In reference to the feeling of pleasure an object
is to be classified as either pleasant, or beautiful, or
sublime, or good (absolutely), (jucundum, pulchrum,
sublime, honestum).
The pleasant, as motive of desire, is always of
one and the same kind, no matter whence it comes
and however specifically different the representation
(of sense, and sensation objectively considered)
may be. Hence in judging its influence on the
mind, account is taken only of the number of its
charms (simultaneous and successive), and so only
of the mass, as it were, of the pleasant sensation;
and this can be made intelligible only by quantity.
It has no reference to culture, but belongs to mere
enjoyment.—On the other hand, the beautiful
requires the representation of a certain quality of
the Object, that can be made intelligible and
reduced to concepts (although it is not so reduced
in an aesthetical judgement); and it cultivates us, in
that it teaches us to attend to the purposiveness
in the feeling of pleasure.—The sublime consists
merely in the relation by which the sensible in the
representation of nature is judged available for a
possible supersensible use.—The absolutely good,
subjectively judged according to the feeling that
it inspires (the Object of the moral feeling), as
capable of determining the powers of the subject
through the representation of an absolutely compelling
law, is specially distinguished by the modality
of a necessity that rests a priori upon concepts.
This necessity involves not merely a claim, but a
command for the assent of every one, and belongs
in itself to the pure intellectual, rather than to the
aesthetical Judgement; and is by a determinant and
not a mere reflective judgement ascribed not to
Nature but to Freedom. But the determinability
of the subject by means of this Idea, and especially
of a subject that can feel hindrances in sensibility,
and at the same time its superiority to them by their
subjugation involving a modification of its state—i.e.
the moral feeling,—is yet so far cognate to the
aesthetical Judgement and its formal conditions
that it can serve to represent the conformity to
law of action from duty as aesthetical, i.e. as
sublime or even as beautiful, without losing its
purity. This would not be so, if we were to put
it in natural combination with the feeling of the
pleasant.
If we take the result of the foregoing exposition
of the two kinds of aesthetical judgements, there
arise therefrom the following short explanations:
The Beautiful is what pleases in the mere
judgement (and therefore not by the medium of
sensation in accordance with a concept of the Understanding).
It follows at once from this that it
must please apart from all interest.
The Sublime is what pleases immediately through
its opposition to the interest of sense.
Both, as explanations of aesthetical universally
valid judging, are referred to subjective grounds;
in the one case to grounds of sensibility, in favour of
the contemplative Understanding; in the other case
in opposition to sensibility, but on behalf of the purposes
of practical Reason. Both, however, united
in the same subject, are purposive in reference to
the moral feeling. The Beautiful prepares us to
love disinterestedly something, even nature itself;
the Sublime prepares us to esteem something highly
even in opposition to our own (sensible) interest.
We may describe the Sublime thus: it is an
object (of nature) the representation of which determines
the mind to think the unattainability of nature
regarded as a presentation of Ideas.
Literally taken and logically considered, Ideas
cannot be presented. But if we extend our empirical
representative faculty (mathematically or
dynamically) to the intuition of nature, Reason
inevitably intervenes, as the faculty expressing the
independence of absolute totality,53 and generates the
effort of the mind, vain though it be, to make the
representation of the senses adequate to this. This
effort,—and the feeling of the unattainability of the
Idea by means of the Imagination,—is itself a presentation
of the subjective purposiveness of our
mind in the employment of the Imagination for its
supersensible destination; and forces us, subjectively,
to think nature itself in its totality as a presentation
of something supersensible, without being
able objectively to arrive at this presentation.
For we soon see that nature in space and time
entirely lacks the unconditioned, and, consequently,
that absolute magnitude, which yet is desired by
the most ordinary Reason. It is by this that we
are reminded that we only have to do with nature
as phenomenon, and that it must be regarded as
the mere presentation of a nature in itself (of which
Reason has the Idea). But this Idea of the supersensible,
which we can no further determine,—so
that we cannot know but only think nature as its
presentation,—is awakened in us by means of an
object, whose aesthetical appreciation strains the
Imagination to its utmost bounds, whether of extension
(mathematical) or of its might over the
mind (dynamical). And this judgement is based
upon a feeling of the mind’s destination, which
entirely surpasses the realm of the former (i.e. upon
the moral feeling), in respect of which the representation
of the object is judged as subjectively
purposive.
In fact, a feeling for the Sublime in nature
cannot well be thought without combining therewith
a mental disposition which is akin to the Moral.
And although the immediate pleasure in the Beautiful
of nature likewise presupposes and cultivates a
certain liberality in our mental attitude, i.e. a satisfaction
independent of mere sensible enjoyment, yet
freedom is thus represented as in play rather than
in that law-directed occupation which is the genuine
characteristic of human morality, in which Reason
must exercise dominion over Sensibility. But in
aesthetical judgements upon the Sublime this dominion
is represented as exercised by the Imagination,
regarded as an instrument of Reason.
The satisfaction in the Sublime of nature is
then only negative (whilst that in the Beautiful is
positive); viz. a feeling that the Imagination is
depriving itself of its freedom, while it is purposively
determined according to a different law from that
of its empirical employment. It thus acquires an
extension and a might greater than it sacrifices,—the
ground of which, however, is concealed from
itself; whilst yet it feels the sacrifice or the
deprivation and, at the same time, the cause to
which it is subjected. Astonishment, that borders
upon terror, the dread and the holy awe which
seizes the observer at the sight of mountain peaks
rearing themselves to heaven, deep chasms and
streams raging therein, deep-shadowed solitudes
that dispose one to melancholy meditations—this,
in the safety in which we know ourselves to be, is
not actual fear, but only an attempt to feel fear by
the aid of the Imagination; that we may feel the
might of this faculty in combining with the mind’s
repose the mental movement thereby excited, and
being thus superior to internal nature,—and therefore
to external,—so far as this can have any influence
on our feeling of well-being. For the Imagination
by the laws of Association makes our state of contentment
dependent on physical [causes]; but it also,
by the principles of the Schematism of the Judgement
(being so far, therefore, ranked under freedom), is
the instrument of Reason and its Ideas, and, as such,
has might to maintain our independence of natural
influences, to regard as small what in reference to
them is great, and so to place the absolutely great
only in the proper destination of the subject. The
raising of this reflection of the aesthetical Judgement
so as to be adequate to Reason (though without a
definite concept of Reason) represents the object as
subjectively purposive, even by the objective want
of accordance between the Imagination in its greatest
extension and the Reason (as the faculty of Ideas).
We must here, generally, attend to what has
been already noted, that in the Transcendental
Aesthetic of Judgement we must speak solely of pure
aesthetical judgements; consequently our examples
are not to be taken from such beautiful or sublime
objects of Nature as presuppose the concept of a
purpose. For, if so, the purposiveness would be
either teleological, or would be based on mere sensations
of an object (gratification or grief); and thus
would be in the former case not aesthetical, in the
latter not merely formal. If then we call the sight
of the starry heaven sublime, we must not place at
the basis of our judgement concepts of worlds
inhabited by rational beings, and regard the bright
points, with which we see the space above us filled,
as their suns moving in circles purposively fixed
with reference to them; but we must regard it,
just as we see it, as a distant, all-embracing vault.
Only under such a representation can we range that
sublimity which a pure aesthetical judgement ascribes
to this object. And in the same way, if we are to
call the sight of the ocean sublime, we must not
think of it as we [ordinarily] do, endowed as we are
with all kinds of knowledge (not contained, however,
in the immediate intuition). For example, we sometimes
think of the ocean as a vast kingdom of aquatic
creatures; or as the great source of those vapours
that fill the air with clouds for the benefit of the
land; or again as an element which, though dividing
continents from each other, yet promotes the greatest
communication between them: but these furnish
merely teleological judgements. To call the ocean
sublime we must regard it as poets do, merely by
what strikes the eye; if it is at rest, as a clear
mirror of water only bounded by the heaven; if
it is restless, as an abyss threatening to overwhelm
everything. The like is to be said of the Sublime
and Beautiful in the human figure. We must not
regard as the determining grounds of our judgement
the concepts of the purposes which all our limbs serve,
and we must not allow this coincidence to influence
our aesthetical judgement (for then it would no longer
be pure); although it is certainly a necessary condition
of aesthetical satisfaction that there should be
no conflict between them. Aesthetical purposiveness
is the conformity to law of the Judgement in its freedom.
The satisfaction in the object depends on
the relation in which we wish to place the Imagination;
always provided that it by itself entertains the
mind in free occupation. If, on the other hand,
the judgement be determined by anything else,—whether
sensation or concept,—although it may be
conformable to law, it cannot be the act of a free
Judgement.
If then we speak of intellectual beauty or sublimity,
these expressions are, first, not quite accurate,
because beauty and sublimity are aesthetical modes
of representation, which would not be found in us at
all if we were pure intelligences (or even regarded
ourselves as such in thought). Secondly, although
both, as objects of an intellectual (moral) satisfaction,
are so far compatible with aesthetical satisfaction
that they rest upon no interest, yet they are difficult
to unite with it, because they are meant to produce
an interest. This, if its presentation is to harmonise
with the satisfaction in the aesthetical judgement,
could only arise by means of a sensible interest that
we combine with it in the presentation; and thus
damage would be done to the intellectual purposiveness,
and it would lose its purity.
The object of a pure and unconditioned intellectual
satisfaction is the Moral Law in that might
which it exercises in us over all mental motives that
precede it. This might only makes itself aesthetically
known to us through sacrifices (which causing a
feeling of deprivation, though on behalf of internal
freedom, in return discloses in us an unfathomable
depth of this supersensible faculty, with consequences
extending beyond our ken); thus the satisfaction on
the aesthetical side (in relation to sensibility) is negative,
i.e. against this interest, but regarded from the
intellectual side it is positive and combined with an
interest. Hence it follows that the intellectual, in
itself purposive, (moral) good, aesthetically judged,
must be represented as sublime rather than beautiful,
so that it rather awakens the feeling of respect
(which disdains charm) than that of love and familiar
inclination; for human nature does not attach itself
to this good spontaneously, but only by the authority
which Reason exercises over Sensibility. Conversely
also, that which we call sublime in nature,
whether external or internal (e.g. certain affections),
is only represented as a might in the mind to
overcome [certain]54 hindrances of the Sensibility by
means of moral fundamental propositions, and only
thus does it interest.
I will dwell a moment on this latter point. The
Idea of the Good conjoined with affection is called
enthusiasm. This state of mind seems to be
sublime, to the extent that we commonly assert that
nothing great could be done without it. Now every
affection55 is blind, either in the choice of its purpose,
or, if this be supplied by Reason, in its accomplishment;
for it is a mental movement which makes
it impossible to exercise a free deliberation about
fundamental propositions so as to determine ourselves
thereby. It can therefore in no way deserve
the approval of the Reason. Nevertheless, aesthetically,
enthusiasm is sublime, because it is a tension
of forces produced by Ideas, which give an impulse
to the mind, that operates far more powerfully and
lastingly than the impulse arising from sensible
representations. But (which seems strange) the
absence of affection (apatheia, phlegma in significatu
bono) in a mind that vigorously follows its unalterable
principles is sublime, and in a far preferable
way, because it has also on its side the satisfaction
of pure Reason.56 It is only a mental state of this kind
that is called noble; and this expression is subsequently
applied to things, e.g. a building, a garment,
literary style, bodily presence, etc., when these do not
so much arouse astonishment (the affection produced
by the representation of novelty exceeding our
expectations), as admiration (astonishment that does
not cease when the novelty disappears); and this
is the case when Ideas agree in their presentation
undesignedly and artlessly with the aesthetical
satisfaction.
Every affection of the STRENUOUS kind (viz. that
excites the consciousness of our power to overcome
every obstacle—animi strenui) is aesthetically sublime,
e.g. wrath, even despair (i.e. the despair of indignation,
not of faintheartedness). But affections of the
LANGUID kind (which make the very effort of resistance
an object of pain—animum languidum) have
nothing noble in themselves, but they may be reckoned
under the sensuously beautiful. Emotions, which may
rise to the strength of affections, are very different.
We have both spirited and tender emotions. The
latter, if they rise to the height of affections, are
worthless; the propensity to them is called sentimentality.
A sympathetic grief that will not admit
of consolation, or one referring to imaginary evils to
which we deliberately surrender ourselves—being
deceived by fancy—as if they were actual, indicates
and produces a tender,57 though weak, soul—which
shows a beautiful side and which can be called
fanciful, though not enthusiastic. Romances, lacrymose
plays, shallow moral precepts, which toy with
(falsely) so-called moral dispositions, but in fact
make the heart languid, insensible to the severe
precept of duty, and incapable of all respect for the
worth of humanity in our own person, and for the
rights of men (a very different thing from their
happiness), and in general incapable of all steady
principle; even a religious discourse,58 which recommends
a cringing, abject seeking of favour and
ingratiation of ourselves, which proposes the
abandonment of all confidence in our own faculties
in opposition to the evil within us, instead of a
sturdy resolution to endeavour to overcome our
inclinations by means of those powers which with all
our frailty yet remain to us; that false humility
which sets the only way of pleasing the Supreme
Being in self-depreciation, in whining hypocritical
repentance and in a mere passive state of mind—these
are not compatible with any frame of mind
that can be counted beautiful, still less with one
which is to be counted sublime.
But even stormy movements of mind which may
be connected under the name of edification with
Ideas of religion, or—as merely belonging to culture—with
Ideas containing a social interest, can in no
way, however they strain the Imagination, lay claim
to the honour of being sublime presentations, unless
they leave after them a mental mood which, although
only indirectly, has influence upon the mind’s
consciousness of its strength, and its resolution in
reference to that which involves pure intellectual
purposiveness (the supersensible). For otherwise
all these emotions belong only to motion, which one
would fain enjoy for the sake of health. The
pleasant exhaustion, consequent upon such disturbance
produced by the play of the affections, is
an enjoyment of our well-being arising from the
restored equilibrium of the various vital forces.
