The Intentionality of Judgments of Taste in Kant's Critique of Judgment (original) (raw)
Related papers
Kant and the Problem of Judgments of Taste
1998
Kant holds that when we judge a thing beautiful, we do so on no other basis than our pleasure in the contemplation of it, while at the same time, we presume to judge with validity for everyone. To explain how this is possible is the task of what he calls the critique of taste. Such a task has three main parts. The first is to describe and analyze the essential characteristics of judgments of this kind. The second is to identify the state of mind from which such judgments take rise, this being, according to Kant, a state of harmonious free play between the cognitive faculties. The third part is the “deduction,” or proof of our right to make judgments of taste. I argue that Kant is unsuccessful in the second and third parts of this task. The main interest of his critical effort, I find, lies in his descriptive and analytical account of judgments of taste, specifically in his attempt to comprehend both their subjective character and their claim to universal validity. The first of these he understands as consisting in the judgment’s being based in feeling; the universality claim he understands as a normative requirement. I argue that no interpretation can be faithful to these basic tenets of Kant’s analysis without also accepting his conclusion that the act of judging in some sense “precedes” the very feeling of pleasure on which it is said to be based. I attempt to make sense of this conclusion in terms of the peculiar kind of consciousness of pleasure involved in such a judgment.
Kant-Studien, 2024
It is well known that Kant connects judgment and feeling in the third Critique. However, the precise relationship between these two faculties remains virtually unexplored, in large part due to the unpopularity of Kant's faculty psychology. This paper considers why, for Kant, judgment and feeling go together, arguing that he had good philosophical reasons for forging this connection. The discussion begins by situating these faculties within Kant's mature faculty psychology. While the 'power of judgment' [Urteilskraft] is fundamentally reflective, feeling [Gefühl] reveals itself as essentially non-discursive. Their systematic connection emerges through the principle of purposiveness [Zweckmäßigkeit], which the former legislates for the latter. I claim that we must understand this notion in terms of the suitability of the faculties for each other, as displayed in mere reflection. That is, we can only recognize the fitness of two things for each other through feeling, which, in turn, is the only way that we can engage in the activity of merely reflecting judgment. I conclude by gesturing at an even further way in which judgment and feeling are related, based on their mutual role in orienting all of the faculties of the human mind.
Kant's Feeling: Why a Judgment of Taste is De Dicto Necessary
Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics , 2020
Necessity can be ascribed not only to propositions, but also to feelings. In the Critique of Judgment (KdU), Immanuel Kant argues that a feeling of beauty is the necessary satisfaction instantiated by the ‘free play’ of the cognitive faculties, which provides the grounds for a judgment of taste (KdU 5:196, 217-19). In contradistinction to the theoretical necessity of the Critique of Pure Reason and the moral necessity of the Critique of Practical Reason, the necessity assigned to a judgment of taste is exemplary necessity (KdU 5:237). Necessity can also be assigned by employing the de re/de dicto distinction, namely, by ascribing entailments of what must necessarily hold to either a thing (de re) or to a proposition (de dicto). Although Kant does not use the distinction in any of the three Critiques, this omission has not prevented Kant scholars from applying the distinction in their analyses of the first two Critiques. In this paper, I examine the role that modality plays in Kant’s third Critique and I attempt to bring the de re/de dicto distinction to bear on Kant’s famous aesthetic theory. Ultimately, I perform a retrospective classification of the modality of taste by arguing that because a judgment of taste is not a statement about an objective fact, a judgment of ‘x is beautiful’ can only be read as de dicto necessary.
Feeling the Life of the Mind: Mere Judging, Feeling, and Judgment
2017
Hughes argues that in the Analytic of the Beautiful Kant introduces an account of feeling that operates as a non-cognitive and yet reflective form of awareness. The range of modes of awareness – which hitherto comprised sensible intuitions, concepts of understanding and conceptually determining judgments, but also ideas and principles of reason – is extended to include a new distinctively aesthetic type of judgments that have feeling as their ground. Crucially, Kant views this development as the condition of the integrity of his critical system.