Mathematical Sublime (§27)

by Corry Shores
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Reason legislates a law requiring us to judge the great things we sense in nature as small in comparison to reason’s ideas (§27 141b). The feeling of displeasure we feel when encountering the absolutely great object causes displeasure, which then arouses the feeling of our supersensible vocation by which “it is purposive and thus a pleasure to find every standard of sensibility inadequate for the ideas of the understanding” (141c).

The mind is moved during sublime experiences, whereas when judging the beautiful it is calm. Kant likens this movement to vibration, that is, “to a rapidly alternating repulsion from and attraction to one and the same object:” the imagination is fearful of the abyss of reality that lies beyond its comprehensive capacities, but also reason’s notion of the supersensible is what causes the imagination to think there can be more. Our ability to conceive it is something lawful, and hence what is attractive to reason is repulsive to the imagination (141-142).

Apprehensions continue arriving in succession; it is a forward movement. But comprehension is regressive; it is a backward movement, hence “it does violence to the inner sense, which must be all the more marked the greater the quantum is which the imagination comprehends in one intuition.” Because comprehension moves backward, it in this sense seems subjectively contrapurposive, because our purpose is to do as much cognizing as possible, and not to halt the flow. However, it is necessary that we perform such interruptive comprehensions, hence in that way it is also purposive. This is another source of violence inflicted on the subject (142c-d).

But this displeasure from counterpurposivity is also what causes the faculty of reason to provide the idea of the absolute whole, and hence this displeasure comes to be seen as purposive (as a means to rational cognition) and hence is converted into pleasure (143c).

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Kant's Ideal of Beauty

by Corry Shores

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“Idea signifies, strictly speaking, a concept of reason, and ideal the representation of an individual being as adequate to an idea” (§17 117a). Our taste judges things as beautiful, but there can be no objective rule that determines what is beautiful by means of concepts alone, because the source of our beauty-judgments is aesthetic: “its determining ground is the feeling of the subject and not a concept of an object” (116b).

So because ideas are concepts of reason, we would call the ideal of beauty the archetype of taste which is an “indeterminate idea of a maximum” that “cannot be represented through concepts, but only in an individual presentation” (117a).

Such a beauty cannot be vague, but rather must be fixed by a concept of purposiveness. Nothing except humans have their ends in themselves, and thus nothing other than the human being can be said to capable of the ideal of beauty.

(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

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Kant's Free and Adherent Beauties

by Corry Shores
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Kant distinguishes two beauties: free and adherent beauty. Free beauty does not presuppose a concept of perfection for what the object is supposed to be, while adherent beauty is conditioned, because it adheres to a concept based on a particular end (§16 114a).

Certain things in nature such as flowers and birds are free beauties, because they do not represent some determinate concept. Kant thus includes decorations and “music fantasias[1]

(without a theme), indeed all music without a text” as free beauties (114b).

However, the beauty of human beings, horses, and buildings is adherent beauty, because they “presuppose a concept of the end that determines what the things should be, hence a concept of its perfection” (114d). [CS: perhaps we have a stronger concept of what horses are supposed to be for, more so than for flowers, on account of our instrumental usage of horses.]

When the representation for the object matches the concept of what it is for, that is, when we become aware of the object’s perfection, then we have deemed it beautiful (115c).

[1] OED, fantasia: 1. a. Mus. ‘A composition in a style in which form is subservient to fancy’ (Stainer and Barrett)

(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

Kant’s Qualitative and Quantitative Perfection

by Corry Shores
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We synthesize the manifold of apperceptions according the objective purposiveness of the object: the concepts for what different things are for provide the rules for how we unify the manifolds that give them to us. This concept of what the thing is for is its qualitative perfection; and its completeness, in which all that the thing is supposed to be is there, is its quantitative perfection (§15 112a).

(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

Critique of the Power of Judgment §10: End, Purposiveness, Pleasure, and Will

by Corry Shores
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Transcendentally speaking (i.e., without regard for empirical matters, such as pleasure), an end is the object of a concept insofar as the concept is considered as the cause (the ground of possibility) of its object. In other words, when the concept of something is presupposed for that object to be, or for it to be thought, then it is an end. Purposiveness is the concept of an object being the cause of that object. The representation of the end is presupposed for it to be an outcome. Pleasure is our consciousness of such a representation, which allows us to maintain this state of awareness; while displeasure is the consciousness of the representation that thwarts pleasure (§10 105b). Will is the faculty of desire’s being in relation to representations of ends. Something is purposive only if it relates to ends and thus also to will (§10 105c).

(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

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