This in the end amounts to the same thing as that
state which Eastern voluptuaries find so delightful,
when they get their bodies as it were kneaded and
all their muscles and joints softly pressed and bent;
only that in this case the motive principle is for the
most part external, in the other case it is altogether
internal. Many a man believes himself to be edified
by a sermon, when indeed there is no edification at
all (no system of good maxims); or to be improved
by a tragedy, when he is only glad at his ennui being
happily dispelled. So the Sublime must always have
reference to the disposition, i.e. to the maxims which
furnish to the intellectual [part] and to the Ideas of
Reason a superiority over sensibility.
We need not fear that the feeling of the sublime
will lose by so abstract a mode of presentation,—which
is quite negative in respect of what is sensible,—for
the Imagination, although it finds nothing beyond
the sensible to which it can attach itself, yet
feels itself unbounded by this removal of its limitations;
and thus that very abstraction is a presentation
of the Infinite, which can be nothing but a mere
negative presentation, but which yet expands the
soul. Perhaps there is no sublimer passage in the
Jewish Law than the command, Thou shalt not
make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness
of anything which is in heaven or on the earth or
under the earth, etc. This command alone can
explain the enthusiasm that the Jewish people in
their moral period felt for their religion, when they
compared themselves with other peoples; or explain
the pride which Mahommedanism inspires. The
same is true of the moral law and of the tendency to
morality in us. It is quite erroneous to fear that if
we deprive this [tendency] of all that can recommend
it to sense it will only involve a cold lifeless assent
and no moving force or emotion. It is quite the other
way, for where the senses see nothing more before
them, and the unmistakable and indelible Idea of
morality remains, it would be rather necessary to
moderate the impetus of an unbounded Imagination,
to prevent it from rising to enthusiasm, than through
fear of the powerlessness of these Ideas to seek aid
for them in images and childish ritual. Thus
governments have willingly allowed religion to be
abundantly provided with the latter accessories;
and seeking thereby to relieve their subjects of
trouble, they have also sought to deprive them of
the faculty of extending their spiritual powers beyond
the limits that are arbitrarily assigned to them, and
by means of which they can be the more easily
treated as mere passive59 beings.
This pure, elevating, merely negative presentation
of morality brings with it, on the other hand, no
danger of fanaticism, which is a delusion that we can
will ourselves to see something beyond all bounds of
sensibility, i.e. to dream in accordance with fundamental
propositions (or to go mad with Reason); and
this is so just because this presentation is merely
negative. For the inscrutableness of the Idea of
Freedom quite cuts it off from any positive presentation;
but the moral law is in itself sufficiently
and originally determinant in us, so that it does
not permit us to cast a glance at any ground of
determination external to itself. If enthusiasm is
comparable to madness, fanaticism is comparable to
monomania; of which the latter is least of all compatible
with the sublime, because in its detail it is
ridiculous. In enthusiasm, regarded as an affection,
the Imagination is without bridle; in fanaticism,
regarded as an inveterate, brooding passion, it is
without rule. The first is a transitory accident
which sometimes befalls the soundest Understanding;
the second is a disease which unsettles it.
Simplicity (purposiveness without art) is as it
were the style of Nature in the sublime, and so also
of Morality which is a second (supersensible) nature;
of which we only know the laws without being able
to reach by intuition that supersensible faculty in ourselves
which contains the ground of the legislation.
Now the satisfaction in the Beautiful, like that in
the Sublime, is not alone distinguishable from other
aesthetical judgements by its universal communicability,
but also because, through this very property,
it acquires an interest in reference to society (in
which this communication is possible). We must,
however, remark that separation from all society is
regarded as sublime, if it rests upon Ideas that overlook
all sensible interest. To be sufficient for oneself,
and consequently to have no need of society,
without at the same time being unsociable, i.e.
without flying from it, is something bordering on
the sublime; as is any dispensing with wants. On
the other hand, to fly from men from misanthropy,
because we bear ill-will to them, or from anthropophoby
(shyness), because we fear them as foes, is
partly hateful, partly contemptible. There is indeed
a misanthropy (very improperly so-called), the
tendency to which frequently appears with old age
in many right-thinking men; which is philanthropic
enough as far as goodwill to men is concerned, but
which through long and sad experience is far removed
from satisfaction with men. Evidence of this is
afforded by the propensity to solitude, the fantastic
wish for a secluded country seat, or (in the case of
young persons) by the dream of the happiness of
passing one’s life with a little family upon some
island unknown to the rest of the world; a dream
of which story-tellers or writers of Robinsonades
know how to make good use. Falsehood, ingratitude,
injustice, the childishness of the purposes
regarded by ourselves as important and great, in
the pursuit of which men inflict upon each other all
imaginable evils, are so contradictory to the Idea of
what men might be if they would, and conflict so
with our lively wish to see them better, that, in
order that we may not hate them (since we cannot
love them), the renunciation of all social joys seems
but a small sacrifice. This sadness—not the sadness
(of which sympathy is the cause) for the evils
which fate brings upon others,—but for those things
which men do to one another (which depends upon
an antipathy in fundamental propositions), is sublime,
because it rests upon Ideas, whilst the former can
only count as beautiful.—The brilliant and thorough
Saussure,60 in his account of his Alpine travels, says
of one of the Savoy mountains, called Bonhomme,
“There reigns there a certain insipid sadness.” He
therefore recognised an interesting sadness, that the
sight of a solitude might inspire, to which men
might wish to transport themselves that they might
neither hear nor experience any more of the world;
which, however, would not be quite so inhospitable
that it would offer only an extremely painful retreat.—I
make this remark solely with the design of indicating
again that even depression (not dejected
sadness) may be counted among the sturdy affections,
if it has its ground in moral Ideas. But if it is
grounded on sympathy and, as such, is amiable, it
belongs merely to the languid affections. [I make
this remark] to call attention to the state of mind
which is sublime only in the first case.
* * * * *
We can now compare the above Transcendental
Exposition of aesthetical judgements with the
Physiological worked out by Burke and by many
clear-headed men among us, in order to see whither
a merely empirical exposition of the Sublime and
Beautiful leads. Burke, who deserves to be regarded
as the most important author who adopts
this mode of treatment, infers by this method “that
the feeling of the Sublime rests on the impulse towards
self-preservation and on fear, i.e. on a pain,
which not going so far as actually to derange the
parts of the body, produces movements which, since
they purify the finer or grosser vessels of dangerous
or troublesome stoppages, are capable of exciting
pleasant sensations; not indeed pleasure, but a kind
of satisfying horror, a certain tranquillity tinged
with terror.”61 The Beautiful, which he founded on
love (which he wishes to keep quite separate from
desire), he reduces to “the relaxing, slackening, and
enervating of the fibres of the body, and a consequent
weakening, languor, and exhaustion, a fainting,
dissolving, and melting away for enjoyment.”62
And he confirms this explanation not only by cases
in which the Imagination in combination with the
Understanding can excite in us the feeling of the
Beautiful or of the Sublime, but by cases in which
it is combined with sensation.—As psychological
observations, these analyses of the phenomena of
our mind are exceedingly beautiful, and afford rich
material for the favourite investigations of empirical
anthropology. It is also not to be denied that all
representations in us, whether, objectively viewed,
they are merely sensible or are quite intellectual,
may yet subjectively be united to gratification or
grief, however imperceptible either may be; because
they all affect the feeling of life, and none of them,
so far as it is a modification of the subject, can be
indifferent. And so, as Epicurus maintained, all
gratification or grief may ultimately be corporeal,
whether it arises from the representations of the
Imagination or the Understanding; because life
without a feeling of bodily organs would be merely
a consciousness of existence, without any feeling of
well-being or the reverse, i.e. of the furthering or
the checking of the vital powers. For the mind
is by itself alone life (the principle of life), and
hindrances or furtherances must be sought outside
it and yet in the man, consequently in union with
his body.
If, however, we place the satisfaction in the
object altogether in the fact that it gratifies us by
charm or emotion, we must not assume that any
other man agrees with the aesthetical judgement
which we pass; for as to these each one rightly
consults his own individual sensibility. But in that
case all censorship of taste would disappear, except
indeed the example afforded by the accidental agreement
of others in their judgements were regarded
as commanding our assent; and this principle we
should probably resist, and should appeal to the
natural right of subjecting the judgement, which
rests on the immediate feeling of our own well-being,
to our own sense and not to that of any
other man.
If then the judgement of taste is not to be valid
merely egoistically, but according to its inner nature,—i.e.
on account of itself and not on account of the
examples that others give of their taste,—to be
necessarily valid pluralistically, if we regard it as a
judgement which may exact the adhesion of every
one; then there must lie at its basis some a priori
principle (whether objective or subjective) to which
we can never attain by seeking out the empirical
laws of mental changes. For these only enable us
to know how we judge, but do not prescribe to us
how we ought to judge. They do not supply an
unconditioned command,63 such as judgements of
taste presuppose, inasmuch as they require that
the satisfaction be immediately connected with the
representation. Thus the empirical exposition of
aesthetical judgements may be a beginning of a
collection of materials for a higher investigation;
but a transcendental discussion of this faculty is also
possible, and is an essential part of the Critique of
Taste. For if it had not a priori principles, it could
not possibly pass sentence on the judgements of
others, and it could not approve or blame them
with any appearance of right.
The remaining part of the Analytic of the
Aesthetical Judgement contains first the
§ 30. The Deduction of aesthetical judgements on the
objects of nature must not be directed to what
we call Sublime in nature, but only to the
Beautiful.
The claim of an aesthetical judgement to universal
validity for every subject requires, as a judgement
resting on some a priori principle, a Deduction
(or legitimatising of its pretensions) in addition to
its Exposition; if it is concerned with satisfaction
or dissatisfaction in the form of the Object. Of this
kind are judgements of taste about the Beautiful in
Nature. For in that case the purposiveness has its
ground in the Object and in its figure, although it
does not indicate the reference of this to other objects
according to concepts (for a cognitive judgement),
but merely has to do in general with the apprehension
of this form, so far as it shows itself conformable
in the mind to the faculty of concepts and
to that of their presentation (which is identical with
that of apprehension). We can thus, in respect of
the Beautiful in nature, suggest many questions
touching the cause of this purposiveness of their
forms, e.g. to explain why nature has scattered
abroad beauty with such profusion, even in the
depth of the ocean, where the human eye (for
which alone that purposiveness exists) but seldom
penetrates.
But the Sublime in nature—if we are passing
upon it a pure aesthetical judgement, not mixed up
with any concepts of perfection or objective purposiveness,
in which case it would be a teleological
judgement—may be regarded as quite formless or
devoid of figure, and yet as the object of a pure
satisfaction; and it may display a subjective purposiveness
in the given representation. And we
ask if, for an aesthetical judgement of this kind,—over
and above the Exposition of what is thought
in it,—a Deduction also of its claim to any (subjective)
a priori principle may be demanded?
To which we may answer that the Sublime in
nature is improperly so called, and that properly
speaking the word should only be applied to a
state of mind, or rather to its foundation in
human nature. The apprehension of an otherwise
formless and unpurposive object gives merely the
occasion, through which we become conscious of
such a state; the object is thus employed as
subjectively purposive, but is not judged as such
in itself and on account of its form (it is, as it were,
a species finalis accepta, non data). Hence our
Exposition of judgements concerning the Sublime
in nature was at the same time their Deduction.
For when we analysed the reflection of the Judgement
in such acts, we found in them a purposive
relation of the cognitive faculties, which must be
ascribed ultimately to the faculty of purposes (the
will), and hence is itself purposive a priori. This
then immediately involves the Deduction, i.e. the
justification of the claim of such a judgement to
universal and necessary validity.
We shall therefore only have to seek for the
deduction of judgements of Taste, i.e. of judgements
about the Beauty of natural things; we shall thus
treat satisfactorily the problem with which the whole
faculty of aesthetical Judgement is concerned.
§ 31. Of the method of deduction of judgements
of Taste
A Deduction, i.e. the guarantee of the legitimacy
of a class of judgements, is only obligatory if the
judgement lays claim to necessity. This it does, if
it demands even subjective universality or the agreement
of every one, although it is not a judgement
of cognition but only one of pleasure or pain in a
given object; i.e. it assumes a subjective purposiveness
thoroughly valid for every one, which must
not be based on any concept of the thing, because
the judgement is one of taste.
We have before us in the latter case no cognitive
judgement—neither a theoretical one based on the
concept of a Nature in general formed by the
Understanding, nor a (pure) practical one based on
the Idea of Freedom, as given a priori by Reason.
Therefore we have to justify a priori the validity
neither of a judgement which represents what a
thing is, nor of one which prescribes that I ought
to do something in order to produce it. We have
merely to prove for the Judgement generally the
universal validity of a singular judgement that expresses
the subjective purposiveness of an empirical
representation of the form of an object; in order
to explain how it is possible that a thing can please
in the mere act of judging it (without sensation or
concept), and how the satisfaction of one man can
be proclaimed as a rule for every other; just as the
act of judging of an object for the sake of a cognition
in general has universal rules.
If now this universal validity is not to be based
on any collecting of the suffrages of others, or on
any questioning of them as to the kind of sensations
they have, but is to rest, as it were, on an autonomy
of the judging subject in respect of the feeling of
pleasure (in the given representation), i.e. on his
own taste, and yet is not to be derived from concepts;
then a judgement like this—such as the
judgement of taste is, in fact—has a twofold logical
peculiarity. First, there is its a priori universal
validity, which is not a logical universality in accordance
with concepts, but the universality of a
singular judgement. Secondly, it has a necessity
(which must always rest on a priori grounds),
which however does not depend on any a priori
grounds of proof, through the representation of
which the assent that every one concedes to the
judgement of taste could be exacted.
The solution of these logical peculiarities,
wherein a judgement of taste is different from all
cognitive judgements—if we at the outset abstract
from all content, viz. from the feeling of pleasure,
and merely compare the aesthetical form with the
form of objective judgements as logic prescribes it—is
sufficient by itself for the deduction of this
singular faculty. We shall then represent and
elucidate by examples these characteristic properties
of taste.
§ 32. First peculiarity of the judgement of Taste
The judgement of taste determines its object in
respect of satisfaction (in its beauty) with an accompanying
claim for the assent of every one, just
as if it were objective.
