even if we grant that free harmonies must be recognized by some feeling, it does not follow that the relevant feeling is pleasure. Nevertheless, it is important for the plausibility of Kants aesthetic theory that pleasure is at the foundation of judgments of taste. After all, pleasure is not just any feeling. There is a considerable evaluative difference between claiming that aesthetic experience is pleasurable and claiming that it is nauseating or tingling or whatever. There is a great danger here that a recognitional feel the t inter-
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pretation will miss the evaluative aspect of an aesthetic judgment of taste. It seems that the very best this sort of interpretation can do is to explain why we must feel our way into a free harmony. But, crucially for our present concerns, it fails to adequately explain why free harmonies are distinctly pleasing.
3
Fortunately, as we saw in chapter 4, there is an alternative to the epistemological explanation of the pleasure in free harmony. It is what I have been calling the evaluative interpretation. This interpretation depends on the general claim, made in the published introduction to the third Critique, that the attainment of every aim (Absicht) is combined with the feeling of pleasure (KU 5: 187, 73).11 Seemingly, Kant wants to place the pleasure of taste within a broader account of pleasure as attainment of aims. To do this he needs to explain how aesthetic appreciation, as a mental state of free harmony, achieves some aim of ours. The key to this strategy is the point, which Kant often makes in the third Critique, that free harmony is subjectively purposive for the faculty of judgment. Somehow or other, Kant wants to argue, the mental state of free harmony satises our general aim of judgmentwhere the faculty of judgment on Kants account is the faculty of organizing a collection of particulars by the rule-ordering function of the understanding. This aim, presumably, is one that all of us share universally (see KU 5: 183, 70). In the introduction Kant claims that a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding is an apprehension of the mere subjective formal purposiveness of the Object (KU 5: 18990, 7576). Sorting this out a bit, the point seems to be that the pleasure we take in apprehending an object freely is not a pleasure in nding the object suitable to this or that determinate kind of organization (concept) since, as a free harmony, no concepts are involved. As such, aesthetic pleasure can be nothing but pleasure in the mere fact that the manifold of the imagination is orderly without regard to the kind of ordera mere formal requirement. The big picture here is relatively clear. Certain objects occasion a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. And free harmony is pleasing because it constitutes a subjective formal purposiveness of the faculty of judgment. However, while the big picture seems clear, the details are not. One problem with the details is that Kants account of pleasure in free harmony seems to cover too much ground. If free harmony pleases since it satises the general aim of judgment to organize a manifold of sense particulars (intuitions) by the faculty of rules (concepts), then it would seem that ab-
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solutely every object (of experience) would give aesthetic pleasure. According to the rst Critique every object of experience must satisfy our epistemic conditions. And, crucially, one of these conditions is that manifolds of intuition must be organizable by the pure concepts of the understanding. Every object, on this accounting, furthers the judgmental aim of bringing order to a manifold of the imagination. There is a great danger that Kant may be forced to the undesirable conclusion that every object of experience is beautiful.12 In order to avoid this problem I will appeal to the discussion in chapter 5. Kant must argue, in some fashion, that a free harmony of the imagination and understanding is different from other ways of organizing a manifold. And further, free harmony is different because it is pleasing while other ways to organize are not. It should be noted that a distinction can be made between free harmonies and others, but perhaps at a considerable cost. Recall that a free harmony is one that is free from the sort of determinate concepts that typically characterize an act of judgment. That is to say, typically a judgment for Kant is a matter of determining a specic, conceptual order of a manifold of sense. However, what makes a free harmony free is the fact that it is not determined by a concept. This is a central theme in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment; the following from 9 is representative: The powers of cognition that are set into play by this representation are hereby in a free play, since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition (KU 5: 217, 102). To insist that the basis for pleasure in beauty is a free harmony will serve to distinguish it from all other sorts of harmonies Kant may wish to talk about. And, therefore, it is entirely possible to hold that a free harmony is pleasing while the other kinds of harmonies between understanding and imagination are not pleasing. However, there is a problem here as well. The more Kant emphasizes the free aspect of free harmony, the harder it is to account for free harmonies as genuine harmonies of the understanding and imagination. To harmonize the understanding and the imagination is to be able to organize a manifold of sense by the rule-ordering function of the understanding. However, since free harmonies use no conceptual rules, it is difcult to see how the understanding brings order to a manifold in such a way that we can say that the two faculties are in harmony. In this sense it is unclear how there can be a free (nonconceptual) harmony of the imagination and understanding. It is unclear how there can be a manifold of the imagination that harmonizes with the conceptual, rule function of the understanding without the employment of rules.13 In this sense we are thrown back to the fundamental question of this present work, raised in chapter 1; namely, How are we to understand free harmony and the pleasure that it is presumed to give?
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4
Aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in the quasi-cognitive state of free harmony. However, we have yet to see a full explanation as to why free harmony is pleasing. The outline of an answer is relatively clear. A free harmony of the imagination and understanding is subjectively purposive for the faculty of judgment. And, since free harmony meets the aim of judgment, this satisfaction is met with pleasureon the principle that generally satisfying an aim is pleasing. On the one hand, Kant needs to explain how free harmony satises an aim of judgment, in spite of the fact that a free harmony does not further judgment by employing concepts. On the other hand, he needs to show how a free harmony satises an aim of judgment in such a way that it is not true that determinate (conceptual) acts of judging also satisfy this aim. This latter is the worry that everything will turn out to be beautiful according to Kant. The answers to these questions have been discussed in earlier chapters, specically chapters 4 and 5, and I will only briey run through those results here. The explanation for how free harmony can be pleasing and, further, why this criterion does not generate the everything-is-beautiful problem resides with the doctrine of aesthetic ideas developed in the latter portions of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.14 The following passage well represents the complex set of concerns that come together in the latter sections of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.
But since it also interests reason that the ideas (for which it produces an immediate interest in the moral feeling) also have objective reality, i.e. that nature should at least show some sort of ground for assuming a lawful correspondence of its products with our satisfaction that is independent of all interest . . . reason must take an interest in every manifestation in nature of a correspondence similar to this; consequently the mind cannot reect on the beauty of nature without nding itself at the same time to be interested in it. Because of this afnity, however, this interest is moral, and he who takes such an interest in the beautiful in nature can do so only insofar as he has already rmly established his interest in the morally good. (KU 5: 300, 180)
A lot of work gets done in this very compact passage. There is a suggestion as to how beauty (as a free harmony) can satisfy an aim of judgment in a way different from ordinary conceptual judging. Kant asserts in 42 that reason is interested in ideas having objective reality. The ideas Kant refers to here are unmistakably the aesthetic ideas that are a topic throughout the latter sections of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment but are discussed at length in 49. The
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position in these latter sections is that aesthetic appreciation is a matter of interpreting objects of art or nature as the expression of aesthetic ideas as, for example, when we interpret that the song of a bird proclaims joyfulness and contentment with its existence (KU 5: 302, 181), or when the poet ventures to make sensible rational ideas of invisible being, the kingdom of the blessed, the kingdom of hell, eternity, creation, etc. (KU 5: 314, 192). Kant goes so far as to say in 60 that taste is at bottom a faculty for the judging of the sensible rendering of moral ideas and that feeling resulting from this judging objects as rendering ideas is nothing other than that pleasure which taste declares to be valid for all mankind in general (KU 5: 356, 230). Expression of aesthetic ideas is the origin of aesthetic pleasure since, from the passage at 42, nding objects to express ideas furthers an aim we have. With a little bit of work we can see that the account of pleasure in expression of ideas is consistent with, and hopefully an extension of, the story Kant tells in the early sections of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. In the early sections Kant claims that the pleasure of taste must be found in subjective purposivending experience amenable to judgments purpose or end to organize manifolds of sense. But now, this general account is specied. Kant claims that we satisfy a purpose of judgment when we nd objects are organizable by an aesthetic idea. It is important to note here, for the consistency of Kants position, that the sort of organization that an aesthetic idea gives to a manifold is different from that given by a determinate concept. Ideas and concepts are separate in the Kantian pantheon of representations. An aesthetic idea, Kant explains, is a representation of the imagination which by itself stimulates so much thinking that it can never be grasped by a determinate concept (KU 5: 314, 192). Kants point, which is not well worked out in the text, is that some notions are too big, too complex to be represented by ordinary empirical concepts; however, aesthetic objects are able to express such notions by encouraging the imagination . . . to spread itself over a multitude of related representations, which let one think more than one can express in a concept determined by words (KU 5: 315, 193).15 The doctrine of expression of ideas provides an explanation of how aesthetic objects can be subjectively purposive for judgment. Insofar as an aesthetic object can be interpreted as expressing an idea (e.g., creation), it can be seen as exhibiting a kind of organization. In fact, 49 is largely devoted to explaining how artistic genius can organize artworks such that they express an idea. Similarly, one could say of natural objects that we can interpret them as expressive (again, like interpreting a birds song as joyfulnessKU 5: 302, 181) insofar as we interpret the natural object as if organized in such a way as to bring out that idea.16 In either the case of art or nature aesthetic appreciation, under this in-
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terpretation, is subjectively purposive for judgment. To appreciate an object as expressing an idea is to nd a manifold of sense amenable to our efforts to bring order to our experience, and this is the aim of judgment generally. While, it may be granted that appreciating beauty as the expression of ideas will satisfy the aim of judgment, it is perhaps less clear that expression is consistent with Kants claim that aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in free harmony. To address this issue I offer nothing original. I take it as a well-accepted interpretative point that appreciating beauty as expressing an idea is an instance of freely harmonizing the imagination and the understanding.17 Again, 49 is the appropriate text. Here Kant argues that the sort of organization (harmony) needed to express an aesthetic idea is nonconceptual in Kants technical sense. For our purposes, it is enough to say that interpreting a manifold as expressing an aesthetic idea is not a matter of applying a pure, a priori concept or even an a posteriori, empirical concept. Rather, there is a degree of freedom or creativity to the process. Kant makes this point in a number of ways. Aesthetic ideas are representations that occasions much thinking without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it (KU 5: 314, 192). Genius, which creates expressive objects, creates a new rule which could not have been deduced from any antecedent principles or examples (KU 5: 317, 195 and again at KU 5: 319, 197). And, quite explicitly, Kant claims that while genius is expressing ideas this must be done by use of the unsought and unintentional subjective purposiveness in the free correspondence of the imagination to the lawfulness of the understanding (KU 5: 317, 195). I will take it as uncontroversial that appreciating beauty as the expression of aesthetic ideas is an instance of free harmony. I go further to suggest that free harmony as expression of ideas helps us to understand how an object can be subjectively purposive without employing concepts (or purposes). To be subjectively purposive a manifold of imagination must conform to the understanding (the faculty of rules). However, consistent with the free harmony requirement, this conformity to the faculty of rules must be done without concepts. The doctrine of expression of ideas allows Kant a way to talk about aesthetic appreciation as achieving a purpose of judgment (by interpreting manifolds as organized by ideas) while being free from concepts. The upshot here is that aesthetic pleasure turns out (on my interpretation) to be pleasure in the expression of aesthetic ideas. We nd an object aesthetically pleasing not simply because it is amenable to our broad judgmental aim of nding manifolds of sense organizable. Rather, the more plausible explanation is that in beauty we can nd expressions of notions that would not otherwise be expressed. According to Kant, it . . . interests reason that . . . ideas . . . have objective reality (KU 5: 300, 180). And, nally, it is the satisfaction of
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this interest that we nd pleasing in aesthetic contemplation. The doctrine of expression of ideas, so far, plugs two holes in Kants account of the pleasure in free harmony. It explains how there can be a harmony free from conceptual organizationthere is organization by an idea. It can also explain why we nd this harmony is pleasing and not necessarily any old harmony This harmony is able to convey a notion we otherwise would be unable to convey by ordinary methods.
