Kant Critique of Judgment, pdf EBook (Download)
Source
Meredith, James Creed. (1911). Kant’s Critique Of Aesthetic Judgement. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
Introduction to The Critique of Judgment
Kant’s Observations on the Beautiful and the Sublime was published in 1764, when he was 40 years old. That essay, devoted partly to the topic of aesthetics and partly to other topics – such as moral psychology and anthropology – pre-dates the Critique of Pure Reason by 15 years. It predates the Critique of Practical Reason by 22 years, and the Critique of Judgment by 24 years. Kant’s interest in aesthetics clearly persisted throughout much of his career, reaching its height, as we know, in the Critique of Judgment.
Although the Critique of Judgment advances a very sophisticated aesthetic theory that Kant had not developed when he wrote the Observations, he retains the view that aesthetics is largely a matter of addressing the finer pleasures of beauty and sublimity. In the Observations, he writes:
The finer feeling that we will now consider is preeminently of two kinds: the feeling of the sublime and of the beautiful. Being touched by either is agreeable, but in very different ways. The sight of a mountain whose snow-covered peaks arise above the clouds, the description of a raging storm, or the depiction of the kingdom of hell by Milton arouses satisfaction, but with dread; by contrast, the prospect of meadows strewn with flowers, of valleys with winding brooks, covered with grazing herds, the description of Elysium,s or Homer’s depiction of the girdle of Venus also occasion an agreeable sentiment, but one that is joyful and smiling. For the former to make its impression on us in its proper strength, we must have a feeling of the sublime,and in or- der properly to enjoy the latter we must have a feeling for the beautiful. Lofty oaks and lonely shadows in sacred groves are sublime, flower beds, low hedges, and trees trimmed into figures are beautiful. The night is sublime, the day is beautiful. Casts of mind that possess a feeling for the sublime are gradually drawn into lofty sentiments, of friendship, of contempt for the world, of eternity, by the quiet calm of a summer evening, when the flickering light of the stars breaks through the umber shadows of the night and the lonely moon rises into view. The brilliant day inspires busy fervor and a feeling of gaiety. The sublime touches, the beautiful charms. (Observations 2:208-9)
The view that aesthetics has fundamentally to do with pleasure was the predominate view in the 18th century, even though such a view may be less widespread nowadays.
One of Kant’s aims in the Critique of Judgment is to take up the project that Hume pursued in his essay on aesthetics published in 1760, “Of the Standard of Taste.” Hume wondered how disputes over matters of taste could be resolved if judgments about beauty are grounded in a subjective feeling of pleasure. His answer was to invoke the notion of an “true judge” or ideal critic whose tendencies to feel pleasure or displeasure in response to an object could serve as the standard.
While Kant does not engage directly with Hume’s strategy, it is clear that the former has something different in mind. Kant invokes some of the argument styles that he had pursued in his first two Critiques in order to formulate the issue of aesthetic justification in new ways. Specifically, Kant focuses on the logical form of aesthetic judgments (a task he takes up primarily in the Analytic of the Beautiful), and then offers a deduction of judgments with just such a form.
A key feature of these judgments, he thinks, is that they manifest universality and necessity. In finding something beautiful, he holds, we feel so strongly in favor of the object that we imply that everyone else will and ought to be pleased by it.
Kant’s strategy for explaining why aesthetic judgments are justified mirrors the strategy he adopts in the first Critique for explaining why judgments involving the application of categories are justified. It is to offer a “deduction.” As he puts it in the Critique of Judgment, “the claim of an aesthetic judgment to universal validity for every Subject, being a judgment which must rely on some a priori principle, stands in need of a Deduction (i.e. a derivation of its title).”
The sections of the Critique of Judgment that make up the deduction are challenging, and it is a matter of some debate how the argument is supposed to go. Unsurprisingly, commentators are of varying opinions as to whether the argument succeeds.
In addition to taking on the task of attempting to establish that aesthetic judgments are justified, which runs throughout the Critique of Judgment, Kant also makes substantial contributions to thinking on the nature of the experience of sublimity, as well as the process of artistic creation. On the latter point, he presents an account of artistic creativity or genius that has turned out to be very influential in the way in which we have come to think of the work of artists. Here, for instance, is his well-known definition of artistic genius:
[G]enius (1) is a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given: and not an aptitude in the way of cleverness for what can be learned according to some rule; and that consequently originality must be its primary property. (2) Since there may also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models, i.e. be exemplary; and, consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for others, i.e. as a standard or rule of judging. (3) It cannot indicate scientifically how it brings about its product, but rather gives the rule as nature. Hence, where an author owes a product to his genius, he does not himself know how the ideas for it have entered into his head, nor has he it in his power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate the same to others in such precepts as would enable them to produce similar products. (Hence, presumably, our word Genie is derived from genius, as the peculiar guardian and guiding spirit bestowed upon a human being at birth, by the inspiration of which those original ideas were obtained.) (4) Nature prescribes the rule through genius not to science but to art, and this also only in so far as it is to be fine art. (CJ, §46, p.307)
Above is a link to the full text of the James Creed Meredith translation of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, first published in 1911. The Meredith translation has been widely used among English-speaking Kant scholars. The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment represents the first part of the Critique of Judgment as a whole. The second part, not included here, is the Critique of Teleological judgment, which deals with judgments of design in nature.
The pagination of the book represents the standard “Academy” edition of Kant’s works (which is why the pagination begins with page 167). Standard methods of citing the text are by section number and page number (e.g. CJ, §23, p. 244) or by the Academy Edition volume number, which is “5” followed by the page number (e.g. CJ, 5: 244).
References and Further Reading
Primary
Kant, I. (1911). Critique of Judgement. (J. C. Meredith). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1790) Retrieved from http://bradleymurray.ca
Introductory Books
Burnham, D. (2001). An Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Edinburgh University Press.
Hughes, F. (2010). Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgement”: A Reader’s Guide (1st ed.). Continuum.
Wenzel, C. H. (2005). An Introduction to Kant’s Aesthetics: Core Concepts and Problems. Wiley-Blackwell.
Wicks, R. (2007). Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Kant on Judgment (New Ed.). Routledge.
General Books and Commentaries
Guyer, P. (1997). Kant and the claims of taste (2nd ed.). Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Allison, H. E. (2001). Kant’s theory of taste: a reading of the Critique of aesthetic judgment. Modern European philosophy. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Crawford, D. W. (1974). Kant’s aesthetic theory. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Zuckert, R. (2007). Kant on beauty and biology: an interpretation of the Critique of judgment. Modern European philosophy. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cite This Introduction
Murray, B. (2014). Introduction to the Critique of Judgment. Retrieved from http://bradleymurray.ca
Links
Kant’s Aesthetics and Teleology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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This version of the Critique of Judgment by Immanuel Kant is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.