To say that “this flower is beautiful” is the
same as to assert its proper claim to satisfy every
one. By the pleasantness of its smell it has no
such claim. A smell which one man enjoys gives
another a headache. Now what are we to presume
from this except that beauty is to be regarded as
a property of the flower itself, which does not
accommodate itself to any diversity of persons or
of their sensitive organs, but to which these must
accommodate themselves if they are to pass any
judgement upon it? And yet this is not so. For
a judgement of taste consists in calling a thing
beautiful just because of that characteristic in respect
of which it accommodates itself to our mode of
apprehension.
Moreover, it is required of every judgement which
is to prove the taste of the subject, that the subject
shall judge by himself, without needing to grope
about empirically among the judgements of others,
and acquaint himself previously as to their satisfaction
or dissatisfaction with the same object; thus
his judgement should be pronounced a priori, and
not be a mere imitation because the thing actually
gives universal pleasure. One would think, however,
that an a priori judgement must contain a
concept of the Object, for the cognition of which
it contains the principle; but the judgement of taste
is not based upon concepts at all, and is in general
not a cognitive but an aesthetical judgement.
Thus a young poet does not permit himself to
be dissuaded from his conviction that his poem is
beautiful, by the judgement of the public or of his
friends; and if he gives ear to them he does so,
not because he now judges differently, but because,
although (in regard to him) the whole public has
false taste, in his desire for applause he finds reason
for accommodating himself to the common error
(even against his judgement). It is only at a later
time, when his Judgement has been sharpened by
exercise, that he voluntarily departs from his former
judgements; just as he proceeds with those of his
judgements which rest upon Reason. Taste
[merely]65 claims autonomy. To make the judgements
of others the determining grounds of his own
would be heteronomy.
That we, and rightly, recommend the works of
the ancients as models and call their authors classical,
thus forming among writers a kind of noble class
who give laws to the people by their example, seems
to indicate a posteriori sources of taste, and to contradict
the autonomy of taste in every subject. But
we might just as well say that the old mathematicians,—who
are regarded up to the present day as supplying
models not easily to be dispensed with for the
supreme profundity and elegance of their synthetical
methods,—prove that our Reason is only imitative,
and that we have not the faculty of producing from
it in combination with intuition rigid proofs by
means of the construction of concepts.66 There is
no use of our powers, however free, no use of
Reason itself (which must create all its judgements
a priori from common sources) which would not
give rise to faulty attempts, if every subject had
always to begin anew from the rude basis of his
natural state, and if others had not preceded him
with their attempts. Not that these make mere
imitators of those who come after them, but rather
by their procedure they put others on the track
of seeking in themselves principles and so of pursuing
their own course, often a better one. Even in
religion—where certainly every one has to derive
the rule of his conduct from himself, because he
remains responsible for it and cannot shift the
blame of his transgressions upon others, whether
his teachers or his predecessors—there is never
as much accomplished by means of universal precepts,
either obtained from priests or philosophers
or got from oneself, as by means of an example
of virtue or holiness which, exhibited in history,
does not dispense with the autonomy of virtue
based on the proper and original Idea of morality
(a priori), or change it into a mechanical imitation.
Following, involving something precedent, not
“imitation,” is the right expression for all influence
that the products of an exemplary author may
have upon others. And this only means that we
draw from the same sources as our predecessor
did, and learn from him only the way to avail
ourselves of them. But of all faculties and talents
Taste, because its judgement is not determinable by
concepts and precepts, is just that one which most
needs examples of what has in the progress of culture
received the longest approval; that it may not
become again uncivilised and return to the crudeness
of its first essays.
§ 33. Second peculiarity of the judgement of Taste
The judgement of taste is not determinable by
grounds of proof, just as if it were merely subjective.
If a man, in the first place, does not find a building,
a prospect, or a poem beautiful, a hundred voices
all highly praising it will not force his inmost agreement.
He may indeed feign that it pleases him in
order that he may not be regarded as devoid of
taste; he may even begin to doubt whether he has
formed his taste on a knowledge of a sufficient
number of objects of a certain kind (just as one,
who believes that he recognises in the distance as a
forest, something which all others regard as a town,
doubts the judgement of his own sight). But he
clearly sees that the agreement of others gives no
valid proof of the judgement about beauty. Others
might perhaps see and observe for him; and what
many have seen in one way, although he believes
that he has seen it differently, might serve him as
an adequate ground of proof of a theoretical and
consequently logical judgement. But that a thing
has pleased others could never serve as the basis
of an aesthetical judgement. A judgement of others
which is unfavourable to ours may indeed rightly
make us scrutinise our own with care, but it can
never convince us of its incorrectness. There is
therefore no empirical ground of proof which would
force a judgement of taste upon any one.
Still less, in the second place, can an a priori
proof determine according to definite rules a judgement
about beauty. If a man reads me a poem of
his or brings me to a play, which does not after
all suit my taste, he may bring forward in proof
of the beauty of his poem Batteux67 or Lessing or
still more ancient and famous critics of taste, and
all the rules laid down by them; certain passages
which displease me may agree very well with rules
of beauty (as they have been put forth by these
writers and are universally recognised): but I stop
my ears, I will listen to no arguments and no
reasoning; and I will rather assume that these rules
of the critics are false, or at least that they do not
apply to the case in question, than admit that my
judgement should be determined by grounds of proof
a priori. For it is to be a judgement of Taste and
not of Understanding or Reason.
It seems that this is one of the chief reasons
why this aesthetical faculty of judgement has been
given the name of Taste. For though a man
enumerate to me all the ingredients of a dish, and
remark that each is separately pleasant to me and
further extol with justice the wholesomeness of this
particular food—yet am I deaf to all these reasons;
I try the dish with my tongue and my palate, and
thereafter (and not according to universal principles)
do I pass my judgement.
In fact the judgement of Taste always takes the
form of a singular judgement about an Object. The
Understanding can form a universal judgement by
comparing the Object in point of the satisfaction it
affords with the judgement of others upon it: e.g.
“all tulips are beautiful.” But then this is not a
judgement of taste but a logical judgement, which
takes the relation of an Object to taste as the
predicate of things of a certain species. That
judgement, however, in which I find an individual
given tulip beautiful, i.e. in which I find my satisfaction
in it to be universally valid, is alone a
judgement of taste. Its peculiarity consists in the
fact that, although it has merely subjective validity,
it claims the assent of all subjects, exactly as it
would do if it were an objective judgement resting
on grounds of knowledge, that could be established
by a proof.
§ 34. There is no objective principle of Taste
possible
By a principle of taste I mean a principle under
the condition of which we could subsume the concept
of an object and thus infer by means of a
syllogism that the object is beautiful. But that is
absolutely impossible. For I must feel the pleasure
immediately in the representation of the object,
and of that I can be persuaded by no grounds of
proof whatever. Although, as Hume says,68 all critics
can reason more plausibly than cooks, yet the same
fate awaits them. They cannot expect the determining
ground of their judgement [to be derived]
from the force of the proofs, but only from the
reflection of the subject upon its own proper state
(of pleasure or pain), all precepts and rules being
rejected.
But although critics can and ought to pursue
their reasonings so that our judgements of taste may
be corrected and extended, it is not with a view to
set forth the determining ground of this kind of
aesthetical judgements in a universally applicable
formula, which is impossible; but rather to investigate
the cognitive faculties and their exercise in
these judgements, and to explain by examples the
reciprocal subjective purposiveness, the form of
which, as has been shown above, in a given representation,
constitutes the beauty of the object.
Therefore the Critique of Taste is only subjective
as regards the representation through which an
Object is given to us; viz. it is the art or
science of reducing to rules the reciprocal relation
between the Understanding and the Imagination
in the given representation (without reference to
any preceding sensation or concept). That is, it
is the art or science of reducing to rules their accordance
or discordance, and of determining them with
regard to their conditions. It is an art, if it only
shows this by examples; it is a science if it derives
the possibility of such judgements from the nature
of these faculties, as cognitive faculties in general.
We have here, in Transcendental Criticism, only to do
with the latter. It should develop and justify the
subjective principle of taste, as an a priori principle
of the Judgement. This Critique, as an art, merely
seeks to apply, in the judging of objects, the physiological
(here psychological), and therefore empirical
rules, according to which taste actually proceeds
(without taking any account of their possibility);
and it criticises the products of beautiful art just as,
regarded as a science, it criticises the faculty by
which they are judged.
§ 35. The principle of Taste is the subjective
principle of Judgement in general
The judgement of taste is distinguished from a
logical judgement in this, that the latter subsumes
a representation under the concept of the Object,
while the former does not subsume it under any
concept; because otherwise the necessary universal
agreement [in these judgements] would be capable
of being enforced by proofs. Nevertheless it is
like the latter in this, that it claims universality and
necessity, though not according to concepts of the
Object, and consequently a merely subjective necessity.
Now, because the concepts in a judgement
constitute its content (what belongs to the cognition
of the Object), but the judgement of taste is not
determinable by concepts, it is based only on the
subjective formal condition of a judgement in general.
The subjective condition of all judgements is the
faculty of Judgement itself. This when used with
reference to a representation by which an object is
given, requires the accordance of two representative
powers: viz. Imagination (for the intuition and
comprehension of the manifold) and Understanding
(for the concept as a representation of the unity of
this comprehension). Now because no concept of
the Object lies here at the basis of the judgement,
it can only consist in the subsumption of the
Imagination itself (in the case of a representation
by which an object is given) under the conditions
that the Understanding requires to pass from intuition
to concepts. That is, because the freedom of the
Imagination consists in the fact that it schematises
without any concept, the judgement of taste must
rest on a mere sensation of the reciprocal activity of
the Imagination in its freedom and the Understanding
with its conformity to law. It must therefore
rest on a feeling, which makes us judge the object
by the purposiveness of the representation (by
which an object is given) in respect of the
furtherance of the cognitive faculty in its free play.
Taste, then, as subjective Judgement, contains a
principle of subsumption, not of intuitions under
concepts, but of the faculty of intuitions or presentations
(i.e. the Imagination) under the faculty
of the concepts (i.e. the Understanding); so far as
the former in its freedom harmonises with the latter
in its conformity to law.
In order to discover this ground of legitimacy
by a Deduction of the judgements of taste we can
only take as a clue the formal peculiarities of this
kind of judgements, and consequently can only consider
their logical form.
§ 36. Of the problem of a Deduction of judgements
of Taste
The concept of an Object in general can immediately
be combined with the perception of an
object, containing its empirical predicates, so as
to form a cognitive judgement; and it is thus that a
judgement of experience is produced.69 At the basis
of this lie a priori concepts of the synthetical
unity of the manifold of intuition, by which the
manifold is thought as the determination of an
Object. These concepts (the Categories) require a
Deduction, which is given in the Critique of pure
Reason; and by it we can get the solution of the
problem, how are synthetical a priori cognitive
judgements possible? This problem concerns then
the a priori principles of the pure Understanding
and its theoretical judgements.
But with a perception there can also be combined
a feeling of pleasure (or pain) and a satisfaction,
that accompanies the representation of the
Object and serves instead of its predicate; thus
there can result an aesthetical non-cognitive judgement.
At the basis of such a judgement—if it is
not a mere judgement of sensation but a formal
judgement of reflection, which imputes the same
satisfaction necessarily to every one,—must lie some
a priori principle; which may be merely subjective
(if an objective one should prove impossible for
judgements of this kind), but also as such may
need a Deduction, that we may thereby comprehend
how an aesthetical judgement can lay claim to
necessity. On this is founded the problem with
which we are now occupied, how are judgements of
taste possible? This problem then has to do with
the a priori principles of the pure faculty of Judgement
in aesthetical judgements; i.e. judgements in
which it has not (as in theoretical ones) merely to
subsume under objective concepts of Understanding,
and in which it is subject to a law, but in which it
is, itself, subjectively, both object and law.
This problem then may be thus represented:
how is a judgement possible, in which merely from
our own feeling of pleasure in an object, independently
of its concept, we judge that this pleasure
attaches to the representation of the same Object
in every other subject, and that a priori without
waiting for the accordance of others?
It is easy to see that judgements of taste are
synthetical, because they go beyond the concept
and even beyond the intuition of the Object, and
add to that intuition as predicate something that is
not a cognition, viz. a feeling of pleasure (or pain).
Although the predicate (of the personal pleasure
bound up with the representation) is empirical, nevertheless,
as concerns the required assent of every one
the judgements are a priori, or desire to be regarded
as such; and this is already involved in the
expressions of this claim. Thus this problem of the
Critique of Judgement belongs to the general
problem of transcendental philosophy, how are synthetical
a priori judgements possible?
§ 37. What is properly asserted a priori of an
object in a judgement of Taste
That the representation of an object is immediately
bound up with pleasure can only be internally
perceived, and if we did not wish to indicate
anything more than this it would give a merely
empirical judgement. For I cannot combine a
definite feeling (of pleasure or pain) with any
representation except where there is at bottom an
a priori principle in the Reason determining the
Will. In that case the pleasure (in the moral
feeling) is the consequence of the principle, but
cannot be compared with the pleasure in taste,
because it requires a definite concept of a law; and
the latter pleasure, on the contrary, must be
bound up with the mere act of judging, prior
to all concepts. Hence also all judgements of
taste are singular judgements, because they do
not combine their predicate of satisfaction with a
concept, but with a given individual empirical representation.
And so it is not the pleasure, but the universal
validity of this pleasure, perceived as mentally
bound up with the mere judgement upon an object,
which is represented a priori in a judgement of
taste as a universal rule for the Judgement and valid
for every one. It is an empirical judgement [to say]
that I perceive and judge an object with pleasure.
But it is an a priori judgement [to say] that I find it
beautiful, i.e. I attribute this satisfaction necessarily
to every one.