5
I believe that an adequate interpretation of the connection between beauty and morality should be able to put together two crucial features of Kants position. One ought to be able to say that the pleasure of taste is some species of pleasure in subjective purposiveness and that pleasure in this species of subjective purposiveness is morally important. Kant needs to make this connection since, in the end, he wants to claim that there is something morally important at the heart of the aesthetic experience, and that pleasure in subjective purposiveness is at the very heart. I have argued that expressing an aesthetic idea is a species of subjective purposiveness and one that plausibly explains the pleasure of taste. Interpreting an object as expressing an idea constitutes nding the object purposive for the faculty of judgment without the use of determinate conceptssatisfying one of Kants requirements. Assuming that some such account is correct, we need to understand why nding pleasure in the subjective purposiveness of expressive objects is also morally important. While Kant irts with a number of ways to connect aesthetic pleasure with morality, there is a central theme. He claims that it is important that aesthetic ideas get expressedthat they have objective reality (KU 5: 300, 180) or the appearance of an objective reality (KU 5: 314, 192). And further the reason expression is important is that it somehow connects us to the supersensible (KU 5: 316, 194) or even the supersensible substratum of humanity (KU 5: 340, 216). Presumably, then, appreciating objects as expressing ideas constitutes a subjective purposivenss for judgment and this appeals to our supersensible nature. Further, it will turn out, this supersensible nature is the very underpinning of our moral life. If we can sort this all out we may be able to understand why Kant thinks that beauty is the symbol of morality as the heading of 59 announces.18 Appreciating an object as expressing an aesthetic idea is a matter of nding it subjectively purposive in a rather special way. We nd that the object is amenable to our efforts to interpret it as organized by an idea. This is quite un-
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expected and fortuitous since ideas (as opposed to concepts) are the sort of thing we can have no right to expect to be exemplied in our experience.19 We do have a right to expect that every object of experience will be purposive for determinate judgment since, if we grant the argument of the rst Critique, every object of experience must be subsumable under the pure concepts of the understanding. However, we have no right to believe that experience will conform to our ideas. In fact, Kants consistent position beginning in the rst Critique is that strictly speaking we can never know that any piece of experience exemplies an idea. Ideas by their very nature are notions that outstrip our cognitive abilities. At best we can merely believe that ideas like God, freedom and immortality are instantiated (Bxxx). And yet, it is fundamental to Kants moral theory that we harbor the hope that ideas are realizable in the world. A central question in the moral theory is how the categorical imperative as an idea of pure reason is possiblethat is to say, how can we aspire to realize the categorical imperative in the world? This is a problem for Kant since, as we have seen, we have no reason to believe that any idea has application to experience. In the Critical philosophy not only do we have no reason to believe that we can act from an idea (like the categorical imperative) but there is a prima facie reason to think that such actions are impossible. Kant devotes considerable energy in the rst Critique to showing that all events, including human actions, are determined by causal laws. Given this position, he is at pains to show that causal determinism is at least consistent with the possibility that humans can choose to act from the idea of the moral law. Kant seems to be arguing that we must be interested in whether ideas of reason are realizable in the world since we must be interested in the realizability of the moral law. It is important to the very project of morality that we be able to shape our world in accordance with an idea of reason. To interpret nature as amenable to our ideas is nothing less, for Kant, than to see nature supported by the supersensible substrate of humanity.20 That is to say, a necessary condition for moral action is the assumption that nature can be a product of our intentionalityour ideas. And the ability to shape the world in accordance with our ideas is supersensible since, according to the doctrine of the rst Critique, knowledge of human freedom is beyond our sensible experience. Given the importance to Kants moral theory of being able to interpret nature as a product of our ideas, we can begin to get a clearer view of why he would hold that beauty as the expression of aesthetic ideas is of moral importance. As moral agents we must have an interest in nature being amenable to the realization of our ideas. One could also say, in Kantian language, that we have an interest in nding nature purposive for judgmentspecically in the sense of being able to judge nature organizable by ideas. Our desire that nature
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be amenable to our ideas is nothing less than a desire that there is a supersensible substrate to nature. We hope that nature can be a product of supersensible free agency. So far so good. The controversial point of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is that appreciation of beauty also satises this moral aim or moral interest. Insofar as objects are interpretable as expressing an idea they are also subjectively purposive since we can also see them as organizable by some sort of idea. And this sort of subjective nality is something we all nd pleasing. We nd such purposiveness pleasing not simply because we want generally to organize experience, but because we all have an aim, Kant would say, in seeing experience as an expression of ideasas a product of supersensible freedom. We have such an aim since a fundamental premise of Kants moral theory is that we are able see nature as a product of ideas. But if this is granted then, nding experience amenable to our ideas satises this aim and is, thus, pleasing. Further, since this is the pleasurable satisfaction of a moral aim, Kant believes he is on solid ground to claim that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good (KU 5: 353, 227). There are strengths to the sort of interpretation I offer here. We can better understand how Kant can hold that the pleasure of taste is pleasure in nding nature subjectively purposive for judgment while avoiding the charge that everything is pleasurable in this respect. If the most plausible interpretation of the pleasure we derive from subjective purposiveness is that we are pleased to nd nature as organized by our ideas, then it will not be the case that every object is beautiful. While every object is organizable in some way, only a limited few will be organizable as expressions of ideas. Further, as sketched above, this interpretation can explain why Kant thinks that appreciation of beauty is connected to our moral life. If it is the case that as moral agents we must take satisfaction in nature being amenable to our ideas, then we should be similarly pleased when we are able to interpret art and nature as expressing aesthetic ideas. Under the interpretation suggested here, beauty as the expression of ideas satises a kind of judgmental purpose or aim by allowing us to view nature as organizable by reason. To this extent aesthetic appreciation shares similarities with morality. However, it is questionable how far this analogy can be taken and thus it is questionable how much moral importance can be granted to aesthetic experience. There are, it must be recognized, a few important disanalogies between morality and aesthetics. As moral agents we surely must be concerned whether we are capable of remaking the world in accordance with our ideas the idea of the moral law in particular. It could be argued that while a plausible analogy can be made between a moral agent and a creative artist the analogy is considerably weaker when we compare our roles as a moral agent and an appreciator of beauty. First, lets consider how the agent/artist analogy might go.
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One may very well claim that a moral agent and an artist share an important concern. If the business of an artist is to create a work that expresses an idea (and Kant clearly makes such a suggestion, KU 5: 313, 192), then the artist must be as concerned as the moral agent whether it is possible to realize ideas in the world. However, Kants claim that beauty has moral signicance is surely not just a claim about the value of artistic creationif it is even that. Rather, it seems clear enough that he holds that the appreciation of beauty is of moral importance. And, yet there is a considerable difference between appreciation of beauty and creation of art. The artist must impose his or her will on the world; whereas, an appreciator of beauty is rather more passive. As appreciator we can, at best, take pleasure in being able to interpret art and nature as expressing ideas. But, this is a bit different from the moral satisfaction we would take in the active role of exercising our freedom to remake nature in accord with our ideas. I know of nowhere that Kant addresses such a problem; however, there is a response he could make. It could be argued that the kind of pleasure that an appreciator of beauty enjoys is similar to the satisfaction of a moral agent. The appreciator, like the moral agent, takes pleasure in being able to see nature as a product of ideaseven if the appreciator is not the producer. One could say that we have a moral concern that it be possible, in general, to affect nature by ideas (i.e., there may be a supersensible substrate). As such, it is of concern to us that nature should at least show some trace or give a sign that free agency based on ideas is possible (KU 5: 300, 180). It is, perhaps, less important that we see ourselves as the authors of such ideasas, arguably, the artist can. Although, from our discussion of genius it is not so clear that artists can see themselves as authors. Part of the account above of the moral importance of aesthetic appreciation is fairly well accepted, specically the interpretation of Kant as arguing that appreciation of beauty as free harmony appeals to our moral hope that the world is amenable to free agency.21 However, unlike my reading, it is often thought that this feature of aesthetic appreciation can be had without any appeal to Kants doctrine of aesthetic ideas. As I have been arguing all along, I do not believe this can be so. I hold this view on two grounds. First, my argument of chapter 1 and elsewhere is that the very notion of a free harmony of the imagination and understanding cannot be explained without reference to the doctrine of aesthetic ideas. But second, as discussed in this chapter, seeing objects as expressing ideas further adds depth to the central moral concern Kant has in his aesthetic theory; namely, that aesthetic appreciation can give us a sense that the objective world is amenable to ideas in general and, hopefully, the idea of the moral law in particular.
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Another sort of objection, one we have encountered earlier, is that Kant sometimes seems to hold that the moral signicance of beauty pertains only to natural beauty.22 If the position that I argue here for the moral importance of beauty holds, then Kant is not entitled to make such a distinction between art and nature. I hold that centrally what is of moral importance in our appreciation of beauty is that such appreciation encourages us to believe that nature is amenable to our ideas. And, further, our appreciation suggests this by our being able to interpret either artworks or natural objects as the expression of aesthetic ideas.23 Both art and nature are able to express aesthetic ideas. Moreover, as was argued in chapter 3, the distinction between art and nature oddly shrinks on Kants account due to his thesis that art (especially so-called ne art) is the product of genius. Very much in the mold of the romanticists, Kant holds that genius is an inborn predisposition of the mind (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art (KU 5: 307, 186). On Kants account, as odd as it may seem, artistic beauty is a special case of natural beauty. The upshot here is that if it be the case that Kant pins the moral importance of aesthetic appreciation on the sense that nature is amenable to our acting on our ideas and, further, that beauty does this through its ability to express aesthetic ideas, then despite what Kant seems to sometimes say beauties of both art and nature are of moral signicance. And, it would seem they are potentially of equal moral importance. The above reading seems to be conrmed by Kants remarks strategically placed at the very end of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Kant claims, famously, the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good (KU 5: 353, 227), and it is reasonably clear that he intends the beautiful to cover beautiful objects of nature or art (KU 5: 354, 228). As we saw in chapter 3, while this seems good evidence for denying the moral superiority of natural beauty some commentators, notably Henry Allison, see matters differently. Allison sees Kant as making two quite different claims about the connection between aesthetic appreciation and morality. The rst and strongest claim is that aesthetic appreciation can suggest the amenability of the world to our moral, practical action. This connection between aesthetic appreciation and morality can be made only by natural beauty, according to Allison. Subsequently in 59, Kant makes a quite different, and weaker, claim that beauty can symbolize morality by the fact that aesthetic experience is in various ways similar to moral experience. Presumably, this weaker claim about the connection between aesthetics and morality pertains to both art and nature. As I have argued in chapter 3, I do not believe that there is a sharp divide between the position that Kant holds in 42 (aesthetic appreciation shows that nature is amenable to our moral ends) and the claim in 59 (aesthetic experi-
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ence is similar to moral experience). First, it is fairly clear that in the paragraphs leading up to 59 Kant continues the earlier theme that aesthetic appreciation (not limited to natural beauty) leads us to believe that nature is conformable to our ideas.24 Specically, Kant claims that aesthetic appreciation can encourage our belief in a supersensible in nature that allows nature to be purposive to our higher aims. This appears merely to be different language for the same kind of point made back in 42. Even in 59, the precise location where Kant asserts that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good, he again asserts that aesthetic appreciation encourages us to believe that there is a supersensible ground to nature that allows for moral freedom (KU 5: 353, 227). In light of the preceeding discussion, it is not implausible to say that, for Kant, the highest moral signicance of aesthetic experience (either art or nature) is that our aesthetic experience suggests the amenability of nature to our moral projects. And, further, I hold that this sense that nature is conformable to our ends is possible only if we further interpret aesthetic objects (either nature or art) as the expression of aesthetic ideas There is, perhaps, a more difcult problem with the interpretation offered here. My interpretation may again make the criteria for beautys moral importance too wide. Presumably, beauty is morally importance because it is subjectively purposive in the sense that it allows us to interpret art or nature as a product of ideas. However, beauty may well not be unique in this role. In fact, such a claim may apply equally well to teleological judgments. Teleological judging, it would seem, can give us just the same sort of pleasure as beauty and would have just the same kind of claim to moral importance. It may even be the case that Kant cannot suitably distinguish beauty and teleology. Perhaps, aesthetic and teleological judging are both a matter of nding nature amenable to our supersensible ideas. As indirect evidence for my interpretation, Kant does indeed worry that teleological judging may offer the same sort of pleasure found in aesthetic judging. In section 6 of the published introduction Kant is concerned as to whether our ability to apply teleological ideas to nature, such as the division of nature into genera and species, gives us an a priori (universally valid) pleasurejust like the pleasure of taste. Kants answer to this concern may not seem entirely satisfactory, if he wishes to make a principled distinction between aesthetic judging and teleological judging. He seems to claim that while, indeed, teleological judging does (or has) been pleasing, we no longer feel any noticeable pleasure resulting from such judging only because teleological judging has become too familiar, ordinarywere all quite used to applying such ideas to nature (KU 5: 187, 74). This seems an unsatisfactory way to distinguish between aesthetics and teleology. Apparently, appreciating beauty and judging the world teleologically are, in
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principle, the same enterprise. The only difference is that the former is somewhat more novel (and thus more obviously pleasing) than the latter. I am not entirely certain that Kant can, in the end, offer a satisfactory distinction between aesthetic judging and teleological judging, but the defense he offers is perhaps better than it seems on a couple of related grounds. Part of the answer Kant gives to distinguish aesthetic judging from teleological judging is that we no longer feel any noticeable pleasure in the latter since, he seems to say, teleological judging has become a routine, everyday, practical affair. That is to say, quite unlike aesthetic judging the point of teleological judgments is to further empirical enquiry. As such, it is less appropriate to attend to the subjective purposiveness of nature for its own sake, while in the case of aesthetic judging this is just the point of the activity. Similarly, as Kant points out, we would hope and expect our teleological judgments to take on a fairly regular and familiar patternfor example, it is often the case that we will be able to unite heterogeneous laws under higher though still empirical ones (KU 5: 188, 74). In aesthetic judging, however, the very originality and hence unexpected nature of the subjective nality will doubtless add to our appreciation of this sort of purposiveness. In this chapter I want to accomplish two related tasks: (1) to identify the source of aesthetic pleasure according to Kant and (2) to offer an interpretation of why such pleasure is of moral importance. I believe that the best interpretative answer to the rst question is that aesthetic appreciation is (universally) pleasing just in the case that we are able to judge an object as subjectively nal in the sense that we can judge an object as expressing an idea. This is pleasing since, Kant presumes, we all have as an aim or end that ideas be realizable in the world. But further, we nd this sort of subjective nality satisfying because it is important to our moral life. The very possibility of moral action depends on the assumption that we can realize ideas in the world. There are, of course, many controversial questions that remain even if the answers to the questions explored earlier are satisfactory. It remains an open question how Kant intends to use his claim that beauty is morally important in his wider theory of aesthetic judgment. Is it intended to help justify the universal validity of aesthetic judgments or rather to offer an incentive to engage in aesthetic appreciation? How does this account of a moral interest in beauty square with Kants insistence that aesthetic judgments are disinterested? I shall address some of these issues in the postscript to the appendix. And, there are doubtless other important issues. However, it is my intention that the interpretation offered here offers better understanding of Kants wider project.