§ 38. Deduction of judgements of Taste
If it be admitted that in a pure judgement of
taste the satisfaction in the object is combined with
the mere act of judging its form, it is nothing else
than its subjective purposiveness for the Judgement
which we feel to be mentally combined with the
representation of the object. The Judgement, as
regards the formal rules of its action, apart from all
matter (whether sensation or concept), can only be
directed to the subjective conditions of its employment
in general (it is applied70 neither to a particular
mode of sense nor to a particular concept of the
Understanding); and consequently to that subjective
[element] which we can presuppose in all men (as
requisite for possible cognition in general). Thus
the agreement of a representation with these conditions
of the Judgement must be capable of being
assumed as valid a priori for every one. I.e. we
may rightly impute to every one the pleasure or the
subjective purposiveness of the representation for
the relation between the cognitive faculties in the
act of judging a sensible object in general.71
Remark
This Deduction is thus easy, because it has no
need to justify the objective reality of any concept,
for Beauty is not a concept of the Object and the
judgement of taste is not cognitive. It only maintains
that we are justified in presupposing universally
in every man those subjective conditions of the
Judgement which we find in ourselves; and further,
that we have rightly subsumed the given Object
under these conditions. The latter has indeed
unavoidable difficulties which do not beset the
logical Judgement. There we subsume under concepts,
but in the aesthetical Judgement under a
merely sensible relation between the Imagination
and Understanding mutually harmonising in the
representation of the form of the Object,—in which
case the subsumption may easily be fallacious. Yet
the legitimacy of the claim of the Judgement in
counting upon universal assent is not thus annulled;
it reduces itself merely to the correctness of the
principle of judging validly for every one from
subjective grounds. For as to the difficulty or
doubt concerning the correctness of the subsumption
under that principle, it makes the legitimacy of the
claim of an aesthetical judgement in general to such
validity and the principle of the same, as little
doubtful, as the like faulty (though neither so
commonly nor readily faulty) subsumption of the
logical Judgement under its principle can make the
latter, an objective principle, doubtful. But if the
question were to be, how is it possible to assume
nature a priori to be a complex of objects of taste?
this problem has reference to Teleology, because it
must be regarded as a purpose of nature essentially
belonging to its concept to exhibit forms that are
purposive for our Judgement. But the correctness
of this latter assumption is very doubtful, whereas
the efficacy of natural beauties is patent to experience.
§ 39. Of the communicability of a Sensation
If sensation, as the real in perception, is related
to knowledge, it is called sensation of the senses;
and its specific quality may be represented as generally
communicable in a uniform way, if we assume
that every one has senses like our own. But this
cannot at all be presupposed of any single sensation.
To a man who is deficient in the sense of smell,
this kind of sensation cannot be communicated;
and even if it is not wholly deficient, we cannot
be certain that he gets exactly the same sensation
from a flower that we have. But even more must
we represent men as differing in respect of the
pleasantness or unpleasantness involved in the sensation
from the same object of sense; and it is
absolutely not to be required that every man should
take pleasure in the same objects. Pleasure of this
kind, because it comes into the mind through the
senses, in respect of which therefore we are passive,
we may call the pleasure of enjoyment.
Satisfaction in an action because of its moral
character is on the other hand not the pleasure of
enjoyment, but of spontaneity and its accordance
with the Idea of its destination. But this feeling,
called moral, requires concepts, and presents not free
purposiveness, but purposiveness that is conformable
to law; it therefore admits of being universally
communicated only by means of Reason, and, if the
pleasure is to be homogeneous for every one, by
very definite practical concepts of Reason.
Pleasure in the Sublime in nature, regarded as
a pleasure of rational contemplation, also makes
claim to universal participation; but it presupposes,
besides, a different feeling, viz. that of our supersensible
destination, which, however obscurely, has
a moral foundation. But that other men will take
account of it, and will find a satisfaction in the consideration
of the wild greatness of nature (that
certainly cannot be ascribed to its aspect, which is
rather terrifying), I am not absolutely justified in
supposing. Nevertheless, in consideration of the
fact that on every suitable occasion regard should be
had to these moral dispositions, I can impute such
satisfaction to every man, but only by means of the
moral law which on its side again is based on
concepts of Reason.
On the contrary, pleasure in the Beautiful is
neither a pleasure of enjoyment nor of a law-abiding
activity, nor even of rational contemplation in
accordance with Ideas, but of mere reflection. Without
having as rule any purpose or fundamental
proposition, this pleasure accompanies the ordinary
apprehension of an object by the Imagination, as
faculty of intuition, in relation with the Understanding,
as faculty of concepts, by means of a procedure
of the Judgement which it must also exercise on
behalf of the commonest experience; only that in
the latter case it is in order to perceive an empirical
objective concept, in the former case (in aesthetical
judgements) merely to perceive the accordance of the
representation with the harmonious (subjectively
purposive) activity of both cognitive faculties in their
freedom, i.e. to feel with pleasure the mental state
produced by the representation. This pleasure
must necessarily depend for every one on the same
conditions, for they are subjective conditions of the
possibility of a cognition in general; and the proportion
between these cognitive faculties requisite
for Taste is also requisite for that ordinary sound
Understanding which we have to presuppose in
every one. Therefore he who judges with taste (if
only he does not go astray in this act of consciousness
and mistake matter for form or charm for
beauty) may impute to every one subjective purposiveness,
i.e. his satisfaction in the Object, and may
assume his feeling to be universally communicable
and that without the mediation of concepts.
§ 40. Of Taste as a kind of sensus communis
We often give to the Judgement, if we are considering
the result rather than the act of its reflection,
the name of a sense, and we speak of a sense of
truth, or of a sense of decorum, of justice, etc. And
yet we know, or at least we ought to know, that
these concepts cannot have their place in Sense, and
further, that Sense has not the least capacity for
expressing universal rules; but that no representation
of truth, fitness, beauty, or justice, and so forth,
could come into our thoughts if we could not rise
beyond Sense to higher faculties of cognition. The
common Understanding of men, which, as the mere
sound (not yet cultivated) Understanding, we regard
as the least to be expected from any one claiming the
name of man, has therefore the doubtful honour of
being given the name of common sense (sensus communis);
and in such a way that by the name
common (not merely in our language, where the word
actually has a double signification, but in many
others) we understand vulgar, that which is everywhere
met with, the possession of which indicates
absolutely no merit or superiority.
But under the sensus communis we must include
the Idea of a communal sense, i.e. of a faculty of
judgement, which in its reflection takes account
(a priori) of the mode of representation of all other
men in thought; in order as it were to compare its
judgement with the collective Reason of humanity,
and thus to escape the illusion arising from the
private conditions that could be so easily taken for
objective, which would injuriously affect the judgement.
This is done by comparing our judgement
with the possible rather than the actual judgements
of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of
any other man, by abstracting from the limitations
which contingently attach to our own judgement.
This, again, is brought about by leaving aside as
much as possible the matter of our representative
state, i.e. sensation, and simply having respect to
the formal peculiarities of our representation or
representative state. Now this operation of reflection
seems perhaps too artificial to be attributed
to the faculty called common sense; but it only
appears so, when expressed in abstract formulae.
In itself there is nothing more natural than to
abstract from charm or emotion if we are seeking a
judgement that is to serve as a universal rule.
The following Maxims of common human Understanding
do not properly come in here, as parts of
the Critique of Taste; but yet they may serve to
elucidate its fundamental propositions. They are:
1° to think for oneself; 2° to put ourselves in thought
in the place of every one else; 3° always to think
consistently. The first is the maxim of unprejudiced
thought; the second of enlarged thought; the third
of consecutive thought.72 The first is the maxim of
a Reason never passive. The tendency to such
passivity, and therefore to heteronomy of the
Reason, is called prejudice; and the greatest prejudice
of all is to represent nature as not subject
to the rules that the Understanding places at its
basis by means of its own essential law, i.e. is
superstition. Deliverance from superstition is called
enlightenment;73 because although this name belongs
to deliverance from prejudices in general,
yet superstition specially (in sensu eminenti) deserves
to be called a prejudice. For the blindness
in which superstition places us, which it even imposes
on us as an obligation, makes the need of
being guided by others, and the consequent passive
state of our Reason, peculiarly noticeable. As
regards the second maxim of the mind, we are
otherwise wont to call him limited (borné, the
opposite of enlarged) whose talents attain to no
great use (especially as regards intensity). But
here we are not speaking of the faculty of cognition,
but of the mode of thought which makes a purposive
use thereof. However small may be the area or the
degree to which a man’s natural gifts reach, yet it
indicates a man of enlarged thought if he disregards
the subjective private conditions of his own judgement,
by which so many others are confined, and
reflects upon it from a universal standpoint (which
he can only determine by placing himself at the
standpoint of others). The third maxim, viz. that
of consecutive thought, is the most difficult to attain,
and can only be attained by the combination of both
the former, and after the constant observance of
them has grown into a habit. We may say that
the first of these maxims is the maxim of Understanding,
the second of Judgement, and the third of
Reason.
I take up again the threads interrupted by this
digression, and I say that Taste can be called sensus
communis with more justice than sound Understanding
can; and that the aesthetical Judgement
rather than the intellectual may bear the name of a
communal sense,74 if we are willing to use the word
“sense” of an effect of mere reflection upon the
mind: for then we understand by sense the feeling
of pleasure. We could even define Taste as the
faculty of judging of that which makes universally
communicable, without the mediation of a concept,
our feeling in a given representation.
The skill that men have in communicating their
thoughts requires also a relation between the Imagination
and the Understanding in order to associate
intuitions with concepts, and concepts again with
those concepts, which then combine in a cognition.
But in that case the agreement of the two mental
powers is according to law, under the constraint of
definite concepts. Only where the Imagination in
its freedom awakens the Understanding, and is put
by it into regular play without the aid of concepts,
does the representation communicate itself not as a
thought but as an internal feeling of a purposive
state of the mind.
Taste is then the faculty of judging a priori of
the communicability of feelings that are bound up
with a given representation (without the mediation
of a concept).
If we could assume that the mere universal
communicability of a feeling must carry in itself an
interest for us with it (which, however, we are not
justified in concluding from the character of a
merely reflective Judgement), we should be able
to explain why the feeling in the judgement of taste
comes to be imputed to every one, so to speak, as
a duty.
§ 41. Of the empirical interest in the Beautiful
That the judgement of taste by which something
is declared beautiful must have no interest as its
determining ground has been sufficiently established
above. But it does not follow that after it has been
given as a pure aesthetical judgement, no interest can
be combined with it. This combination, however,
can only be indirect, i.e. taste must first of all be
represented as combined with something else, in
order that we may unite with the satisfaction of
mere reflection upon an object a pleasure in its
existence (as that wherein all interest consists). For
here also in aesthetical judgements what we say in
cognitive judgements (of things in general) is valid;
a posse ad esse non valet consequentia. This
something else may be empirical, viz. an inclination
proper to human nature, or intellectual, as the
property of the Will of being capable of a priori
determination by Reason. Both these involve a
satisfaction in the presence of an Object, and so can
lay the foundation for an interest in what has by
itself pleased without reference to any interest
whatever.
Empirically the Beautiful interests only in
society. If we admit the impulse to society as natural
to man, and his fitness for it, and his propension
towards it, i.e. sociability, as a requisite for man as
a being destined for society, and so as a property
belonging to humanity, we cannot escape from
regarding taste as a faculty for judging everything
in respect of which we can communicate
our feeling to all other men, and so as a means of
furthering that which every one’s natural inclination
desires.
A man abandoned by himself on a desert island
would adorn neither his hut nor his person; nor
would he seek for flowers, still less would he plant
them, in order to adorn himself therewith. It is
only in society that it occurs to him to be not merely
a man, but a refined man after his kind (the beginning
of civilisation). For such do we judge him
to be who is both inclined and apt to communicate
his pleasure to others, and who is not contented
with an Object if he cannot feel satisfaction in it in
common with others. Again, every one expects and
requires from every one else this reference to universal
communication [of pleasure], as it were from an
original compact dictated by humanity itself. Thus,
doubtless, in the beginning only those things which
attracted the senses, e.g. colours for painting
oneself (roucou among the Carabs and cinnabar
among the Iroquois), flowers, mussel shells,
beautiful feathers, etc.,—but in time beautiful forms
also (e.g. in their canoes, and clothes, etc.), which
bring with them no gratification, or satisfaction of
enjoyment—were important in society, and were
combined with great interest. Until at last
civilisation, having reached its highest point, makes
out of this almost the main business of refined inclination;
and sensations are only regarded as of
worth in so far as they can be universally communicated.
Here, although the pleasure which every
one has in such an object is inconsiderable and in
itself without any marked interest, yet the Idea of
its universal communicability increases its worth in
an almost infinite degree.
But this interest that indirectly attaches to the
Beautiful through our inclination to society, and
consequently is empirical, is of no importance for us
here; because we have only to look to what may
have a reference, although only indirectly, to the
judgement of taste a priori. For if even in this
form an interest bound up therewith should discover
itself, taste would discover a transition of our judging
faculty from sense-enjoyment to moral feeling;
and so not only would we be the better guided in
employing taste purposively, but there would be
thus presented a link in the chain of the human
faculties a priori, on which all legislation must
depend. We can only say thus much about the
empirical interest in objects of taste and in taste
itself. Since it is subservient to inclination, however
refined the latter may be, it may easily be
confounded with all the inclinations and passions,
which attain their greatest variety and highest
degree in society; and the interest in the Beautiful,
if it is grounded thereon, can only furnish a very
ambiguous transition from the Pleasant to the Good.
But whether this can or cannot be furthered by
taste, taken in its purity, is what we now have to
investigate.
§ 42. Of the intellectual interest in the Beautiful
With the best intentions those persons who
refer all activities, to which their inner natural
dispositions impel men, to the final purpose of
humanity, viz. the morally good, have regarded the
taking an interest in the Beautiful in general as a
mark of good moral character. But it is not without
reason that they have been contradicted by
others who rely on experience; for this shows that
connoisseurs in taste, not only often but generally,
are given up to idle, capricious, and mischievous
passions, and that they could perhaps make less
claim than others to any pre-eminent attachment
to moral principles. Thus it would seem that the
feeling for the Beautiful is not only (as actually is
the case) specifically different from the Moral feeling;
but that the interest which can be bound up with it
is hardly compatible with moral interest, and
certainly has no inner affinity therewith.
Now I admit at once that the interest in the
Beautiful of Art (under which I include the
artificial use of natural beauties for adornment and
so for vanity) furnishes no proof whatever of a
disposition attached to the morally good or even
inclined thereto. But on the other hand, I maintain
that to take an immediate interest in the Beauty of
Nature (not merely to have taste in judging it) is
always a mark of a good soul; and that when this
interest is habitual it at least indicates a frame of
mind favourable to the moral feeling, if it is voluntarily
bound up with the contemplation of nature.
It is to be remembered, however, that I here speak
strictly of the beautiful forms of Nature, and I set
aside the charms, that she is wont to combine so
abundantly with them; because, though the interest
in the latter is indeed immediate, it is only empirical.
He who by himself (and without any design of
communicating his observations to others) regards
the beautiful figure of a wild flower, a bird, an
insect, etc., with admiration and love—who would
not willingly miss it in Nature, although it may
bring him some hurt, who still less wants any
advantage from it—he takes an immediate and also
an intellectual interest in the beauty of Nature.
I.e. it is not merely the form of the product of
nature which pleases him, but its very presence
pleases him, the charms of sense having no share
in this pleasure and no purpose whatever being
combined with it.
But it is noteworthy that if we secretly deceived
this lover of the beautiful by planting in the ground
artificial flowers (which can be manufactured exactly
like natural ones), or by placing artificially carved
birds on the boughs of trees, and he discovered the
deceit, the immediate interest that he previously took
in them would disappear at once; though, perhaps,
a different interest, viz. the interest of vanity in
adorning his chamber with them for the eyes of
others, would take its place. This thought then
must accompany our intuition and reflection on
beauty, viz. that nature has produced it; and on
this alone is based the immediate interest that
we take in it. Otherwise, there remains a mere
judgement of taste, either devoid of all interest,
or bound up with a mediate interest, viz. in that
it has reference to society; which latter [interest]
furnishes no certain indications of a morally good
disposition.
This superiority of natural to artificial beauty
in that it alone arouses an immediate interest,
although as regards form the first may be surpassed
by the second, harmonises with the refined and
well-grounded habit of thought of all men who have
cultivated their moral feeling. If a man who has
taste enough to judge of the products of beautiful
Art with the greatest accuracy and refinement
willingly leaves a chamber where are to be found
those beauties that minister to vanity or to any
social joys, and turns to the beautiful in Nature
in order to find, as it were, delight for his spirit
in a train of thought that he can never completely
evolve, we will regard this choice of his with veneration,
and attribute to him a beautiful soul, to which
no connoisseur or lover [of Art] can lay claim on
account of the interest he takes in his [artistic]
objects.—What now is the difference in our estimation
of these two different kinds of Objects, which
in the judgement of mere taste it is hard to compare
in point of superiority?
We have a faculty of mere aesthetical Judgement
by which we judge forms without the aid of concepts,
and find a satisfaction in this mere act of judgement;
this we make into a rule for every one, without this
judgement either being based on or producing any
interest.—On the other hand, we have also a
faculty of intellectual Judgement which determines
an a priori satisfaction for the mere forms of
practical maxims (so far as they are in themselves
qualified for universal legislation); this we make
into a law for every one, without our judgement
being based on any interest whatever, though in this
case it produces such an interest. The pleasure or
pain in the former judgement is called that of taste,
in the latter, that of moral feeling.
But it also interests Reason that the Ideas (for
which in moral feeling it arouses an immediate
interest) should have objective reality; i.e. that
nature should at least show a trace or give an
indication that it contains in itself some ground for
assuming a regular agreement of its products with
our entirely disinterested satisfaction (which we
recognise a priori as a law for every one, without
being able to base it upon proofs). Hence Reason
must take an interest in every expression on the
part of nature of an agreement of this kind. Consequently,
the mind cannot ponder upon the beauty
of Nature without finding itself at the same time
interested therein. But this interest is akin to
moral, and he who takes such an interest in the
beauties of nature can do so only in so far as he
previously has firmly established his interest in the
morally good. If, therefore, the beauty of Nature
interests a man immediately we have reason for
attributing to him, at least, a basis for a good moral
disposition.
It will be said that this account of aesthetical
judgements, as akin to the moral feeling, seems far
too studied to be regarded as the true interpretation
of that cipher through which Nature speaks to us
figuratively in her beautiful forms. However, in the
first place, this immediate interest in the beautiful
is actually not common; but is peculiar to those
whose mental disposition either has already been
cultivated in the direction of the good or is eminently
susceptible of such cultivation. In that case
the analogy between the pure judgement of taste
which, independently of any interest, causes us to
feel a satisfaction, and also represents it a priori
as suitable to humanity in general, and the moral
judgement that does the same thing from concepts
without any clear, subtle, and premeditated reflection—this
analogy leads to a similar immediate interest
in the objects of the former as in those of the
latter; only that in the one case the interest is free,
in the other it is based on objective laws. To this
is to be added our admiration for Nature, which
displays itself in its beautiful products as Art, not
merely by chance, but as it were designedly, in
accordance with a regular arrangement, and as
purposiveness without purpose. This latter, as we
never meet with it outside ourselves, we naturally
seek in ourselves; and, in fact, in that which
constitutes the ultimate purpose of our being, viz.
our moral destination. (Of this question as to the
ground of the possibility of such natural purposiveness
we shall first speak in the Teleology.)
It is easy to explain why the satisfaction in the
pure aesthetical judgement in the case of beautiful
Art is not combined with an immediate interest as
it is in the case of beautiful Nature. For the former
is either such an imitation of the latter that it reaches
the point of deception and then produces the same
effect as natural beauty (for which it is taken); or
it is an art obviously directed designedly to our
satisfaction. In the latter case the satisfaction in the
product would, it is true, be brought about immediately
by taste, but it would be only a mediate interest
in the cause lying at its root, viz. an art that can
only interest by means of its purpose and never in
itself. It will, perhaps, be said that this is also
the case, if an Object of nature interests us by its
beauty only so far as it is associated with a moral
Idea. But it is not the Object itself which immediately
interests us, but its character in virtue of which
it is qualified for such association, which therefore
essentially belongs to it.
The charms in beautiful Nature, which are so
often found, as it were, blended with beautiful forms,
may be referred to modifications either of light
(colours) or of sound (tones). For these are the only
sensations that imply not merely a sensible feeling
but also reflection upon the form of these modifications
of Sense; and thus they involve in themselves
as it were a language by which nature speaks to us,
which thus seems to have a higher sense. Thus the
white colour of lilies seems to determine the mind
to Ideas of innocence; and the seven colours in
order from the red to the violet seem to suggest the
Ideas of (1) Sublimity, (2) Intrepidity, (3) Candour,
(4) Friendliness, (5) Modesty, (6) Constancy, (7)
Tenderness. The song of birds proclaims gladsomeness
and contentment with existence. At least
so we interpret nature, whether it have this design
or not. But the interest which we here take in
beauty has only to do with the beauty of Nature;
it vanishes altogether as soon as we notice that we
are deceived and that it is only Art—vanishes so
completely that taste can no longer find the thing
beautiful or sight find it charming. What is more
highly praised by poets than the bewitching and
beautiful note of the nightingale in a lonely copse
on a still summer evening by the soft light of the
moon? And yet we have instances of a merry host,
where no such songster was to be found, deceiving
to their great contentment the guests who were
staying with him to enjoy the country air, by hiding
in a bush a mischievous boy who knew how to
produce this sound exactly like nature (by means of
a reed or a tube in his mouth). But as soon as we
are aware that it is a cheat, no one will remain long
listening to the song which before was counted
so charming. And it is just the same with the
songs of all other birds. It must be Nature or be
regarded as Nature, if we are to take an immediate
interest in the Beautiful as such; and still more is
this the case if we can require that others should
take an interest in it too. This happens as a matter
of fact when we regard as coarse and ignoble the
mental attitude of those persons who have no feeling
for beautiful Nature (for thus we describe a susceptibility
to interest in its contemplation), and who
confine themselves to eating and drinking—to the
mere enjoyments of sense.
§ 43. Of Art in general
(1). Art is distinguished from Nature, as doing
(facere) is distinguished from acting or working
generally (agere), and as the product or result of
the former is distinguished as work (opus) from the
working (effectus) of the latter.
By right we ought only to describe as Art,
production through freedom, i.e. through a will
that places Reason at the basis of its actions.
For although we like to call the product of bees
(regularly built cells of wax) a work of art, this is
only by way of analogy: as soon as we feel that
this work of theirs is based on no proper rational
deliberation, we say that it is a product of Nature
(of instinct), and as Art only ascribe it to their
Creator.
If, as sometimes happens, in searching through a
bog we come upon a bit of shaped wood, we do not
say: this is a product of Nature, but, of Art. Its
producing cause has conceived a purpose to which
the bit of wood owes its form. Elsewhere too we
should see art in everything which is made so that a
representation of it in its cause must have preceded
its actuality (as even in the case of the bees), though
the effect could not have been thought by the cause.
But if we call anything absolutely a work of art in
order to distinguish it from a natural effect, we
always understand by that a work of man.
(2). Art regarded as human skill differs from
science (as can from know) as a practical faculty does
from a theoretical, as Technic does from Theory (as
mensuration from geometry). And so what we can
do, as soon as we merely know what ought to be
done and therefore are sufficiently cognisant of the
desired effect, is not called Art. Only that which
a man, even if he knows it completely, may not
therefore have the skill to accomplish, belongs to
Art. Camper75 describes very exactly how the best
shoes must be made, but he certainly could not
make one.76
(3). Art also differs from handicraft; the first is
called free, the other may be called mercenary. We
regard the first as if it could only prove purposive
as play, i.e. as occupation that is pleasant in itself.
But the second is regarded as if it could only be
compulsorily imposed upon one as work, i.e. as
occupation which is unpleasant (a trouble) in itself,
and which is only attractive on account of its effect
(e.g. the wage). Whether or not in the graded list
of the professions we ought to count watchmakers
as artists, but smiths only as handicraftsmen, would
require another point of view from which to judge
than that which we are here taking up; viz. [we
should have to consider] the proportion of talents
which must be assumed requisite in these several
occupations. Whether or not, again, under the so-called
seven free arts some may be included which
ought to be classed as sciences, and many that are
akin rather to handicraft, I shall not here discuss.
But it is not inexpedient to recall that in all free
arts there is yet requisite something compulsory,
or, as it is called, mechanism, without which the
spirit, which must be free in art and which alone
inspires the work, would have no body and would
evaporate altogether; e.g. in poetry there must be
an accuracy and wealth of language, and also
prosody and metre. [It is not inexpedient, I say,
to recall this], for many modern educators believe
that the best way to produce a free art is to remove
it from all constraint, and thus to change it from
work into mere play.
§ 44. Of beautiful Art
There is no Science of the Beautiful, but only
a Critique of it; and there is no such thing as
beautiful Science, but only beautiful Art. For as
regards the first point, if it could be decided
scientifically, i.e. by proofs, whether a thing was to
be regarded as beautiful or not, the judgement
upon beauty would belong to science and would
not be a judgement of taste. And as far as the
second point is concerned, a science which should
be beautiful as such is a nonentity. For if in such
a science we were to ask for grounds and proofs,
we would be put off with tasteful phrases (bon-mots).—The
source of the common expression,
beautiful science, is without doubt nothing else than
this, as it has been rightly remarked, that for
beautiful art in its entire completeness much science
is requisite; e.g. a knowledge of ancient languages,
a learned familiarity with classical authors, history,
a knowledge of antiquities, etc. And hence these
historical sciences, because they form the necessary
preparation and basis for beautiful art, and also
partly because under them is included the knowledge
of the products of beautiful art (rhetoric and poetry),
have come to be called beautiful sciences by a
confusion of words.
If art which is adequate to the cognition of a
possible object performs the actions requisite therefore
merely in order to make it actual, it is mechanical
art; but if it has for its immediate design the feeling
of pleasure, it is called aesthetical art. This is
again either pleasant or beautiful. It is the first, if
its purpose is that the pleasure should accompany
the representations [of the object] regarded as mere
sensations; it is the second if they are regarded as
modes of cognition.
Pleasant arts are those that are directed merely
to enjoyment. Of this class are all those charming
arts that can gratify a company at table; e.g. the
art of telling stories in an entertaining way, of starting
the company in frank and lively conversation, of
raising them by jest and laugh to a certain pitch of
merriment;77 when, as people say, there may be a
great deal of gossip at the feast, but no one will be
answerable for what he says, because they are only
concerned with momentary entertainment, and not
with any permanent material for reflection or subsequent
discussion. (Among these are also to be
reckoned the way of arranging the table for enjoyment,
and, at great feasts, the management of the
music. This latter is a wonderful thing. It is
meant to dispose to gaiety the minds of the guests,
regarded solely as a pleasant noise, without any
one paying the least attention to its composition;
and it favours the free conversation of each with his
neighbour.) Again, to this class belong all games
which bring with them no further interest than that
of making the time pass imperceptibly.
On the other hand, beautiful art is a mode of
representation which is purposive for itself, and
which, although devoid of [definite] purpose, yet
furthers the culture of the mental powers in reference
to social communication.
The universal communicability of a pleasure
carries with it in its very concept that the pleasure
is not one of enjoyment, from mere sensation, but
must be derived from reflection; and thus aesthetical
art, as the art of beauty, has for standard the
reflective Judgement and not sensation.
§ 45. Beautiful Art is an art, in so far as it seems
like nature
In a product of beautiful art we must become
conscious that it is Art and not Nature; but yet the
purposiveness in its form must seem to be as free
from all constraint of arbitrary rules as if it were a
product of mere nature. On this feeling of freedom
in the play of our cognitive faculties, which must
at the same time be purposive, rests that pleasure
which alone is universally communicable, without
being based on concepts. Nature is beautiful
because it looks like Art; and Art can only be
called beautiful if we are conscious of it as Art
while yet it looks like Nature.
For whether we are dealing with natural or
with artificial beauty we can say generally: That is
beautiful which pleases in the mere act of judging it
(not in the sensation of it, or by means of a concept).
Now art has always a definite design of producing
something. But if this something were bare sensation
(something merely subjective), which is to be
accompanied with pleasure, the product would please
in the act of judgement only by mediation of sensible
feeling. And again, if the design were directed
towards the production of a definite Object, then,
if this were attained by art, the Object would only
please by means of concepts. But in both cases the
art would not please in the mere act of judging; i.e.
it would not please as beautiful, but as mechanical.
Hence the purposiveness in the product of beautiful
art, although it is designed, must not seem
to be designed; i.e. beautiful art must look like
nature, although we are conscious of it as art.