Appendix The Meaning of Universal Validity in Kants Aesthetics

Kants project in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is to show on what grounds we can make a legitimate judgment of taste (i.e., a judgment that something is beautiful). While recent interpretations have attempted to explain and evaluate this demonstration, my hunch is that much of the difculty of interpreting Kants argument stems from the more basic problem of understanding just what Kant thinks he must show. Since, as Kant acknowledges, justifying judgments of taste crucially depends on supporting their claim to universal validity, I shall consider here only the restricted question of how we should understand the meaning of this claim.1 My position, simply stated, is that judgments of taste for Kant are a species of imperatives. Specically, a judgment of taste issues a demand to all persons (i.e., universally) that if they attend properly to the object, which I judge as beautiful, then they ought to take pleasure in that object. Only if this point is appreciated, I maintain, can we make any headway in identifying Kants argument justifying judgments of taste.
1
At least on the face of it, the notion of universal validity is an easy one to understand. Universal validity implies a nonrelativistic account of judgments of taste. Thus Kants position in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is that a judgment of taste does not simply state personal preferences but lays claim to everyones assent.2 In this respect, judgments of taste are like ordinary statements of fact. Both are either correct or incorrect (valid) independently of who makes the judgment (universally). Yet the parallel between judgments of taste and statements of fact cannot be taken too far. In paragraph 8 of the Critique Kant distinguishes between objectively and subjectively universal judgments.3 To make a statement of fact
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for example, Lola is a catwe need only subsume the object with particular properties (feline constitution) under a concept with the appropriate marks (felineness). If the subsumption is done properly, the judgment will be objectively universalthat is, it will be true for everyone. But judgments of taste, Kant holds, cannot be objectively valid because beauty is not a concept.4 Beauty does not describe a set of properties such that objects with these properties are beautiful. Instead, Kant claims, beauty is ultimately a matter of objects that please subjects. But unlike ordinary, merely subjective reports of pleasure, judgments of taste claim that beautiful objects are (or should be) a source of pleasure for all persons. Judgments of taste are, in this sense, subjectively universal. To put Kants point in more contemporary terms, to claim that an object is beautiful is to say that appreciating the object is an intrinsically pleasurable experiencea pleasure not peculiar to me, but in some sense one that can be imputed rightfully to all.5 In paragraph 7, however, Kant seems use slightly different terms to describe universal validity. When someone judges an object as beautiful, Kant writes, he expects (zumutet) the very same pleasure of others, he judges not solely for himself, but for everyone, and then speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things. Kant continues, he says of the thing it is beautiful, and does not count on others agreeing with his judgment of pleasure . . . rather he demands (fordern) this agreement from them.6 The substance of the claim that judgments of taste are universally valid seems to be that when we take pleasure in an object that we purport to be beautiful, we are justied in expecting or demanding that everyone nd the object pleasingthat everyone agree with our judgment of pleasure. Kant sharply contrasts this with ordinary, nonuniversal judgments of pleasure. Most objects will or will not give pleasure to various persons depending on their individual likes and dislikes. Thus, in order to justify the universal validity of judgments of taste, Kant must show that there is a source of pleasure that is not contingent upon our likes and dislikes, but rather one that can be assumed for all persons. As a reader familiar with the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment knows, Kant argues that a particular mental state, similar to cognition, is such a source of pleasure. Kant calls this mental state the free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. To make a complicated story far too simple, the position for which Kant argues is this: Properly appreciating or estimating certain objects leads to a mental state of free harmony. We are justied in imputing the pleasure we feel from this experience to anyone else who appreciates the object since, Kant argues, there is a necessary connection between free harmony and pleasureone that holds for all persons. This necessary connection lies at the foundation of the claim to universal validity.
The Meaning of Universal Validity in Kants Aesthetic
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This characterization of Kants position is, I hope, fairly uncontroversial, if only because it is so general. However, spelling out the precise meaning of universal validity is not nearly so uncontroversial. The language of the passage cited above suggests an ambiguity in Kants description of this notion. In the rst half of the passage, Kant maintains that when we judge something as beautiful, we can expect that everyone will be pleased by the object. But in the second half of the same passage, Kant also says that we can demand that everyone agree with our judgment of pleasure. It has been argued recently that there is an important distinction between expecting and demanding agreement in matters of taste.7 For surely there is a considerable difference between reasonably expecting something and rightfully demanding the same thing. Assuming Kant makes this distinction, we are forced to read the universality claim as either a demand for agreement or an expectation of it in order to resolve the apparent ambiguity. The predominant way of reading universal validity is as a rational expectation for agreement.8 On this interpretation, a judgment of taste is the factual prediction that, under the proper conditions, everyone will be pleased by the object we judge as beautiful. More precisely, if we (1) properly appreciate an object (where for Kant this means we attend disinterestedly to the objects form of nality); (2) derive pleasure from the object; and (3) locate the source of this pleasure in the free harmony of the imagination and the understanding; then (4) we are entitled to predict that anyone who properly appreciates the object will feel pleasure also. While most commentators subscribe to the expectation reading of universal validity, they do not deny that Kant also talks about demanding agreement. The most popular way of accommodating such language is to argue that, for Kant, there are two senses in which we may require everyone to agree that an object is pleasing.9 First, there is the agreement that we can rationally expect. This, supposedly, is equivalent to the claim to universal validity. But, second, since Kant obviously talks of demanding agreementindeed even of demanding it as a duty- such a demand is considered a different, logically distinct claim for agreement, which extends beyond universal validity. The language of demanding agreement, according to the predominant interpretation, appears in the later sections of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment where Kants aim is to demonstrate the moral signicance of aesthetic appreciation. In this context, demanding agreement in matters of taste is understood as the imperative, enforced by morality, to take an interest in beauty. Presumably, Kant wants to show that the pleasing experience of aesthetic appreciation is of such importance that we can demand all persons to agree with our feeling of pleasure by demanding that they appreciate beauty. This imperative apparently exceeds the claim to universal validity, since the universality claim only states that we can expect others to feel pleasure only if they properly appreciate an object. The connec-
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tion with morality, however, authorizes us to demand that everyone properly appreciate beautiful objects. This expectation interpretation has direct consequences for the further issue of what Kant must show to warrant judgments of taste. In order to know that everyone will feel pleasure under the circumstance described, we must know that everyone will nd free harmony pleasing. Only on this assumption are we justied in expecting that everyone will share our pleasure in free harmony. But if this is what Kant needs to show, then the task of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment must be parallel to that of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kants rst Critique). According to recent interpretations, Kant must establish a connection between free harmony and pleasure that is known to be strictly universalthat is, a connection known to hold for all persons. Thus, it seems that, like the principles of the rst Critique, Kant must argue for an a priori factual connection between free harmony and pleasure.10 It must be factual, since on the expectation interpretation the judgment that all others will feel pleasure in free harmony is a prediction about what will, as a matter of fact, happen. And, consistent with Kants epistemology, the connection must be known to hold a priori, since no amount of empirical data could insure strict universality. Further, Kant supposedly argues for the connection between free harmony and pleasure in a manner analogous to the way he argues for the principles in the rst Critique. In particular, from the materials of paragraphs 21 and 38, Kant is represented as offering what has been called an epistemological argument for universal validity.11 Anything like a detailed analysis of this epistemological argument exceeds the scope of my present project. However, in general, as the argument is typically reconstructed, it attempts to show that the premise that free harmony is pleasing for all persons follows from the conditions for the possibility of experience.12 That is to say, we must assume that all persons necessarily will nd free harmony pleasing, for otherwise knowledge of the world would he impossible. Yet while this reconstruction of Kants support of universal validity, construed as a rational expectation, has become well accepted, it is also widely held that the so-called epistemological argument is inadequate.13 Kant does not establish that, based on the possibility of experience, we must share similar feeling states on the occasion of similar dispositions of the imagination and the understandinga premise Kant supposedly needs for his epistemological argument. The failure to nd a good argument to support a rational expectation should, of itself, be sufcient motivation for considering an alternative interpretation of universal validity. However, the insistence on reading universal validity as an expectation raises another interpretative difcultynamely, what we should make of the principle of Common Sense. In 20, Kant argues that judgments of taste appeal to a common sense, where this is, I believe, correctly understood as the
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principle specifying a necessary connection between free harmony and pleasure. As we have seen, only by granting this connection are we justied in imputing the pleasure we feel in free harmony to all others. The interpretative problem that arises is whether we should understand common sense as a constitutive principle or a regulative idea. Interpreting the connection between free harmony and pleasure as factual, I will argue, forces a constitutive reading of common sensea reading contrary to the text.