But a product of art appears like nature when,
although its agreement with the rules, according to
which alone the product can become what it ought
to be, is punctiliously observed, yet this is not painfully
apparent; [the form of the schools does not
obtrude itself]78—it shows no trace of the rule
having been before the eyes of the artist and having
fettered his mental powers.
§ 46. Beautiful Art is the art of genius
Genius is the talent (or natural gift) which gives
the rule to Art. Since talent, as the innate productive
faculty of the artist, belongs itself to Nature,
we may express the matter thus: Genius is the
innate mental disposition (ingenium) through which
Nature gives the rule to Art.
Whatever may be thought of this definition,
whether it is merely arbitrary or whether it is
adequate to the concept that we are accustomed to
combine with the word genius (which is to be
examined in the following paragraphs), we can
prove already beforehand that according to the
signification of the word here adopted, beautiful
arts must necessarily be considered as arts of genius.
For every art presupposes rules by means of
which in the first instance a product, if it is to be
called artistic, is represented as possible. But the
concept of beautiful art does not permit the
judgement upon the beauty of a product to be
derived from any rule, which has a concept as its
determining ground, and therefore has at its basis a
concept of the way in which the product is possible.
Therefore, beautiful art cannot itself devise the rule
according to which it can bring about its product.
But since at the same time a product can never be
called Art without some precedent rule, Nature in
the subject must (by the harmony of its faculties)
give the rule to Art; i.e. beautiful Art is only possible
as a product of Genius.
We thus see (1) that genius is a talent for
producing that for which no definite rule can be
given; it is not a mere aptitude for what can be
learnt by a rule. Hence originality must be its
first property. (2) But since it also can produce
original nonsense, its products must be models, i.e.
exemplary; and they consequently ought not to
spring from imitation, but must serve as a standard
or rule of judgement for others. (3) It cannot
describe or indicate scientifically how it brings about
its products, but it gives the rule just as nature
does. Hence the author of a product for which he
is indebted to his genius does not himself know
how he has come by his Ideas; and he has not the
power to devise the like at pleasure or in accordance
with a plan, and to communicate it to others in
precepts that will enable them to produce similar
products. (Hence it is probable that the word
genius is derived from genius, that peculiar guiding
and guardian spirit given to a man at his birth, from
whose suggestion these original Ideas proceed.)
(4) Nature by the medium of genius does not
prescribe rules to Science, but to Art; and to it
only in so far as it is to be beautiful Art.
§ 47. Elucidation and confirmation of the above
explanation of Genius
Every one is agreed that genius is entirely
opposed to the spirit of imitation. Now since
learning is nothing but imitation, it follows that
the greatest ability and teachableness (capacity)
regarded quâ teachableness, cannot avail for genius.
Even if a man thinks or invents for himself, and
does not merely take in what others have taught,
even if he discovers many things in art and science,
this is not the right ground for calling such a
(perhaps great) head, a genius (as opposed to him
who because he can only learn and imitate is called
a shallow-pate). For even these things could be
learned, they lie in the natural path of him who
investigates and reflects according to rules; and
they do not differ specifically from what can be
acquired by industry through imitation. Thus we
can readily learn all that Newton has set forth in
his immortal work on the Principles of Natural
Philosophy, however great a head was required to
discover it; but we cannot learn to write spirited
poetry, however express may be the precepts of the
art and however excellent its models. The reason
is that Newton could make all his steps, from the
first elements of geometry to his own great and
profound discoveries, intuitively plain and definite
as regards consequence, not only to himself but to
every one else. But a Homer or a Wieland cannot
show how his Ideas, so rich in fancy and yet so full
of thought, come together in his head, simply
because he does not know and therefore cannot
teach others. In Science then the greatest discoverer
only differs in degree from his laborious
imitator and pupil; but he differs specifically from
him whom Nature has gifted for beautiful Art.
And in this there is no depreciation of those great
men to whom the human race owes so much
gratitude, as compared with nature’s favourites in
respect of the talent for beautiful art. For in the
fact that the former talent is directed to the ever-advancing
greater perfection of knowledge and
every advantage depending on it, and at the same
time to the imparting this same knowledge to
others—in this it has a great superiority over [the
talent of] those who deserve the honour of being
called geniuses. For art stands still at a certain
point; a boundary is set to it beyond which it
cannot go, which presumably has been reached long
ago and cannot be extended further. Again,
artistic skill cannot be communicated; it is imparted
to every artist immediately by the hand of nature;
and so it dies with him, until nature endows another
in the same way, so that he only needs an example
in order to put in operation in a similar fashion the
talent of which he is conscious.
If now it is a natural gift which must prescribe
its rule to art (as beautiful art), of what kind is this
rule? It cannot be reduced to a formula and serve
as a precept, for then the judgement upon the
beautiful would be determinable according to
concepts; but the rule must be abstracted from the
fact, i.e. from the product, on which others may try
their own talent by using it as a model, not to be
copied but to be imitated. How this is possible is
hard to explain. The Ideas of the artist excite like
Ideas in his pupils if nature has endowed them with
a like proportion of their mental powers. Hence
models of beautiful art are the only means of
handing down these Ideas to posterity. This
cannot be done by mere descriptions, especially not
in the case of the arts of speech, and in this latter
classical models are only to be had in the old dead
languages, now preserved only as “the learned
languages.”
Although mechanical and beautiful art are very
different, the first being a mere art of industry and
learning and the second of genius, yet there is no
beautiful art in which there is not a mechanical
element that can be comprehended by rules and
followed accordingly, and in which therefore there
must be something scholastic as an essential
condition. For [in every art] some purpose must
be conceived; otherwise we could not ascribe the
product to art at all, and it would be a mere
product of chance. But in order to accomplish a
purpose, definite rules from which we cannot dispense
ourselves are requisite. Now since the originality
of the talent constitutes an essential (though not the
only) element in the character of genius, shallow
heads believe that they cannot better show themselves
to be full-blown geniuses than by throwing
off the constraint of all rules; they believe, in effect,
that one could make a braver show on the back of
a wild horse than on the back of a trained animal.
Genius can only furnish rich material for products
of beautiful art; its execution and its form require
talent cultivated in the schools, in order to make
such a use of this material as will stand examination
by the Judgement. But it is quite ridiculous for a
man to speak and decide like a genius in things
which require the most careful investigation by
Reason. One does not know whether to laugh
more at the impostor who spreads such a mist round
him that we cannot clearly use our Judgement and
so use our Imagination the more, or at the public
which naïvely imagines that his inability to cognise
clearly and to comprehend the masterpiece before
him arises from new truths crowding in on him in
such abundance that details (duly weighed definitions
and accurate examination of fundamental propositions)
seem but clumsy work.
§ 48. Of the relation of Genius to Taste
For judging of beautiful objects as such, taste
is requisite; but for beautiful art, i.e. for the production
of such objects, genius is requisite.
If we consider genius as the talent for beautiful
art (which the special meaning of the word implies)
and in this point of view analyse it into the faculties
which must concur to constitute such a talent, it is
necessary in the first instance to determine exactly
the difference between natural beauty, the judging
of which requires only Taste, and artificial beauty,
whose possibility (to which reference must be made
in judging such an object) requires Genius.
A natural beauty is a beautiful thing; artificial
beauty is a beautiful representation of a thing.
In order to judge of a natural beauty as such
I need not have beforehand a concept of what sort
of thing the object is to be; i.e. I need not know
its material purposiveness (the purpose), but its
mere form pleases by itself in the act of judging it
without any knowledge of the purpose. But if the
object is given as a product of art, and as such is
to be declared beautiful, then, because art always
supposes a purpose in the cause (and its causality),
there must be at bottom in the first instance a
concept of what the thing is to be. And as the
agreement of the manifold in a thing with its inner
destination, its purpose, constitutes the perfection
of the thing, it follows that in judging of artificial
beauty the perfection of the thing must be taken
into account; but in judging of natural beauty (as
such) there is no question at all about this.—It is
true that in judging of objects of nature, especially
objects endowed with life, e.g. a man or a horse,
their objective purposiveness also is commonly taken
into consideration in judging of their beauty; but
then the judgement is no longer purely aesthetical,
i.e. a mere judgement of taste. Nature is no longer
judged inasmuch as it appears like art, but in so
far as it is actual (although superhuman) art; and
the teleological judgement serves as the basis and
condition of the aesthetical, as a condition to which
the latter must have respect. In such a case, e.g.
if it is said “that is a beautiful woman,” we think
nothing else than this: nature represents in her
figure the purposes in view in the shape of a woman’s
figure. For we must look beyond the mere form to
a concept, if the object is to be thought in such a
way by means of a logically conditioned aesthetical
judgement.
Beautiful art shows its superiority in this, that
it describes as beautiful things which may be in
nature ugly or displeasing.79 The Furies, diseases,
the devastations of war, etc., may [even regarded
as calamitous],80 be described as very beautiful,
and even represented in a picture. There is only
one kind of ugliness which cannot be represented
in accordance with nature, without destroying all
aesthetical satisfaction and consequently artificial
beauty; viz. that which excites disgust. For in
this peculiar sensation, which rests on mere imagination,
the object is represented as it were obtruding
itself for our enjoyment while we strive against it
with all our might. And the artistic representation
of the object is no longer distinguished from the
nature of the object itself in our sensation, and thus
it is impossible that it can be regarded as beautiful.
The art of sculpture again, because in its products
art is almost interchangeable with nature, excludes
from its creations the immediate representation of
ugly objects; e.g. it represents death by a beautiful
genius, the warlike spirit by Mars, and permits
[all such things] to be represented only by an
allegory or attribute81 that has a pleasing effect, and
thus only indirectly by the aid of the interpretation of
Reason, and not for the mere aesthetical Judgement.
So much for the beautiful representation of an
object, which is properly only the form of the presentation
of a concept, and the means by which the
latter is communicated universally.—But to give
this form to the product of beautiful art, mere taste
is requisite. By taste, after he has exercised and
corrected it by manifold examples from art or nature,
the artist checks his work; and after many, often
toilsome, attempts to content taste he finds the
form which satisfies him. Hence this form is not,
as it were, a thing of inspiration or the result of a
free swing of the mental powers, but of a slow and
even painful process of improvement, by which he
seeks to render it adequate to his thought, without
detriment to the freedom of the play of his powers.
But taste is merely a judging and not a productive
faculty; and what is appropriate to it is not therefore
a work of beautiful art. It may be only a
product belonging to useful and mechanical art or
even to science, produced according to definite rules
that can be learned and must be exactly followed.
But the pleasing form that is given to it is only the
vehicle of communication, and a mode, as it were,
of presenting it, in respect of which we remain free
to a certain extent, although it is combined with
a definite purpose. Thus we desire that table
appointments, a moral treatise, even a sermon,
should have in themselves this form of beautiful
art, without it seeming to be sought: but we do not
therefore call these things works of beautiful art.
Under the latter class are reckoned a poem, a piece
of music, a picture gallery, etc.; and in some would-be
works of beautiful art we find genius without
taste, while in others we find taste without genius.
§ 49. Of the faculties of the mind that constitute
Genius
We say of certain products of which we expect
that they should at least in part appear as beautiful
art, they are without spirit82; although we find
nothing to blame in them on the score of taste. A
poem may be very neat and elegant, but without
spirit. A history may be exact and well arranged,
but without spirit. A festal discourse may be solid
and at the same time elaborate, but without spirit.
Conversation is often not devoid of entertainment,
but yet without spirit: even of a woman we say
that she is pretty, an agreeable talker, and courteous,
but without spirit. What then do we mean by
spirit?
Spirit, in an aesthetical sense, is the name given
to the animating principle of the mind. But that
whereby this principle animates the soul, the
material which it applies to that [purpose], is that
which puts the mental powers purposively into
swing, i.e. into such a play as maintains itself and
strengthens the [mental] powers in their exercise.
Now I maintain that this principle is no other
than the faculty of presenting aesthetical Ideas.
And by an aesthetical Idea I understand that representation
of the Imagination which occasions much
thought, without, however, any definite thought, i.e.
any concept, being capable of being adequate to
it; it consequently cannot be completely compassed
and made intelligible by language.—We easily
see that it is the counterpart (pendant) of a rational
Idea, which conversely is a concept to which no
intuition (or representation of the Imagination) can
be adequate.
The Imagination (as a productive faculty of
cognition) is very powerful in creating another
nature, as it were, out of the material that actual
nature gives it. We entertain ourselves with it
when experience proves too commonplace, and by
it we remould experience, always indeed in accordance
with analogical laws, but yet also in accordance
with principles which occupy a higher place in
Reason (laws too which are just as natural to us as
those by which Understanding comprehends empirical
nature). Thus we feel our freedom from the
law of association (which attaches to the empirical
employment of Imagination), so that the material
which we borrow from nature in accordance with
this law can be worked up into something different
which surpasses nature.
Such representations of the Imagination we may
call Ideas, partly because they at least strive after
something which lies beyond the bounds of experience,
and so seek to approximate to a presentation
of concepts of Reason (intellectual Ideas), thus
giving to the latter the appearance of objective
reality,—but especially because no concept can be
fully adequate to them as internal intuitions. The
poet ventures to realise to sense, rational Ideas of
invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell,
eternity, creation, etc.; or even if he deals with
things of which there are examples in experience,—e.g.
death, envy and all vices, also love, fame, and
the like,—he tries, by means of Imagination, which
emulates the play of Reason in its quest after a
maximum, to go beyond the limits of experience
and to present them to Sense with a completeness
of which there is no example in nature. It is,
properly speaking, in the art of the poet, that the
faculty of aesthetical Ideas can manifest itself in its
full measure. But this faculty, considered in itself,
is properly only a talent (of the Imagination).
If now we place under a concept a representation
of the Imagination belonging to its presentation,
but which occasions solely by itself more thought
than can ever be comprehended in a definite
concept, and which therefore enlarges aesthetically
the concept itself in an unbounded fashion,—the
Imagination is here creative, and it brings the
faculty of intellectual Ideas (the Reason) into movement;
i.e. a movement, occasioned by a representation,
towards more thought (though belonging, no
doubt, to the concept of the object) than can be
grasped in the representation or made clear.