2
The predominant interpretation of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment I have sketched out rests upon two doubtful premises: (I) that Kant distinguishes between two logically independent claimsexpecting and demanding (or exacting) agreement and (2) that rationally expecting agreement is equivalent to the universality claim. A close study of the text, I maintain, reveals that Kants univocal stand on judgments of taste is that they make a demand for everyone to take pleasure in the object judged as beautiful. Specically, we should understand a judgment of taste as the following imperatival claim: If we properly appreciate an object (we nd it to occasion a free harmony), then we can legitimately demand that anyone else who would appreciate the object nd it pleasing since, in general, we can demand that everyone have the taste to take pleasure in free harmony. This, I claim, is what Kant means by the universal validity of judgments of taste. Further, this imperative is not different from the one Kant attempts to support by a connection with morality. In the end Kant wants to argue that taking pleasure in free harmony is something we can demand of all persons because having such taste is akin to a moral disposition. However, I nd no evidence for the wider thesis that we can demand persons to exercise their taste by seeking out and appreciating beauty. The rst question to consider is whether or not the text supports a philosophically important distinction between expecting and demanding agreement. Walter Cerfs translation of 7, cited earlier, would seem to be good evidence for such a distinction:
Many a thing may be attractive and pleasurable to him; no one cares about that; but if he declares something to be beautiful, he expects the very same pleasure of others, he judges not solely for himself, but for everyone, and then speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things. Hence, he says, the thing is beautiful, and does not count on others agreeing with his judgment of pleasure because they did so occasionally in the past; rather he demands this agreement from them. He censures them if they judge differently and denies them taste, which he yet demands they should have.14
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The rst part of the passage apparently describes universal validity as a factual (nonimperatival) statement about what we can expect others to feel. The later portion of the passage, however, contains just the sort of language that, supposedly, refers to the morally enforced demand to appreciate beautiful objects. Yet an examination of the original German does not, I believe, support this sort of distinction. One might suppose, for instance, that the contrast in German would be the sharp factual/imperatival one between erwarten (literally to await) and fordern (the usual equivalent for demand). But I have found no place where Kant uses erwarten in contexts discussing agreement. Instead, the term Cerf consistently translates as expect is the verb zumuten.15 While it may be plausible to reconstruct a factual/imperatival distinction between erwarten and fordern, it is much less so in the case of zumuten and fordern. A more standard translation of zumuten as to require or exact shows zumuten, like fordern, to have imperatival force.16 If we keep in mind the closeness of meaning of zumuten and fordern, Kants use of the two terms in the above passage would seem to indicate nothing more philosophically important than a facon de parler employed to make a single point about judgments of taste. Such judgments do nothing but issue a demand that everyone who appreciates the object we judge as beautiful should nd it pleasing. Not only can zumuten and fordern be used to make the equivalent demand claim, but in the passage from 7 Kant apparently understands expecting (zumuten) agreement as a demand (fordern) for agreement. After stating that judging something as beautiful is tantamount to expecting (zumuten) agreement, Kant concludes without further argument (hence) that we can demand (fordern) agreement from everyoneeven criticize them for lack of taste if they fail to agree. The simplest way to explain why Kant believes he can move easily from a claim about expecting agreement to one of demanding agreement is that he understands the latter as merely a reformulation of the former, not as a different claim, Merediths translation, in this instance, accurately reects the identity of the two claims by rendering both zumuten and fordern as demand.17 The original German does not, at least prima facie, support a factual/imperatival distinction between expecting and demanding agreement. However, one might be tempted to force such a reading on the terms zumuten and fordern if zumuten were used only in connection with the early epistemological arguments and fordern were used only with the later appeal to morality. But this is not what we nd. In the early passage from 7, which I have been considering, Kant uses zumuten and fordern interchangeably. Similarly, in 22, well before any talk of the moral importance of beauty, fordern, not zumuten, is used to express the requirement for agreement.18 Alternatively, in 40 and 59, where Kant does argue for the link with morality, he uses zumuten in both cases.19 In fact, it is in 59 where Kant claims that, on the basis of morality, agreement about an
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objects pleasurableness can be exacted from everyone as a son of duty and zumuten is the term translated as exacted.20 In light of Kants use of zumuten and fordern to characterize a claim to agreement in matters of taste we should draw three conclusions: (1) Contrary to the predominant interpretation, these terms do not support a distinction between a factual claim that persons will feel pleasure and an imperative that they ought to feel pleasure; (2) instead, Kant uses both zumuten and fordern to state the position that when I properly judge an object as beautiful, everyone who takes the trouble to appreciate the object ought to take pleasure in it; (3) on the basis of the passage from 7, a legitimate demand for agreement is just what Kant means by the universality of judgments of taste, and this demand is not different from the one supported by morality. In the passage above, Kant describes the claim to universal validity as a right to demand the very same pleasure of others, even censure and deny them taste if they disagree. Such imperatival language is consistent with that used in 59 (cited above) where Kants announced intention is to ground judgments of taste in morality. Nor is Kants imperatival description of universal validity peculiar to the passage from 7. Just before the deduction, to cite only one example, Kant reminds us what universal validity entails and he does so in unmistakably imperatival terms:
For these laws (empirical generalizations about what people happen to nd pleasing) only yield a knowledge of how we do judge. but they do not give us a command as to how we ought (werden soll) to judge, and what is more such a command (Gebot) as is unconditionedand commands of this kind are presupposed by judgments of taste, inasmuch as they require delight to be taken as immediately connected with a representation.21
3
Consistent with the factual interpretation of judgments of taste, it seems to follow that common sensethe principle specifying a necessary connection between free harmony and pleasuremust also be a factual claim. That is, in order to ground the factual claim that others will feel pleasure in an object that occasions free harmony, supposedly Kant must appeal to a principle that free harmony is, as a matter of fact, pleasing for everyone. But, it is admitted, this reading of common sense does not well accord with the text.22 However, if my imperatival reading of judgments of taste is correct, the principle of common sense should also be an imperative of the sort: Everyone ought to take pleasure in free harmony. And, I hope to show, this reading of common sense does accord with the text.
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Paul Guyer, one of the proponents of the factual reading of judgments of taste, raises the question of whether Common Sense should be regarded as a constitutive principle or a regulative Idea.23 The question presents something of a dilemma for the factual interpretation. On the one hand, much of the text seems to refer to Common Sense as a regulative idea. In 22, Kant explicitly uses Idea and Ideal to characterize common sense.24 Similarly, in 8, where Kant uses the term universal voice to do the same work as Common Sense, this principle is again classied as an idea.25 Nor, I should hope, do these references come as a surprise to a student of the Critique of Judgment (Kants third Critique). The larger project of the third Critique is to argue that aesthetic and teleological judgments are species of reective judgments. And, as it is often observed, reective judging is Kants way of describing what was considered, in the rst Critique, as judging by use of ideas. On the other hand, there are two philosophical considerations that favor a constitutive view of common sense. If we understand the constitutive/regulative distinction as it is dened in the rst Critiquenamely as a distinction between principles that are necessary for the possibility of experience and principles that have no such warrantthen common sense must be constitutive. This would seem to follow from the predominant interpretation since, on this reading, Kant justies the claim to universal validity by establishing a necessary factual connection between free harmony and pleasure on the basis of the requirements for experience. This is the thrust of the so-called epistemological argument. Additionally, if common sense were regulative, it has been recently argued, it would be insufcient to justify universal validity.26 On a fairly standard reading of the constitutive/regulative distinction, regulative ideas are mere heuristic devicesthey are not objective laws, as are constitutive principles. This is, unquestionably, the distinction in the rst Critique between the constitutive principle of causality and the regulative idea of an innite series of causes to use one of Kants examples. The former is an a priori, factual principle. The latter, Kant argues, is not factually descriptive, but is only a heuristic notion used to regulate empirical enquiry. Such regulative ideas are, as it were, nothing more than useful ctions that may help to uncover genuine factual truths. But if we consider common sense as a regulative idea, under this reading of regulative, then universal validity could not be justied in any rigorous sense. At best we would impute agreement to others on the basis of the mere useful ction that everyone will nd free harmony pleasing. If this were the only way to understand the notion of regulative ideas, then regarding common sense as such an idea surely would depreciate the force of judgments of taste. A more adequate interpretation of common sense would be one that is consistent with the numerous passages where Kant describes the principle as a regulative idea, and yet one that does not trivialize the claim to universal validity. I
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shall not, however, be concerned if such a regulative reading of common sense conicts with an expectation reading of universal validity. In the previous section, I have argued on independent grounds that this interpretation is problematic. To be sure, we should agree with the dominant interpretation that Kant uses common sense as a justicatory principle for judgments of taste, and, further that it plays this role by specifying a necessary connection between free harmony and pleasure. But the nature of this necessary connection, I maintain, is imperatival, not factual. It is not the case that everyone will, as a matter of fact, always take pleasure in free harmony, but that everyone should. Further, reading common sense as an imperative docs not depreciate the force of judgments of taste. While on my interpretation common sense is not an a priori factual principle, neither is it a mere useful ction. Rather, Kant argues that common sense is a well-founded, universal imperativeone ultimately supported by morality. This is how Kant can uphold a rigorous, nonconstitutive link between free harmony and pleasure. But even if reading common sense as an imperative offers an alternative interpretation of the necessity of the principle, can common sense be considered as a regulative idea, as the text requires? This raises the larger question of where imperatival principles t within the critical philosophy. I believe that such principles should be understood as regulative, rather than constitutive. But to see this, a clearer view of the distinction is needed. It is inaccurate to describe the constitutive/regulative distinction narrowly as a distinction between principles required for the possibility of experience and mere heuristic devices. Rather, the distinction is better understood as a contrast between principles required for experience, and principles that are used in a broadly practical fashion. In the Dialectic of the rst Critique, Kant makes two distinguishable points about regulative ideas. First, Kant argues the critical point that such notions are neither derived from experience nor necessary for the possibility of our having experience. Thus, they are not legitimate, factually descriptive statements. But, second, Kant argues that this does not render ideas superuous. Instead they are assigned a practical role. The ideas of the rst Critique function as heuristic rules in the service of empirical investigation. But surely this is only one example of the practical role a principle may play. Imperatives are also nondescriptive and yet fulll a quite different practical function. They tell us what we ought to do. The moral law of the Critique of Practical Reason (Kants second Critique) would seem to be a perfect example of an imperatival principle as described above. The moral law is surely not an a priori descriptive law (at least not for any of us with less than a holy will), but neither is it a merely heuristic device. Instead, the moral law regulates our activity, insofar as we heed its categorical imperative. However, this does not jeopardize its universal validity just because the regulation, in this case, is required of everyone. For these reasons the
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moral law is typically understood as a regulative principle, but this need not have any depreciatory implications.27
4
It is nearly a truism of Kant scholarship that any attempt to settle one interpretative problem raises several more in its wake. My contribution does little to dispel this belief. However, before considering the further interpretative problems, I want to clarify one point about my imperatival reading of universal validity. It may seem odd to attribute to Kant the thesis that we can demand of anyone who appreciates the object we judge as beautiful to take pleasure in that object. It could be argued that taking pleasure is simply not the sort of thing that can be demanded. We either do or do not feel pleasure. We cannot be commanded to enjoy something. In a strict sense, Kant would agree with this. Kant argues, particularly in 42, that certain objects (those that lead to a free harmony) are the source of an intellectual interest and that, in general, the satisfaction of interests gives pleasure. Kant then claims, on moral grounds, that we can rightfully demand all persons to have intellectual interests.28 Finally, Kants position is that objects are beautiful only if they satisfy an intellectual interest. On this basis, we can demand pleasure from others only in the extended sense that we can legitimately demand persons to have the sort of interest that beauty pleasingly satises. However, placing so much importance on the later sections of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (where Kant discusses the moral importance of having intellectual interests) may seem textually implausible, because it seriously reduces the role of the deduction of judgments of taste. For surely, an outcome of my interpretation is that the warrant for universal validity is established by the connection with moralitywell after the chapters on the deduction. But it may be argued, this cannot be correct since we would expect that just as the deduction of the rst Critique demonstrates the objective validity of the principles, so should the deduction of judgments of taste demonstrate their subjective universal validity.29 Although a complete solution to this problem would require another chapter of at least equal length, the short answer here is that we should not assume that the deduction of imperatival claims must be like the deduction of factual ones. In fact, in the second Critique, with regard to the moral law, Kant goes so far as to assert that a deduction of that imperative is not possible.30 While Kant does, nally, offer something called a deduction of the moral law, the former remark should stand as a warning that the deduction of imperatives is not strictly parallel to the deduction of factual principles.
Postscript The Argument for Universal Validity

In my original article (reprinted here as an appendix) I focused on the limited objective of arguing for an interpretation of the central claim of Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Specically my aim was to give a reading of how the claim to the universal validity of aesthetic judgments should be understood. While giving an interpretation of the claim to universal validity will obviously have an effect on how an argument in support of the claim will go, I did not concentrate on various interpretations of the argument that have been given. I did, however, argue a preference for an argumentative strategy that went beyond the epistemological arguments suggested by the early sections for the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (140) in favor of a larger role for the later sections of the work that emphasize the expression of aesthetic ideas and the connection with ethics. In this postscript I would like to offer some remarks on what sort of argument best serves Kants aim to support universal validity. Broadly speaking the claim to the universal validityof aesthetic judgments amounts to the following. When I (properly) appreciate an aesthetic object and judge it to be beautiful I expect or demand that all others who (properly) appreciate the same object come to the same judgment.1 And further, given Kants analysis, to expect or demand others to agree with our judgment is to expect or demand that all others, who properly appreciate the aesthetic object, feel pleasure in the appreciation of that objectall others will share my pleasure. All of this is relatively uncontroversial. What is more controversial is exactly the nature of the claim to universal validity (which I address in the original article) and, further, what kind of argument Kant has to support such a claim. Here commentators fall into two camps. On the one hand, there are those who see Kant as arguing for universal validity on the grounds that, short of skepticism, we must assume that if I properly appreciate an object and nd it to be pleasing, then all others will (or should) nd the object pleasing as well. That is to say, if we are not skeptics, then we must assume that when we make a cognitive judgment we can legitimately expect that others (if they are doing their proper cognitive job) will agree
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with our judgment. Presumably, Kant musters an argument prior to 40 that, given the similarity between cognitive judging and aesthetic appreciation, we are justied in believing that our aesthetic response to objects will be shared in a manner similar to our shared cognitive experience of objects. On the other hand, some commentators (including me) see Kants argument from universal validity requiring the connection he makes between aesthetic appreciation, expression of aesthetic ideas, and ethics developed in the latter paragraphs of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (40 to the end).2 I want to consider here what I believe to be the best recent attempt to construct an argument for the universal validity of judgments of taste using only the materials prior to Kants discussions of expression of aesthetic ideas and the connection with moralitythat is to say, using the materials that rely for the most part on the resources of what I had been calling the epistemological argumentative strategy. The goal of this analysis will be to show that even best efforts along these lines come up short and, again, Kants argument for universal validity may be better served by looking beyond the early sections alone. Lets begin by taking a wide view of the goal and strategy of such an argument. The nub of this strategy is to argue that short of skepticism we must assume that there can be (should be) universal agreement on ones judgments of taste. Specically, on the assumption that cognitive judgments concerning the application of a concept to an individual are capable of universal assent (that is to say, assuming that we are not skeptics), then we must also assume that our judgment that a particular object occasions free harmony with an attendant feeling of pleasure will be shared by all others who properly appreciate the object in question. The argument, according to advocates of the epistemological interpretation, goes something like this. If we are not skeptics, we must assume that everyone cognizes objects in the same way. To cognize an object is to recognize a certain relationship between the understanding and the imagination; namely, that the manifold of the imagination follows a particular conceptual rule lent by the understanding. But, according to the argument of paragraphs 9, 21, and 38 aesthetic appreciation as free harmony relies on precisely the same faculties as cognition (understanding and imagination) and, as a result, we must assume that we all recognize free harmony in the same way. Further, again from 9 and 21, it is argued that free harmonies are recognized by a feeling since no concepts are appropriate. And, specically it is claimed that this recognitional feeling is a feeling of pleasure. Conclusion: Since we must all recognize harmonies in the same way and a free harmony can only be recognized by a feeling of pleasure, then it can assumed that when I appreciate an object as engaging in me a free harmony and I feel pleasure, then everyone else will fell pleasure as well. It is this universal claim to pleasure in free harmony that grounds the universal validity of aesthetic judgments.
The Argument for Universal Validity
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This argument is widely criticized, even by those who believe that it is a correct interpretation of Kant.3 Crucial to this argument is the analogy between a free harmony of the understanding and imagination and a cognitive harmony of these faculties. As we have seen in earlier chapters, this strategy forces a nasty dilemma.4 On the one hand, if Kant merely holds that a free harmony of the understanding and the imagination is somewhat similar to a cognitive harmony of the faculties, then the entire argument becomes a weak argument from analogy. We may grant that cognition requires all of us to recognize conceptual harmonies in the same way, but it does not follow that all of us must recognize free harmonies in the same way simply because they look something like conceptual harmonies. On the other hand, if Kant holds for one reason or another that free harmonies and conceptual harmonies are, at base, the same kind of mental state, then the strength of the argument is bolstered. We do have good reason to think that both sorts of harmonies must be recognized in the same way by everyone. Unfortunately, another serious problem arises. This strategy raises the worry, as we saw in chapter 5, that every object may qualify as beautifulthe everything-is-beautiful criticism. If conceptual harmonies are not importantly different from free harmonies, it may well follow that ordinary cognitive judgements are as good a source for aesthetic appreciation as are more traditional candidates. Crucial to an improved version of the epistemological interpretation is to argue, on some grounds, that a free harmony of the faculties is very closely connected to conceptual judging such that if we grant shared abilities in cognition, then shared pleasure in free harmony follows. However, while the connection between the two activities must be quite close, it must also be the case that they are sharply distinguished. Otherwise we cannot avoid the everything-is-beautiful charge. There is such an interpretation that has gained some popularity recently and that we considered in a different context in chapter 1. Although there are differences between the proponents, the interpretation of free harmony is this. As we have seen all along, the notion of a free harmony of the imagination and understanding is problematic. To have a free harmony of our faculties, we must recognize the rule orderliness of a manifold of sense without applying any rulesand this seems to make no sense. Yet, proponents of the new epistemological interpretation argue that as odd as it seems the ability to recognize the orderliness of a manifold prior to (independent of) applying a rule is not only a plausible notion in aesthetic judging, it is an absolute requirement for conceptual judging. Specically, Hannah Ginsborg, Beatrice Longuenesse, Karl Posy, and Henry Allison argue that Kant needs the notion of recognizing rule orderliness without a rule in order to give a coherent account of empirical concept acquisition.5 In brief the argument for a nonconceptual judging is this. For Kant concepts are rules describing the order of a manifold. Apart from this new way of
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looking at concepts, Kants account of empirical concept acquisition is quite similar to a standard empiricists story. We go about noticing similarities between a number of individual objects and, in the end, pronounce them to be members of a kind. Subsequently, we judge a new object to be a member of the kind if its manifold is governed by the rule (concept) we found in common with our original collection of objects. However, it is argued variously by proponents of new epistemological interpretation that Kants account of empirical concept acquisition has a problem. Before we can begin to compare several individuals for their similarities (and disregarding irrelevant differences) it seems as though we must already possess something like a concept (rule) to narrow down the right sort of objects to consider. To use Kants example from the Jasche Logic, if I am to form my concept of tree by comparing what a spruce, a willow, and a linden have in common, it seems as though I must already know that spruce, willow, and linden are appropriately similar before I begin to form concept of tree.6 But this implies that I must already know that the objects in question are trees (know the tree rule) in order to form my concept of treean obviously vicious circle. On the new epistemological interpretation, we can break out of this circle if we assume that as cognizers we must have the ability to recognize similarities of manifolds prior to the application of a rule (concept). That is to say, if we assume that we have the ability to recognize that a spruce, a willow, and a linden share a similar orderliness in their manifold prior to forming the explicit concept of tree, then (perhaps) we can give a noncircular account of how we come to acquire the explicit concept of tree. But notice, what is being presupposed here for an account of concept acquisition is the ability to recognize the orderliness of a manifold without the application of a concept. And this seems to be the same sort of ability as recognizing a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding. Free harmonies are also nonconceptual harmonies. For now, lets grant this interpretation of Kants account of empirical concept acquisition. If we grant this, then some interesting consequences follow for aesthetic judgment. On the new epistemological interpretation, the ability to recognize a nonconceptual (free?) harmony of the imagination and the understanding is a necessary condition for shared cognition. In order to have shared cognition we must assume that everyone can acquire and use empirical concepts in the same way. But, a necessary condition for empirical concept acquisition (according to this interpretation) is the common ability to recognize manifold orderliness without using a rule (concept). Now, this result appears to be important to an argument for the universal validity of aesthetic judgments since it adds support to the argument from skepticism. Instead of arguing that recognizing order in a manifold without the use of concepts (as free harmony demands) is something merely analogous to cognition, it can now be argued that
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recognizing such order is, in fact, a necessary condition for shared cognition. Short of skepticism, we must assume that all of us can recognize the orderliness of a manifold independently of a conceptual rule. Even if this argument is successful it takes us only part way to the goal of justifying the universal validity of aesthetic judgments. At best, the argument shows that on the assumption of shared cognition we must also assume that we can all recognize a nonconceptual harmony of the imagination and understanding in the same way. Accordingly, it seems to follow that if I were to appreciate (aesthetically) an object, discover that it occasions in me a free harmony, then I would be warranted in believing that anyone else who properly appreciated the object would also recognize the free harmony. This is a good rst step. However, to account for the universal validity of judgments of taste we need to be able to claim that when I appreciate an object, recognize that it occasions free harmony, and feel pleasure in this mental state, then I can assume that all others will feel this pleasure as well. The strategy adopted here must be able to justify why, in the end, I can attribute my pleasure in appreciation to all others who properly appreciate an object. And this comes down to justifying the claim that all others will feel pleasure in free harmony. There are a couple of interpretative strategies for making a connection between pleasure and free harmony. One way that people have made the connection is by what I have called the recognitional interpretation.7 According to this interpretation, the only way that we can recognize the nonconceptual order of a manifold is by a feeling. And, presumably, this feeling is pleasure. An alternative interpretation, which I present in chapter 4, is to draw the connection between free harmony and pleasure by noting that a free harmony suits the purpose of judgment. In Kantian language, free harmony is subjectively purposive for the faculty of judgment. And, since generally Kant holds that satisfying ones purposes is pleasing, then free harmony is pleasing.8 Now, we seem to be getting closer to the desired conclusion. When I properly appreciate an object, this occasions in me a mental state of free harmony and I derive pleasure from the experience. Now, presumably, I can claim that all others who properly appreciate the object will share this experience. They will share the experience since, in the rst instance, there is reason to believe that everyone who properly appreciates the object that occasions my free harmony will have their free harmony occassioned as well. This claim supposedly follows from the requirements for shared cognition. But further, depending on which account of pleasure in free harmony one prefers, everyone will also take pleasure in free harmony. As a result, when I properly appreciate an object and this appreciation results in a free harmony of the imagination and the understanding, and I take pleasure in this experience, then I can claim that all others who