Those forms which do not constitute the presentation
of a given concept itself but only, as
approximate representations of the Imagination,
express the consequences bound up with it and its
relationship to other concepts, are called (aesthetical)
attributes of an object, whose concept as a
rational Idea cannot be adequately presented. Thus
Jupiter’s eagle with the lightning in its claws is an
attribute of the mighty king of heaven, as the
peacock is of its magnificent queen. They do not,
like logical attributes, represent what lies in our
concepts of the sublimity and majesty of creation,
but something different, which gives occasion to
the Imagination to spread itself over a number of
kindred representations, that arouse more thought
than can be expressed in a concept determined by
words. They furnish an aesthetical Idea, which
for that rational Idea takes the place of logical
presentation; and thus as their proper office they
enliven the mind by opening out to it the prospect
into an illimitable field of kindred representations.
But beautiful art does this not only in the case of
painting or sculpture (in which the term “attribute”
is commonly employed): poetry and rhetoric also
get the spirit that animates their works simply
from the aesthetical attributes of the object, which
accompany the logical and stimulate the Imagination,
so that it thinks more by their aid, although
in an undeveloped way, than could be comprehended
in a concept and therefore in a definite form of
words.— For the sake of brevity I must limit
myself to a few examples only.
When the great King83 in one of his poems
expresses himself as follows:
“Oui, finissons sans trouble et mourons sans regrets,
En laissant l’univers comblé de nos bienfaits.
Ainsi l’astre du jour au bout de sa carrière,
Répand sur l’horizon une douce lumière;
Et les derniers rayons qu’il darde dans les airs,
Sont les derniers soupirs qu’il donne à l’univers;”
he quickens his rational Idea of a cosmopolitan
disposition at the end of life by an attribute which
the Imagination (in remembering all the pleasures
of a beautiful summer day that are recalled at its
close by a serene evening) associates with that
representation, and which excites a number of
sensations and secondary representations for which
no expression is found. On the other hand, an
intellectual concept may serve conversely as an
attribute for a representation of sense and so can
quicken this latter by means of the Idea of the
supersensible; but only by the aesthetical [element],
that subjectively attaches to the concept of the
latter, being here employed. Thus, for example, a
certain poet84 says, in his description of a beautiful
morning:
“The sun arose
As calm from virtue springs.”
The consciousness of virtue, even if one only places
oneself in thought in the position of a virtuous man,
diffuses in the mind a multitude of sublime and
restful feelings and a boundless prospect of a joyful
future, to which no expression measured by a definite
concept completely attains.85
In a word the aesthetical Idea is a representation
of the Imagination associated with a given concept,
which is bound up with such a multiplicity of partial
representations in its free employment, that for it no
expression marking a definite concept can be found;
and such a representation, therefore, adds to a
concept much ineffable thought, the feeling of which
quickens the cognitive faculties, and with language,
which is the mere letter, binds up spirit also.
The mental powers, therefore, whose union (in a
certain relation) constitutes genius are Imagination
and Understanding. In the employment of the
Imagination for cognition it submits to the constraint
of the Understanding and is subject to the limitation
of being conformable to the concept of the latter.
On the other hand, in an aesthetical point of view it
is free to furnish unsought, over and above that
agreement with a concept, abundance of undeveloped
material for the Understanding; to which the
Understanding paid no regard in its concept, but
which it applies, though not objectively for cognition,
yet subjectively to quicken the cognitive
powers and therefore also indirectly to cognitions.
Thus genius properly consists in the happy relation
[between these faculties], which no science can teach
and no industry can learn, by which Ideas are found
for a given concept; and on the other hand, we thus
find for these Ideas the expression, by means of
which the subjective state of mind brought about by
them, as an accompaniment of the concept, can be
communicated to others. The latter talent is properly
speaking what is called spirit; for to express
the ineffable element in the state of mind implied by
a certain representation and to make it universally
communicable—whether the expression be in speech
or painting or statuary—this requires a faculty of
seizing the quickly passing play of Imagination and
of unifying it in a concept (which is even on that
account original and discloses a new rule that could
not have been inferred from any preceding principles
or examples), that can be communicated without any
constraint [of rules].86
* * * * *
If after this analysis we look back to the explanation
given above of what is called genius, we find:
first, that it is a talent for Art, not for Science, in
which clearly known rules must go beforehand and
determine the procedure. Secondly, as an artistic
talent it presupposes a definite concept of the product,
as the purpose, and therefore Understanding;
but it also presupposes a representation (although
an indeterminate one) of the material, i.e. of the
intuition, for the presentment of this concept; and,
therefore, a relation between the Imagination and
the Understanding. Thirdly, it shows itself not so
much in the accomplishment of the proposed purpose
in a presentment of a definite concept, as in the
enunciation or expression of aesthetical Ideas, which
contain abundant material for that very design; and
consequently it represents the Imagination as free
from all guidance of rules and yet as purposive in
reference to the presentment of the given concept.
Finally, in the fourth place, the unsought undesigned
subjective purposiveness in the free accordance of
the Imagination with the legality of the Understanding
presupposes such a proportion and disposition
of these faculties as no following of rules, whether
of science or of mechanical imitation, can bring
about, but which only the nature of the subject can
produce.
In accordance with these suppositions genius is
the exemplary originality of the natural gifts of a
subject in the free employment of his cognitive
faculties. In this way the product of a genius (as
regards what is to be ascribed to genius and not to
possible learning or schooling) is an example, not
to be imitated (for then that which in it is genius
and constitutes the spirit of the work would be lost),
but to be followed, by another genius; whom it
awakens to a feeling of his own originality and
whom it stirs so to exercise his art in freedom from
the constraint of rules, that thereby a new rule is
gained for art, and thus his talent shows itself to be
exemplary. But because a genius is a favourite of
nature and must be regarded by us as a rare phenomenon,
his example produces for other good heads
a school, i.e. a methodical system of teaching according
to rules, so far as these can be derived from the
peculiarities of the products of his spirit. For such
persons beautiful art is so far imitation, to which
nature through the medium of a genius supplied
the rule.
But this imitation becomes a mere aping, if the
scholar copies everything down to the deformities,
which the genius must have let pass only because
he could not well remove them without weakening
his Idea. This mental characteristic is meritorious
only in the case of a genius. A certain audacity in
expression—and in general many a departure from
common rules—becomes him well, but it is in no
way worthy of imitation; it always remains a fault
in itself which we must seek to remove, though the
genius is as it were privileged to commit it, because
the inimitable rush of his spirit would suffer from
over-anxious carefulness. Mannerism is another
kind of aping, viz. of mere peculiarity (originality) in
general; by which a man separates himself as far as
possible from imitators, without however possessing
the talent to be at the same time exemplary.—There
are indeed in general two ways (modi) in
which such a man may put together his notions of
expressing himself; the one is called a manner (modus
aestheticus), the other a method (modus logicus). They
differ in this, that the former has no other standard
than the feeling of unity in the presentment, but the
latter follows definite principles; hence the former
alone avails for beautiful art. But an artistic product
is said to show mannerism only when the
exposition of the artist’s Idea is founded on its very
singularity, and is not made appropriate to the Idea
itself. The ostentatious (précieux), contorted, and
affected [manner, adopted] to differentiate oneself
from ordinary persons (though devoid of spirit) is
like the behaviour of a man of whom we say, that
he hears himself talk, or who stands and moves
about as if he were on a stage in order to be stared
at; this always betrays a bungler.
§ 50. Of the combination of Taste with Genius in
the products of beautiful Art
To ask whether it is more important for the
things of beautiful art that Genius or Taste should
be displayed, is the same as to ask whether in it
more depends on Imagination or on Judgement.
Now, since in respect of the first an art is rather
said to be full of spirit, but only deserves to be
called a beautiful art on account of the second;
this latter is at least, as its indispensable condition
(conditio sine qua non), the most important thing
to which one has to look in the judging of art as
beautiful art. Abundance and originality of Ideas
are less necessary to beauty than the accordance
of the Imagination in its freedom with the conformity
to law of the Understanding. For all the abundance
of the former produces in lawless freedom nothing
but nonsense; on the other hand, the Judgement
is the faculty by which it is adjusted to the
Understanding.
Taste, like the Judgement in general, is the
discipline (or training) of Genius; it clips its wings
closely, and makes it cultured and polished; but, at
the same time, it gives guidance as to where and
how far it may extend itself, if it is to remain
purposive. And while it brings clearness and order
into the multitude of the thoughts, it makes the
Ideas susceptible of being permanently and, at the
same time, universally assented to, and capable of
being followed by others, and of an ever-progressive
culture. If, then, in the conflict of these two properties
in a product something must be sacrificed, it should
be rather on the side of genius; and the Judgement,
which in the things of beautiful art gives its decision
from its own proper principles, will rather sacrifice
the freedom and wealth of the Imagination than
permit anything prejudicial to the Understanding.
For beautiful art, therefore, Imagination, Understanding,
Spirit, and Taste are requisite.87
§ 51. Of the division of the beautiful arts
We may describe beauty in general (whether
natural or artificial) as the expression of aesthetical
Ideas; only that in beautiful Art this Idea must
be occasioned by a concept of the Object; whilst
in beautiful Nature the mere reflection upon a
given intuition, without any concept of what the
object is to be, is sufficient for the awakening and
communicating of the Idea of which that Object
is regarded as the expression.
If, then, we wish to make a division of the
beautiful arts, we cannot choose a more convenient
principle, at least tentatively, than the analogy of
art with the mode of expression of which men
avail themselves in speech, in order to communicate
to one another as perfectly as possible not merely
their concepts but also their sensations.88—This
is done by word, deportment, and tone (articulation,
gesticulation, and modulation). It is only by the
combination of these three kinds of expression that
communication between the speaker [and his hearers]
can be complete. For thus thought, intuition, and
sensation are transmitted to others simultaneously
and conjointly.
There are, therefore, only three kinds of beautiful
arts; the arts of speech, the formative arts, and the
art of the play of sensations (as external sensible
impressions). We may also arrange a division by
dichotomy; thus beautiful art may be divided
into the art of expression of thoughts and of intuitions;
and these further subdivided in accordance
with their form or their matter (sensation). But
this would appear to be too abstract, and not so
accordant with ordinary concepts.
(1) The arts of SPEECH are rhetoric and poetry.
Rhetoric is the art of carrying on a serious business
of the Understanding as if it were a free play of
the Imagination; poetry, the art of conducting a
free play of the Imagination as if it were a serious
business of the Understanding.
The orator, then, promises a serious business,
and in order to entertain his audience conducts it
as if it were a mere play with Ideas. The poet
merely promises an entertaining play with Ideas,
and yet it has the same effect upon the Understanding
as if he had only intended to carry on
its business. The combination and harmony of
both cognitive faculties, Sensibility and Understanding,
which cannot dispense with one another,
but which yet cannot well be united without constraint
and mutual prejudice, must appear to be undesigned
and so to be brought about by themselves:
otherwise it is not beautiful art. Hence, all that
is studied and anxious must be avoided in it, for
beautiful art must be free art in a double sense.
It is not a work like that of a tradesman, the
magnitude of which can be judged, exacted, or
paid for, according to a definite standard; and again,
though the mind is occupied, still it feels itself
contented and stimulated, without looking to any
other purpose (independently of reward.)
The orator therefore gives something which he
does not promise, viz. an entertaining play of the
Imagination; but he also fails to supply what he
did promise, which is indeed his announced business,
viz. the purposive occupation of the Understanding.
On the other hand, the poet promises
little and announces a mere play with Ideas; but
he supplies something which is worth occupying
ourselves with, because he provides in this play
food for the Understanding, and by the aid of
Imagination gives life to his concepts. [Thus the
orator on the whole gives less, the poet more, than
he promises.]89
(2) The FORMATIVE arts, or those by which expression
is found for Ideas in sensible intuition (not
by representations of mere Imagination that are
aroused by words), are either arts of sensible truth or
of sensible illusion. The former is called Plastic, the
latter Painting. Both express Ideas by figures in
space; the former makes figures cognisable by two
senses, sight and touch (although not by the latter
as far as beauty is concerned); the latter only by
one, the first of these. The aesthetical Idea (the
archetype or original image) is fundamental for both
in the Imagination, but the figure which expresses
this (the ectype or copy) is either given in its
bodily extension (as the object itself exists), or as it
paints itself on the eye (according to its appearance
when projected on a flat surface). In the first case90
the condition given to reflection may be either the
reference to an actual purpose or only the semblance
of it.
To Plastic, the first kind of beautiful formative
Art, belong Sculpture and Architecture. The first
presents corporeally concepts of things, as they
might have existed in nature (though as beautiful art
it has regard to aesthetical purposiveness). The
second is the art of presenting concepts of things
that are possible only through Art, and whose form
has for its determining ground not nature but an
arbitrary purpose, with the view of presenting them
with aesthetical purposiveness. In the latter the
chief point is a certain use of the artistic object, by
which condition the aesthetical Ideas are limited.
In the former the main design is the mere expression
of aesthetical Ideas. Thus statues of men, gods,
animals, etc., are of the first kind; but temples,
splendid buildings for public assemblies, even
dwelling-houses, triumphal arches, columns, mausoleums,
and the like, erected in honourable remembrance,
belong to Architecture. Indeed all house
furniture (upholsterer’s work and such like things
which are for use) may be reckoned under this art;
because the suitability of a product for a certain use is
the essential thing in an architectural work. On the
other hand, a mere piece of sculpture, which is simply
made for show and which is to please in itself, is as
a corporeal presentation a mere imitation of nature,
though with a reference to aesthetical Ideas; in it
sensible truth is not to be carried so far that the
product ceases to look like art and looks like a product
of the elective will.
Painting, as the second kind of formative art,
which presents a sensible illusion artificially combined
with Ideas, I would divide into the art of the
beautiful depicting of nature and that of the beautiful
arrangement of its products. The first is painting
proper, the second is the art of landscape gardening.