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properly appreciate the object will feel pleasure also. This nal claim, one could argue, is the claim to the universal validity of judgments of taste. The new epistemological interpretation of the argument for the universal validity of judgments of taste has a considerable advantage over earlier interpretations.9 As we saw above, the earlier interpretation leads to a dilemma. Either free harmony is merely similar to cognition in which case the argument to universal validity is, at best, a dubious argument from analogy or, perhaps worse yet, free harmony and cognitive judgment are the same sort of activities, in which case it seems that every act of cognition is an act of aesthetic appreciationeverything is beautiful. The new epistemological interpretation avoids this dilemma. Free harmony is not the same sort of activity as a cognitive judgment. Cognitive judgments require concepts; free harmonies do not. If this distinction is maintained, then the interpretation can avoid the everything-isbeautiful charge.10 But further, on this interpretation the argument from skepticism is no longer merely an analogical argument. Free harmony is not merely analogous to conceptual judging, rather recognizing nonconceptual (free) harmonies is a necessary rst step in the project of empirical concept acquisition. It is a necessary rst step for any cognition. And, if we are to have shared cognition, we must assume that we all recognize nonconceptual (free) harmonies in the same way. I have several difculties with this way of interpreting the argument for universal validity. First, I am not entirely convinced that in order to account for empirical concept acquisition we must assume the shared ability to recognize nonconceptual harmonies of the imagination and the understanding. This assumption might explain how we can begin the process of comparing various objects to the end of forming an empirical concept (rule), but perhaps it is not the only explanation. It may very well be that we can form empirical concepts armed only with our ability to recognize individual, spatial-temporal objects. And this ability is guaranteed in virtue of our a priori intuitions and concepts established in the Critique of Pure Reason (Kants rst Critique) (an a priori concept of substance and a priori intuitions of space and time). We may be able to develop a coherent account of empirical concept acquisition that assumes only the ability to to recognize, barely, spatial-temporal objects and the further ability sort out similarities and differences between these objects. From those similarities and differences, we may be able postulate empirical, conceptual rules. But perhaps this criticism is misguided. Even so, there are further problems. Lets assume that empirical concept acquisition requires the ability to recognize the orderliness of a manifold without the use of rules. Yet, it is an open question whether empirical concept acquisition requires us to recognize a free harmony or merely something rather similar to it. And both alternatives are un-
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attractive. If we say that every act of concept acquisition requires us to recognize a free harmony and we assume that free harmonies are pleasing, then we run up against the everything-is-beautiful charge that we considered in chapter 5. At least once upon a time (during concept acquisition) every object was appreciated as displaying a free harmony and, one would assume, gave us pleasure. But then it would follow, on Kants accounting, every object was once appreciated as beautiful. This alternative is not very attractive. But neither is the other. Lets assume that the kind of nonconceptual order recognition required for concept acquisition is fundamentally different from the non-conceptual free harmony experience found in aesthetic contemplation. This could solve the everything-is-beautiful charge since it could be argued that free harmonies lead to aesthetic pleasure, but the nonconceptual harmonies required for concept acquisition do not. However, if this is so, then the argument from skepticism again becomes a weak analogical argument. For purposes of cognition we must assume the common ability to recognize concept-acquiring, nonconceptual harmonies. And yet, grounding the universal validity of aesthetic judgments requires that we have a shared ability to recognize and take pleasure in free nonconceptual harmonies where these two abilities are merely similar. Obviously, just because we must assume that we experience concept-acquiring, nonconceptual harmonies in the same way, it does not follow that we experience free nonconceptual harmonies in the same way. There is an additional and perhaps even greater problem with this interpretation. Recall that the central argument for the universal validity of aesthetic judgments depends crucially on arguing for the claim that, somehow, free harmony is universally pleasing for persons. The new epistemological argument has a explanation for why free harmony is universally pleasingfree harmonies subjectively purposive for judgment. That is to say, free harmonies satisfy our commonly shared end of making judgments. Now, to be sure, I believe more needs to be said on this point to avoid the everything-is-beautiful charge that we encountered in chapter 5. However, lets grant that the new epistemological argument has made the point that free harmonies are universally pleasing because they are subjectively purposive for judgment. If this is so, then I claim that this alone is sufcient to establish the universal validity of aesthetic judgments. When I pleasurably experience a free harmony I know that others will as well. I am secure in this knowledge since free harmonies satisfy a common end of persons. Whether the feeling of pleasure also helps us to recognize a free harmony or not simply does not seem needed for the larger argument. Although there is much to recommend the new epistemological interpretation, there are still problems. I advocate another approach to nding an acceptable argument to universal validity of aesthetic judgments. First, the epis-
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temological approach, in my view, overemphasizes the importance of establishing that we will all experience a free harmony of our cognitive faculties in the same way. That is to say, the main thrust of this interpretation is to show that when I appreciate an object and this appreciation amounts to a free harmony of the imagination and understanding, then I am justied in assuming that all others (if they properly attend) will also appreciate the object as a free harmony. It shows, as it were, that we have a common aesthetic object.11 Regardless of how strong this argument is, I believe that the point established is not the most important point of an argument to universal validity. The most important point, I would argue, is showing that the mental state of free harmony is universally pleasing. Assuming that we can grant that if I appreciate an object as giving rise to free harmony others will as well, then the important question is whether I have good grounds for further assuming that the pleasure I feel in free harmony is universally shared. For this issue, I refer the reader back to my discussion in chapter 4. Perhaps, the best explanation for why free harmony is pleasing is that it suits the purpose of the faculty of judgment. It is subjectively purposive for judgment. And suiting our subjective purposes gives pleasure. But, as I argued in chapter 4, in order to distinguish from ordinary cognition the way aesthetic appreciation satises the aims of judgment it may well be necessary to enlist the doctrine of aesthetic ideas and even, perhaps, the connection with morality. In end the most effective argumentative strategy for establishing universal validity may be to hold that objects that can be appreciated as expressing ideas through a free harmony suit an interesting and valuable purpose of judgment and as a result we all nd this experience pleasing. If we can nally establish that free harmony is universally pleasing because it is subjectively purposive for judging in a special and interesting way, then the epistemological/recognitional argument becomes nearly irrelevant. The principal task of Kants argument to the universal validity of judgments of taste is to show that certain objects (the beautiful ones) when properly appreciated are the source of a universal pleasure and, of course, Kant hopes to show that this pleasure is derived from the objects giving rise to a free harmony of the imagination and understanding. At most the epistemological argument can show that, for any given object, we will all recognize whether and to what extent an object engenders free harmony. This is well and ne, but to explain why this free harmony is universally pleasing one must look elsewhere. Specically, I have been arguing, one must look to a unique and valuable way that free harmony is purposive for judgmentand this has nothing to do with how or whether the attendant feeling of pleasure will function to pick out states of free harmony.
Notes
Chapter 1. The Problem of Free Harmony 1. A very important term in the Critique of the Power of Judgment is the German word Zweck, which translators have rendered in a variety of ways: purpose, end, nality, goal, etc. I will conne myself to using purpose or end (sometimes both) to translate Zweck and related terms like Zweckmassigkeit (purposiveness). A related term to Zweck is Absicht. I will translate this as aim or goal. 2. See for instance the discussions at A 108 and A 126 for Kants account of concepts as rules. 3. See Bxxx. 4. See A 643/B 671A 669/B 697. 5. A much more complete statement of this position can be found in Reection on Beauty, by Ralf Meerbote in Essays in Kants Aesthetics, ed. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 5586. 6. This is Kants argument in 1 of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. 7. Paul Guyer uses the good for/good as distinction in his excellent article Formalism and the Theory of Expression, Kant-Studien 68 (1977). 8. See Kants discussion of originality, primarily in 46 and 47. 9. Critique of the Power of Judgment, general remarks, KU 5: 24144, 12527. 10. For example, see Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 28488 and 31824. 11. It seems to be quite central to the argument of the transcendental deduction that every manifold of intuition must be capable of being united in consciousness by a rule. See the Critique of Pure Reason, 16 of B edition. 12. Ralf Meerbote, Reection on Beauty, 81f. 13. Paul Guyer, The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited, Aesthetics and Cognition in Kants Critical Philosophy, ed. Rebecca Kukla (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 166. 14. Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2001), 188. See also Carl Posy, Imagination and Judgment in the Critical Philosophy, Kants Aesthetics, ed. Ralf Meerbote (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1991), 4041. 119
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15. Paul Guyer, The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited, Aesthetics and Cognition in Kants Critical Philosophy, ed. Rebecca Kukla (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 165. 16. See also chapter 5 of this book for a fuller criticism of this position. 17. See chapter 5. 18. Hannah Ginsborg, Lawfulness without a Law: Kant on the Free Play of Imagination and Understanding, Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 3781. 19. Kants most explicit discussion is in the Jasche Logic, 6. 20. Hannah Ginsborg, Lawfulness without a Law: Kant on the Free Play of Imagination and Understanding, 59f. 21. Ibid., 59. 22. See appendix, The Meaning of Universal Validity in Kants Aesthetics, 161. 23. See Ginsborg, Lawfulness without a Law: Kant on the Free Play of Imagination and Understanding, 69. 24. Ibid. 25. I will be arguing here for a species of the position that Guyer calls a metacognitive position and a position with which he is sympathetic. I am quite certain, however, that Guyer would not take the position to the end that I argue. See Paul Guyer, The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited, Aesthetics and Cognition in Kants Critical Philosophy, ed. Rebecca Kukla (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 182f. 26. The compatibility thesis has been argued by several others. See Paul Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression, especially section 7; Donald W. Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), section 5.6; and Theodore E. Uehling Jr., The Notion of Form in Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), chapter 5. 27. See chapter 2 for an extensive discussion of aesthetic ideas. 28. Paul Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression, 63f. 29. See Donald W. Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory, 123; and Theodore E. Uehling Jr., The Notion of Form in Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 77. 30. See Kants remarks at KU 5: 322, 199 and KU 5: 329, 206 as examples where he discusses how ideas can be expressed through the form of perceptual elements. 31. Generally, Kant talks about the cipher by means of which nature speaks guratively to us in its beautiful forms (KU 5: 301, 180). Specically, Kant suggests that various colors found in nature express moral ideas (e.g., white expresses innocenceKU 5: 302, 181) and even that trees can be called majestic or elds described as smiling and joyful (KU 5: 354, 228). 32. Attributing the intention to express ideas to an artist is out of place since Kant holds the somewhat extreme view, subsequently endorsed by the Romantics, that the ability to express (genius) is a talent that cannot be learned or taught and ultimately is attributable to nature, not some self-conscious ability of an artist (see 46).
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33. See chapter 3 for a further discussion of this point. See also, Paul Guyer, Interest, Nature, and Art: A problem in Kants Aesthetics, Review of Metaphysics 3l (1978): 580603; and Robert Burch, Kants Theory of Beauty as Ideal Art, in Aesthetics, ed. George Dickie and Richard Sclafani (New York: St. Martins, 1977), 688703). Chapter 2. The Doctrine of Aesthetic Ideas 1. For a quite explicit pronouncement of a formalist doctrine see 14 (KU 5: 225). 2. For an excellent discussion of Kants commitment to formalism see Paul Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kants Aesthetics, Kant-Studien 68 (1977): 4670. 3. See the discussion of concept formation in chapter 1. 4. The distinction between pure concepts and pure intuitions in Kant is controversial and falls outside the scope of this project. 5. Critique of Pure Reason, CPR, second analogy A 189/B 233A 211/B 256. 6. See CPR, B xxx for Kants initial discussion of ideas of reason. For one of the best current discussions of Kants doctrine of ideas, see Michelle Grier, Kants Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 7. See Kenneth F. Rogerson, Kants Aesthetics: The Roles of Form and Expression (Lanham, Md., New York, and London: University Press of America, 1986), 95105. 8. The key text here is 59, especially Ak 352f. 9. For someone who holds such a position see D. W. Gotshalk, Form and Expression in Kants Aesthetic Theory, British Journal of Aesthetics 7 (1967): 25060. 10. For instance, there is no evidence that Kant wants to say that God creates natural objects to express ideas in a way similar to the way an artist works. 11. See chapter 3. 12. See sections 5 and 8 of the introduction to the Critique of Judgment. 13. See my earlier discussion of this point in Kenneth F. Rogerson, Kants Aesthetics: The Roles of Form and Expression (Lanham, Md., New York, and London: University of Press of America, 1986), 1925. 14. This assumes a point that I would deny; namely, that there can be a species of beauty that does not express an idea. 15. For authors who discuss this point, see Donald Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory, 11517; D. W. Gotshalk, Form and Expression in Kants Aesthetic Theory, 25455; Paul Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kants Aesthetics, 4647; Robert L. Zimmerman, Kant: The Aesthetic Judgment in Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert Paul Wolff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 402404. 16. See the second moment of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (KU 5: 21119).
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17. For a good discussion of the problems with Kants free/dependent distinction, see Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 24248. 18. Paul Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kants Aesthetics, 56f. 19. Such an account would also conict with Kants treatment of literature. See KU 5: 321. 20. Theodore E. Uehling Jr. argues the point that Kant subscribes to the view that aesthetic ideas can be expressed through contemplation of the perceptual form of an object. See Theodore E. Uehling Jr., The Notion of Form in Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 95. 21. See chapter 3 where I discuss genius. 22. We will look into this issue more fully in chapter 5. 23. It should be noted that moral notions like virtue will lie beyond sense experience since, according to Kants ethics, acting morally is always acting from freedom, and freedom is not an empirical notion. 24. Kant cites examples of sorts of ideas such as invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity, creation, etc. (KU 5: 314). Chapter 3. Natural and Artistic Beauty 1. See, Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 227f; and Felicitas Munzel, The Privileged Status of Interest in Natures Beautiful Forms: A Response to Jane Kneller, Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress Memphis 1995, ed. Hoke Robinson (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1996), vol. 1, part 2, pp. 78792; Anne Margaret Baxley, The Practical Signicance of Taste in Kants Critique of Judgment, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 63, no. 1 (2005), pp. 3345. 2. See Salim Kemal, Kant and Fine Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), part 4, esp. 22528. 3. The disinterestedness is the topic of the rst moment of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. 4 (KU 5: 207209, 9294) is specically concerned to rule out interests based on concepts or ideas. 4. See the account of genius in 46 through 49 where Kant attempts to show how proper art can be produced without being too studied. See also my discussion of genius in chapter 2. 5. I refer the reader to the free/adherent beauty discussion in chapter 2, section 2, as it pertains to expression of aesthetic ideas. 6. For accounts of this sort of argument see, D. W. Gotshalk, Form and Expression in Kants Aesthetic Theory, British Journal of Aesthetics 7 (1967): 254f; Donald W. Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974),
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115f; and Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 24348. 7. This comes out in Kants discussion of genius in the production of art and specically how genius must be coupled with taste, described as the ability to achieve a free conformity to law. See KU 5: 319, 197. 8. Gotshalk takes this position. See Gotshalks Form and Expression in Kants Aesthetic Theory. 9. See Paul Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kants Aesthetics, Kant-Studien 68 (1977): 56. 10. See Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 227f, arguing the superiority of natural beauty; also see Salim Kemal, Kant and Fine Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), part 4, esp. 22528. 11. For an excellent discussion of this line of argument see Jane Kneller, The Interests of Disinterest, Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress Memphis 1995, ed. Hoke Robinson (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1996), vol. 1, part 2, pp. 77786. 12. See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 367; Ted Cohen, Why Beauty Is a Symbol of Morality, in Essays in Kants Aesthetics, ed. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 230; and Salim Kemal, Kant and Fine Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 16. 13. See also KU 5: 354, 228. 14. See Salim Kemal, Kant and Fine Art, 2832, and chapter 7. See also R. K. Elliot, The Unity of Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, British Journal of Aesthetics 8 (1968): 24459. 15. See Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 227f. 16. As is unfortunately common for Kant, he is not entirely consistent about the distinctions between different types of art. Sometimes Kant distinguishes between aesthetic art and mechanical art, where beautiful art and agreeable art are species of the aesthetic (KU 5: 305, 184). However, at other times, agreeable art seems to be a species of mechanical art but still contrasted with beautiful art (KU 5: 306, 185). 17. See 45 (5: 306) for Kants distinction between ne and mechanical art. See also Kneller, The Interests of Disinterest, 78284; and Kenneth F. Rogerson, Kants Aesthetics: The Roles of Form and Expression (Lanham, Md., New York, and London: University Press of America, 1986), 11113. See my discussion of genius in chapter 2. 18. Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 219. 19. Note that Guyer has a rather different interpretation of the moral interest in beauty. See Guyer, Kant and Fine Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 17076. 20. See the list of the four similarities at KU 5: 354, 22728.
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21. A regard to this analogy is customary even for the ordinary understanding, and we often designate beautiful objects of nature or art with names that seem to be grounded in a moral judging (KU 5: 354, 228). It is interesting that this passage from 59 is very similar to a passage in 42 where, on Allisons interpretation, Kant is making a quite different point. In 42 Kant says that certain sensations contain a language that nature brings to us and that seems to have a higher meaning (KU 5: 302, 181). The white color of the lily seems to dispose the mind to ideas of innocence (KU 5: 302, 181); and Kant goes on to claim that other natural colors inspire the use of moral language to describe them. 22. See the discussion in chapter 6. 23. See KU 5: 340, 216. 24. See Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory, 155, for a similar sort of argument. Chapter 4. Free Harmony and Aesthetic Pleasure An earlier version of this chapter appeared under the title Pleasure and Fit in Kants Aesthetics, Kantian Review 2 (1998). 1. See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1979), 8, 10016, 15160; and Donald Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), 6974. Note that Crawford offers a further history of this line of interpretation. 2. Hannah Ginsborg, On the Key to Kants Critique of Taste, Pacic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1991): 290313. Henry Allison argues a similar position. See Allison, Pleasure and Harmony in Kants Theory of Taste: Critique of the Causal Reading, in H. Parret, ed., Kants Aesthetik Kants Aesthetics/L esthetique de Kant (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1998) pp. 46683. See also Allisons position in Kantian Review 1 (1997), 5381, and most recently in Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 113f. See also Karl Amerikss account of Ginsborgs position. Ameriks, New Views on Kants Judgment of Taste, in Parret, ed., Kants Aesthetik Kants Aesthetics/L esthetique de Kant. 3. Actually, we judge an object to be purposive without purpose, and this judging engenders the mental state of free harmony. 4. See the appendix for a discussion on Kants argument for the universal validity of judgments of taste. 5. Paul Guyer makes a similar criticism of Ginsborgs position, The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited, in Rebecca Kukla, ed., Aesthetics and Cognition in Kants Critical Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 178f. 6. Henry Allison argues the contrary position that recognizing free harmony by a feeling is a harmless extension of the rst Critique position. See Allison, Pleasure and Harmony. See Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 28, 102103, and 17074.
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7. This topic is discussed in depth in chapter 1. 8. See Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 28, 102103, and 17074. 9. For an account of the history of the third Critique, see John H. Zammito, The Genesis of Kants Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). See especially 7, 12123, and 264. 10. See Allison, Pleasure and Harmony. 11. See Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals (KU 4: 45963) for this sort of discussion. 12. See 2, KU 5: 204205, 9091. 13. See KU 5: 18788, where Kant recognizes that the categories will constitute a harmony of the faculties. 14. See Karl Ameriks, New Views on Kants Judgment of Taste, especially the discussion at 44243. 15. See the following for more complete accounts of Kants doctrine of expression of ideas: Salim Kemal, Kants Aesthetic Theory (London: Macmillan, 1992), 9597 and 13537; Rudolf A. Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 11129; and Kenneth F. Rogerson, Kants Aesthetics (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986), 95107. See also chapter 2. 16. This seems to be the position that Allison now holds. See Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17177. 17. Robert Pippin makes a similar point. See Robert Pippin, Kant and the Signicance of Taste, Journal of the History of Philosophy 34, 4 (October 1996): 56465. 18. See Paul Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kants Aesthetics, 5657, as a commonly held position of rejecting expression as criterial. 19. For a discussion of this issue see chapter 3. 20. In 21 Kant refers to free harmony as a state in which the faculties of imagination and understanding are in a unique state that is optimal for the animation of these faculties (KU5: 239, 123). One might hold that it is this feature that explains why we take pleasure in free harmony. It is unclear to me why optimal animation on Kants account would be necessarily pleasing. Further, this account is not incompatible with my account of expression of ideas. It is quite likely, as discussed in chapter 2, that expression of ideas will require the sort of stimulating mental state Kant describes in 21 as optimal animation. Chapter 5. The Extensiveness of the Criterion of Beauty 1. Please see my discussion of free harmony in chapter 1. 2. A much fuller discussion of Kants argument for the universal validity of aesthetic judgments can be found in the appendix.
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3. See my discussion in chapter 4, 2f. 4. Hannah Ginsborg offers an extensive discussion of Kants notion of concepts as rules in Lawfulness without a Law: Kant on the Free Play of Imagination and Understanding, Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 3781. Also see my discussion of this issue in chapter 1. 5. See Kants own example at B 180. 6. One may well be concerned that Kant moves so easily from the claim that beauty is not a concept to the rather different claim that beauty is not based on conceptual perfectionism. However, this is a topic that goes beyond our present concern. 7. What follows is not the only interpretation of how Kant accounts for the feeling of pleasure. See the appendix for a description of the epistemological argument for universal validity for an alternative. See also an extended discussion of the role of pleasure in chapter 4. 8. See the discussion in the third moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful. 9. See Karl Ameriks, New Views on Kants Judgment of Taste, 436f. 10. See Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2001), 17477. Also, see chapter 4. 11. Possibly the best recent interpretation of this sort of argument is given by Henry Allison in Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 16879. 12. See the appendix (and chapter 4) on the argument for universal validity. 13. See chapter 1 for a discussion of free harmony as an abstraction from concepts. 14. Henry Allison offers such a defense of the everything-is-beautiful charge in an unpublished manuscript The Quid Facti and Quid Juris in Kants Critique of Taste. See also his updated account in Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 18492. 15. Again, see my previous discussion of such a criticism in chapter 1. 16. Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2001), 18492. See also Carl Posy, Imagination and Judgment in the Critical Philosophy, Kants Aesthetics, ed. Ralf Meerbote (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1991), 4041. See my earlier discussion of this position in chapter 1, pp. 9f. 17. Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2001), 188. 18. Carl Posy, Imagination and Judgment in the Critical Philosophy, 41. 19. See Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 188; and Posy, Imagination and Judgment in the Critical Philosophy, 41. 20. See Posy, Imagination and Judgment in the Critical Philosophy, 40.
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21. See Hannah Ginsborg, Lawfulness without a Law: Kant on the Free Play of the Imagination and Understanding, Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 3781. 22. See Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression, Kant-Studien 68 (1977): 4670, especially section 7; Donald Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), section 5.6; and Theodore E. Uehling Jr., The Notion of Form in Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), chapter 5. 23. See my discussion of Kants argument for universal validity in the appendix. Chapter 6. Beauty, Free Harmony, and Moral Duty This chapter is a substantially revised version of an article originally published under the title Kant on Beauty and Morality, Kant-Studien 95, 3 (2004). 1. I am using aesthetic in the contemporary sense to refer to what Kant would include as objects of artistic or natural beauty. Strictly speaking, Kant uses the term broadly to refer to all sorts of matters affecting our senses. For example, in the Transcendental Aesthetic of the rst Critique, space and time are claimed to be modes of our sense perception. 2. On the issue of whether beauties of both art and nature can be of moral value for Kant, see chapter 2 of this work as well as Jane Kneller, The Interests of Disinterest, in Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, vol. 1, part 2, pp. 78284. 3. For a sampling of positions on how the connection with morality may advance the argument for universal validity, see Jeffrey Maitland, Two Senses of Necessity in Kants Aesthetic Theory, British Journal of Aesthetics 16 (1976): 34753; Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 261; and Donald Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), 145. 4. Paul Guyer takes this position in his recent writings. See Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 19 and 97f. 5. Salim Kemal argues an interesting interpretation along these lines. See Kemal, Kant and Fine Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 17076. 6. See also KU 5: 326, 203204, and KU 5: 335, 211. Paul Guyer makes quite a lot of the expression of moral ideas as the appropriate connection between aesthetics and ethics. See Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom, 19, 3839, and 106107. 7. I have argued that expression of an idea is necessary to explain how a free harmony of the imagination and understanding is even possible. See chapter 1. 8. See Paul Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kants Aesthetics, Kant-Studien 1 (1977): 4670. 9. The so-called patchwork thesis has been attributed to the interpretations by Kemp-Smith, Adickes, and Vaihinger. For a description of this position see H. J. Paton, Kants Metaphysic of Experience (New York: Humanities, 1936), vol. 1, 3846.
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10. See John H. Zammito, The Genesis of Kants Critique of Judgment (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992) for an interesting historical account of Kants text. The introduction and part 1 are most relevant to our present purposes. 11. Kants characterization of pleasure as satisfaction of aims does not appear to be offered as a complete denition of pleasure but it does seem to be offered as a sufcient condition. And this is enough for our purposes. If satisfaction of aims is a sufcient condition for pleasure, then showing that, for example, free harmony satises an aim provides an explanation for why we nd such a thing pleasing. 12. For the worry that Kants account may yield that every object is beautiful, see Ralf Meerbote, Reection on Beauty, in Essays in Kants Aesthetics, ed. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), 81; and Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 322. 13. See the discussion in chapter 1. 14. Zammito claims that in the latter sections of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment where Kant makes a connection between aesthetics and ethics, represents the third and nal stage of his evolution in thought on beauty. See Zammito, The Genesis of Kants Critique of Judgment, 7, 12123, and 26368. 15. For an extended discussion of Kants doctrine of aesthetic ideas, see chapter 2. 16. See the discussion in chapter 2. 17. Again, see Paul Guyer, Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kants Aesthetics, 4670, for the claim that expressions of ideas are instances of free harmony. 18. It should be noted that not all commentators see that Kants claim that appreciation of beauty can speak to the supersensible underpinnings of our moral life and his claim that beauty is the symbol of morality are the same claims. Allison, for example, separates the two. See Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), see chapters 9, 10, and 11. 19. See sections 6 and 7 of the introduction to the Critique of Judgment for a discussion of the distinction between the realization of a concept and an idea. 20. Kants talk about the supersensible is most frequent in the section entitled the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment, especially from KU 5: 33946, and 21521. 21. Henry Allison makes this the cornerstone of his interpretation of the moral signicance of aesthetic appreciation. See Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), chapters 9 and 10. 22. I argue in chapters 2 and 3 that both art and nature are capable of being appreciated as expressing aesthetic ideas. 23. See Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Chapters 9 and 10 argue for the moral signicance of natural beauty while chapter 11 argues that art and nature can symbolize morality. Also, see my extended discussion of this point in chapter 3.
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24. See remark 2, especially KU 5: 346, 22021. Also, I refer the reader to the more extensive discussion of this position in chapter 2. Appendix: The Meaning of Universal Validity in Kants Aesthetics This appendix is a reprint (with few changes) of my The Meaning of Universal Validity in Kants Aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40, 3 (Spring 1982). 1. Immanuel Kant. Critique of Judgment. trans. J. C. Meredith (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 145. By the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, I refer to the rst part of the Critique of Judgment. For future references to this work I shall adopt the following method. The abbreviation CJ will be used to refer to the Critique of Judgment and this will be followed by the pagination of volume 5 of the Akademie-Ausgabe. The English translation, if used, will be cited last by the name of the translator and the page number of translation. Two translations will be referred to: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. C. Meredith (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), and Immanuel Kant, Analytic of the Beautiful from the Critique of Judgment, trans. Walter Cerf (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963). 2. CJ, KU 5: 216, Cerf., 18. 3. CJ, KU 5: 215. 4. Kant makes this point several times in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. The argument of paragraph 1 (CJ, KU 5: 203204) is perhaps the clearest statement of his position. 5. What I have in mind here is that a judgment of taste, for Kant, is a specic sort of intrinsic value judgment. Like ordinary intrinsic value claims, they purport to be objectively correct, but in the specic sense that the aesthetic experience is one that is universally pleasing. 6. CJ, KU 5: 21213, Cerf., 15. 7. Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 354. See also, Jeffrey Maitland, Two Senses of Necessity in Kants Aesthetic Theory, British Journal of Aesthetics 16, 4 (Autumn 1976): 350. 8. While the term rational expectation is Guyers (see Guyer, 256 and 354), this interpretation is widely shared. See also, Donald Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory (Madison; University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), 12531; and R. K. Elliot, The Unity of Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, British Journal of Aesthetics 8, 3 (July 1968): 245. These are some of the more recent proponents of this interpretation. 9. Maitland in his Two Senses of Necessity in Kants Aesthetic Theory is the most vigorous proponent of this interpretation, but it can also be found in Guyer (Kant and the Claims of Taste, 261) and Crawford (Kants Aesthetic Theory, 145). 10. For some recent versions of this reconstructed argument see Crawford (Kants
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Aesthetic Theory, 12531); Guyer (Kant and the Claims of Taste, 28486); and Elliot (The Unity of Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 245). 11. The term epistemological argument is Guyers, but refers to an interpretation widely shared. 12. See Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 297. 13. See Elliot (The Unity of Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 215); and Guyer (Kant and the Claims of Taste, 321) for examples of this criticism. 14. CJ, KU 5: 213, Cerf., 13. 15. For the occurrences of zumuten see KU 5: 211, Cerf., 13; KU 5: 212, Cerf., 15; KU 5: 214, Cerf., 17; KU 5: 218, Cerf., 22; KU 5: 296, Meredith, 154; and KU 5: 353, Meredith, 223. Note that since the original publication of this article it has been pointed out to me that the verb in question is zumuten and not muten, as I had originally claimed. The subtle difference in meaning between the two verbs does not, I believe, affect the argument here. 16. Harold T. Betteridge, The New Cassells German Dictionary (New York: Frank & Wagnalls, 1971), 592 17. CJ, KU 5: 13; Meredith, 52. 18. CJ, KU 5: 23940. 19. CJ, KU 5: 296, Meredith, 154; and CJ, KU 5: 353, Meredith, 223. 20. CJ, KU 5: 353; Meredith, 223. 21. CJ, KU 5: 278; Meredith, 132. 22. While it is Paul Guyer who draws this conclusion, it would seem that anyone holding a factual interpretation of judgments of taste must take this position. 23. Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 297307. 24. CJ, KU 5: 23940, Cerf., 4951. 25. CJ, KU 5: 216, Cerf., 19. 26. See Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 302. 27. See Stanley G. French, Kants Constitutive-Regulative Distinction, in Kant Studies Today, ed. Lewis W. Beck (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1969), 38586; and Lewis W. Beck, A Commentary on Kants Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 209. 28. Kant is far from unambiguous on this point. His most promising approach is to argue that having intellectual interests is necessary for a good will. 29. Guyer makes such a criticism. See, Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 261. 30. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis W. Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 48. Postscript: The Argument for Universal Validity 1. The qualication properly is important here. In order to demand that others agree to our judgment both we and they must attend to the proper aesthetic features of
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an object. For Kant this means a couple of things: Negatively, we must not evaluate an object based on our subjective interestswe must be disinterested. More positively, it will turn out, we must focus on an objects subjective purposiveness for judgment. 2. Henry Allison (Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Paul Guyer (Kant and the Claims of Taste, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979) offer quite different versions of the epistemological argument from skepticism. Alternatively, the following nd that Kants argument to universal validity needs the help of the later materials of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment: Donald Crawford, Kants Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974); Salim Kemal, Kant and Fine Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986); Kenneth Rogerson, Kants Aesthetics (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986); Robert Pippin, The Signicance of Taste: Kant, Aesthetic and Reective Judgment, Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996): 54969; and Anthony Saville, Aesthetic Reconstructions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987). 3. See, for example Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 297. 4. Ralf Meerbote, Reection on Beauty, in Essays in Kants Aesthetics, ed. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 81f. 5. Hannah Ginsborg, Lawfulness without a Law: Kant on the Free Play of the Imagination and Understanding, Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 5967, Beatrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 11522; Henry Allison, Kants Theory of Taste, 2128; and Karl Posy Imagination and Judgment in the Critical Philosophy, in Kants Aesthetics, ed. Ralf Meerbote (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1991), 4041. 6. Logik, 6, Ak 9, 9495: 592. 7. See my discussion in chapters 1 and 5 where I discuss the feel-the-t interpretation. Specically look at chapter 4 for the discussion of pleasure. 8. See KU 5: 187, 73. It might even be possible to incorporate these two views. It could go something like this: Since free harmony is subjectively purposive, it gives pleasure; since free harmony cannot be recognized by a concept, the only way we can recognize such a state is by the felt pleasure. There are some familiar problems here. If pleasure is due to nothing more than subjective purposiveness, then why isnt every wellordered manifold pleasurablethis is our old friend, the everything-is-beautiful criticism. But there is a further problem: If aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in nding an object purposive for judgment, then it surely seems that we must rst recognize that the object is purposive for judgment and then take pleasure in it for that reason. See Robert Pippin, Kant on the Signicance of Taste, Journal of the History of Philosophy 34, 4 (October 1996): 56465, for a similar point. See also, chapter 4 for an extensive discussion of pleasure and free harmony. 9. See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, chapter 8. 10. See chapter 5 for my argument that the Allison et al. interpretation cannot, in the end, avoid this criticism.
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11. This is not a trivial point. On other interpretations (what Guyer calls the multiconceptual interpretations), its not clear that there would be shared, intentional aesthetic objects. See Paul Guyer, The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited, in ed. Rebecca Kukla, Aesthetics and Cognition in Kants Critical Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 175f.
Index
Allison, Henry, 14, 16, 51, 54, 7679, 97, 113 art, beautiful, 36, 47, 50, 54 beauty aesthetic ideas and, 3, 2226, 2940, 6768, 80, 8587, 9296 free vs. dependent, 3132, 38, 4147, 55 natural vs. artistic, 45, 2124, 3031, 4155, 66, 87, 91, 97 not a concept, 8, 102 concepts acquisition of, 1622, 11314, 117 versus ideas, 2229, 32, 35, 37, 39, 66, 9194, 102 Crawford, Donald, 5860 epistemological argument, 104108, 11118 everything-is-beautiful criticism, 6567, 7490, 113, 11617 free harmony pleasure and, 1, 4, 7, 14, 25, 5768, 7072, 76, 80, 8692, 10218 feel the t, 12, 87, see also recognition, argument from interpretations of, 1019 genius, 2023, 3637 expression of idea and, 2930, 5053, 9192, 9697 Ginsborg, Hannah, 1619, 5861, 7879, 113 Guyer, Paul, 1315, 21, 33, 5862, 108 ideas, aesthetic as a criterion for beauty, see beauty, aesthetic ideas and as purposive for judgment, 6667, 80, 9193 as solving the problem of free harmony, 2024, 35 everything-is-beautiful and, 7981 value of, 3840 versus concepts, 2627, 66 ideas, rational (of reason), 8, 2728, 39, 51, 66, 8081, 91, 94 interests disinterest and, 4144, 4849, 52, 99, 103 of reason, 3940 moral, 4854, 8083, 87, 95, 99 judgment determinant vs. reective, 78 Longuenesse, 113 133
134
Index subjective, 10, 1516, 5154, 6468, 7074, 7980, 88, 9295, 117 without purpose, 78, 1011, 4246 universal validity expecting vs. demanding, 102107 subjective universality and, 1, 61, 67 recognition, argument from, 1319, 5768, 87, 112, 11518 skepticism, argument from, 1319, 5963, 7273, 81, 11117 supersensible, 5254, 93108
Meerbote, Ralf, 1314 morality aesthetics and, 8388, 9499 in art and nature, 41, 4954, 98 moral ideas and, 84 pleasure in free harmony and, 87 pleasure, 33 aesthetic ideas and, 3840, 68, 93ff. attainment of aims and, 64, 88, 118 see also free harmony, pleasure and Posy, Carl, 14, 16, 18, 7679, 113 purposiveness for higher cognitive abilities, 54
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