The first gives only the illusory appearance of
corporeal extension; the second gives this in
accordance with truth, but only the appearance of
utility and availableness for other purposes than the
mere play of the Imagination in the contemplation
of its forms.91 This latter is nothing else than the
ornamentation of the soil with a variety of those
things (grasses, flowers, shrubs, trees, even ponds,
hillocks, and dells) which nature presents to an
observer, only arranged differently and in conformity
with certain Ideas. But, again, the beautiful arrangement
of corporeal things is only apparent to the eye,
like painting; the sense of touch cannot supply any
intuitive presentation of such a form. Under painting
in the wide sense I would reckon the decoration
of rooms by the aid of tapestry, bric-a-brac, and all
beautiful furniture which is merely available to be
looked at; and the same may be said of the art of
tasteful dressing (with rings, snuff-boxes, etc.). For
a bed of various flowers, a room filled with various
ornaments (including under this head even ladies’
finery), make at a fête a kind of picture; which, like
pictures properly so-called (that are not intended to
teach either history or natural science), has in view
merely the entertainment of the Imagination in free
play with Ideas, and the occupation of the aesthetical
Judgement without any definite purpose. The
detailed work in all this decoration may be quite
distinct in the different cases and may require
very different artists; but the judgement of taste
upon whatever is beautiful in these various arts is
always determined in the same way: viz. it only
judges the forms (without any reference to a
purpose) as they present themselves to the eye
either singly or in combination, according to the
effect they produce upon the Imagination.—But
that formative art may be compared (by analogy)
with deportment in speech is justified by the fact
that the spirit of the artist supplies by these figures
a bodily expression to his thought and its mode, and
makes the thing itself as it were speak in mimic
language. This is a very common play of our
fancy, which attributes to lifeless things a spirit
suitable to their form by which they speak to us.
(3) The art of the BEAUTIFUL PLAY OF SENSATIONS
(externally stimulated), which admits at the
same time of universal communication, can be concerned
with nothing else than the proportion of the
different degrees of the disposition (tension) of the
sense, to which the sensation belongs, i.e. with its tone.
In this far-reaching signification of the word it may
be divided into the artistic play of the sensations of
hearing and sight, i.e. into Music and the Art of
colour.—It is noteworthy that these two senses,
besides their susceptibility for impressions so far as
these are needed to gain concepts of external objects,
are also capable of a peculiar sensation bound up
therewith, of which we cannot strictly decide whether
it is based on sense or reflection. This susceptibility
may sometimes be wanting, although in other respects
the sense, as regards its use for the cognition of
Objects, is not at all deficient but is peculiarly fine.
That is, we cannot say with certainty whether
colours or tones (sounds) are merely pleasant sensations
or whether they form in themselves a beautiful
play of sensations, and as such bring with them
in aesthetical judgement a satisfaction in their form.
If we think of the velocity of the vibrations of light,
or in the second case of the air, which probably far
surpasses all our faculty of judging immediately in
perception the time interval between them, we must
believe that it is only the effect of these vibrations
upon the elastic parts of our body that is felt, but
that the time interval between them is not remarked
or brought into judgement; and thus that only
pleasantness and not beauty of composition is bound
up with colours and tones. But on the other hand,
first, we think of the mathematical [element] which
enables us to pronounce on the proportion between
these oscillations in music and thus to judge of
them; and by analogy with which we easily may
judge of the distinctions between colours. Secondly,
we recall instances (although they are rare) of men
who with the best sight in the world cannot distinguish
colours, and with the sharpest hearing
cannot distinguish tones; whilst for those who can
do this the perception of an altered quality (not
merely of the degree of sensation) in the different
intensities in the scale of colours and tones is
definite; and further, the very number of these is
fixed by intelligible differences. Thus we may be
compelled to see that both kinds of sensations are
to be regarded not as mere sensible impressions,
but as the effects of a judgement passed upon the
form in the play of divers sensations. The difference
in our definition, according as we adopt the
one or the other opinion in judging of the grounds
of Music, would be just this: either, as we have
done, we must explain it as the beautiful play of
sensations (of hearing), or else as a play of pleasant
sensations. According to the former mode of
explanation music is represented altogether as a
beautiful art; according to the latter, as a pleasant
art (at least in part).
§ 52. Of the combination of beautiful arts in one
and the same product
Rhetoric may be combined with a pictorial presentation
of its subjects and objects in a theatrical
piece; poetry may be combined with music in a
song, and this again with pictorial (theatrical) presentation
in an opera; the play of sensations in
music may be combined with the play of figures in
the dance, and so on. Even the presentation of the
sublime, so far as it belongs to beautiful art, may
combine with beauty in a tragedy in verse, in a
didactic poem, in an oratorio; and in these combinations
beautiful art is yet more artistic. Whether it
is also more beautiful may in some of these cases be
doubted (since so many different kinds of satisfaction
cross one another). Yet in all beautiful art the
essential thing is the form, which is purposive as
regards our observation and judgement, where the
pleasure is at the same time cultivation and disposes
the spirit to Ideas, and consequently makes it susceptible
of still more of such pleasure and entertainment.
The essential element is not the matter
of sensation (charm or emotion), which has only to
do with enjoyment; this leaves behind nothing in
the Idea, and it makes the spirit dull, the object
gradually distasteful, and the mind, on account of
its consciousness of a disposition that conflicts with
purpose in the judgement of Reason, discontented
with itself and peevish.
If the beautiful arts are not brought into more or
less close combination with moral Ideas, which alone
bring with them a self-sufficing satisfaction, this latter
fate must ultimately be theirs. They then serve only
as a distraction, of which we are the more in need the
more we avail ourselves of them to disperse the discontent
of the mind with itself; so that we thus render
ourselves ever more useless and ever more discontented.
The beauties of nature are generally of most
benefit in this point of view, if we are early accustomed
to observe, appreciate, and admire them.
§ 53. Comparison of the respective aesthetical worth
of the beautiful arts
Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin
almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by
precept or example) maintains the first rank. It
expands the mind by setting the Imagination at
liberty; and by offering within the limits of a given
concept amid the unbounded variety of possible
forms accordant therewith, that which unites the
presentment of this concept with a wealth of thought,
to which no verbal expression is completely
adequate; and so rising aesthetically to Ideas. It
strengthens the mind by making it feel its faculty—free,
spontaneous and independent of natural determination—of
considering and judging nature as a
phenomenon in accordance with aspects which it
does not present in experience either for Sense or
Understanding, and therefore of using it on behalf
of, and as a sort of schema for, the supersensible.
It plays with illusion, which it produces at pleasure,
but without deceiving by it; for it declares its
exercise to be mere play, which however can be purposively
used by the Understanding.—Rhetoric,
in so far as this means the art of persuasion, i.e.
of deceiving by a beautiful show (ars oratoria),
and not mere elegance of speech (eloquence and
style), is a Dialectic, which borrows from poetry
only so much as is needful to win minds to the side
of the orator before they have formed a judgement,
and to deprive them of their freedom; it cannot
therefore be recommended either for the law courts
or for the pulpit. For if we are dealing with civil
law, with the rights of individual persons, or with
lasting instruction and determination of people’s
minds to an accurate knowledge and a conscientious
observance of their duty, it is unworthy of so
important a business to allow a trace of any exuberance
of wit and imagination to appear, and still
less any trace of the art of talking people over and
of captivating them for the advantage of any chance
person. For although this art may sometimes be
directed to legitimate and praiseworthy designs, it
becomes objectionable, when in this way maxims and
dispositions are spoiled in a subjective point of view,
though the action may objectively be lawful. It is
not enough to do what is right; we should practise
it solely on the ground that it is right. Again, the
mere concept of this species of matters of human
concern, when clear and combined with a lively
presentation of it in examples, without any offence
against the rules of euphony of speech or propriety
of expression, has by itself for Ideas of Reason (which
collectively constitute eloquence), sufficient influence
upon human minds; so that it is not needful to add
the machinery of persuasion, which, since it can be
used equally well to beautify or to hide vice and
error, cannot quite lull the secret suspicion that one
is being artfully overreached. In poetry everything
proceeds with honesty and candour. It
declares itself to be a mere entertaining play of the
Imagination, which wishes to proceed as regards
form in harmony with the laws of the Understanding;
and it does not desire to steal upon and
ensnare the Understanding by the aid of sensible
presentation.92
After poetry, if we are to deal with charm and
mental movement, I would place that art which comes
nearest to the art of speech and can very naturally
be united with it, viz. the art of tone. For although
it speaks by means of mere sensations without concepts,
and so does not, like poetry, leave anything
over for reflection, it yet moves the mind in a greater
variety of ways and more intensely, although only
transitorily. It is, however, rather enjoyment than
culture (the play of thought that is incidentally
excited by its means is merely the effect of a kind of
mechanical association); and in the judgement of
Reason it has less worth than any other of the beautiful
arts. Hence, like all enjoyment, it desires constant
change, and does not bear frequent repetition without
producing weariness. Its charm, which admits
of universal communication, appears to rest on this,
that every expression of speech has in its context a
tone appropriate to the sense. This tone indicates
more or less an affection of the speaker, and produces
it also in the hearer; which affection excites
in its turn in the hearer the Idea that is expressed
in speech by the tone in question. Thus as modulation
is as it were a universal language of sensations
intelligible to every man, the art of tone employs
it by itself alone in its full force, viz. as a language
of the affections, and thus communicates universally
according to the laws of association the aesthetical
Ideas naturally combined therewith. Now these
aesthetical Ideas are not concepts or determinate
thoughts. Hence the form of the composition of
these sensations (harmony and melody) only serves
instead of the form of language, by means of their
proportionate accordance, to express the aesthetical
Idea of a connected whole of an unspeakable wealth
of thought, corresponding to a certain theme which
produces the dominating affection in the piece. This
can be brought mathematically under certain rules,
because it rests in the case of tones on the relation
between the number of vibrations of the air in the
same time, so far as these tones are combined simultaneously
or successively. To this mathematical
form, although not represented by determinate concepts,
alone attaches the satisfaction that unites the
mere reflection upon such a number of concomitant
or consecutive sensations with this their play, as a
condition of its beauty valid for every man. It is
this alone which permits Taste to claim in advance
a rightful authority over every one’s judgement.
But in the charm and mental movement produced
by Music, Mathematic has certainly not the slightest
share. It is only the indispensable condition (conditio
sine qua non) of that proportion of the impressions
in their combination and in their alternation by
which it becomes possible to gather them together
and prevent them from destroying one another, and
to harmonise them so as to produce a continual
movement and animation of the mind, by means of
affections consonant therewith, and thus a delightful
personal enjoyment.
If, on the other hand, we estimate the worth of
the Beautiful Arts by the culture they supply to the
mind, and take as a standard the expansion of the
faculties which must concur in the Judgement for
cognition, Music will have the lowest place among
them (as it has perhaps the highest among those arts
which are valued for their pleasantness), because it
merely plays with sensations. The formative arts
are far before it in this point of view; for in putting
the Imagination in a free play, which is also
accordant with the Understanding, they at the same
time carry on a serious business. This they do by
producing a product that serves for concepts as a
permanent self-commendatory vehicle for promoting
their union with sensibility and thus, as it were,
the urbanity of the higher cognitive powers. These
two species of art take quite different courses; the
first proceeds from sensations to indeterminate Ideas,
the second from determinate Ideas to sensations.
The latter produce permanent, the former only
transitory impressions. The Imagination can recall
the one and entertain itself pleasantly therewith;
but the other either vanish entirely, or if they are
recalled involuntarily by the Imagination they are
rather wearisome than pleasant.93 Besides, there
attaches to Music a certain want of urbanity from
the fact that, chiefly from the character of its instruments,
it extends its influence further than is desired
(in the neighbourhood), and so as it were obtrudes
itself, and does violence to the freedom of others
who are not of the musical company. The Arts
which appeal to the eyes do not do this; for we need
only turn our eyes away, if we wish to avoid being
impressed. The case of music is almost like that of
the delight derived from a smell that diffuses itself
widely. The man who pulls his perfumed handkerchief
out of his pocket attracts the attention of all
round him, even against their will, and he forces
them, if they are to breathe at all, to enjoy the
scent; hence this habit has gone out of fashion.94
Among the formative arts I would give the palm
to painting; partly because as the art of delineation
it lies at the root of all the other formative arts, and
partly because it can penetrate much further into
the region of Ideas, and can extend the field of
intuition in conformity with them further than the
others can.
§ 54. Remark
As we have often shown, there is an essential
difference between what satisfies simply in the act
of judging it, and that which gratifies (pleases in
sensation). We cannot ascribe the latter to every
one, as we can the former. Gratification (the causes
of which may even be situate in Ideas) appears
always to consist in a feeling of the furtherance of
the whole life of the man, and consequently, also
of his bodily well-being, i.e. his health; so that
Epicurus, who gave out that all gratification was at
bottom bodily sensation, may, perhaps, not have
been wrong, but only misunderstood himself when
he reckoned intellectual and even practical satisfaction
under gratification. If we have this distinction
in view we can explain how a gratification may
dissatisfy the man who sensibly feels it (e.g. the
joy of a needy but well-meaning man at becoming
the heir of an affectionate but penurious father);
or how a deep grief may satisfy the person experiencing
it (the sorrow of a widow at the death of her
excellent husband); or how a gratification can in
addition satisfy (as in the sciences that we pursue);
or how a grief (e.g. hatred, envy, revenge) can
moreover dissatisfy. The satisfaction or dissatisfaction
here depends on Reason, and is the same as
approbation or disapprobation; but gratification and
grief can only rest on the feeling or prospect of
a possible (on whatever grounds) well-being or its
opposite.
All changing free play of sensations (that have no
design at their basis) gratifies, because it promotes
the feeling of health. In the judgement of Reason
we may or may not have any satisfaction in its
object or even in this gratification; and this latter
may rise to the height of an affection, although we
take no interest in the object, at least none that is
proportionate to the degree of the affection. We
may subdivide this free play of sensations into the
play of fortune [games of chance], the play of tone
[music], and the play of thought [wit]. The first
requires an interest, whether of vanity or of selfishness;
which, however, is not nearly so great as the
interest that attaches to the way in which we are
striving to procure it. The second requires merely
the change of sensations, all of which have a relation
to affection, though they have not the degree of
affection, and excite aesthetical Ideas. The third
springs merely from the change of representations
in the Judgement; by it, indeed, no thought that
brings an interest with it is produced, but yet the
mind is animated thereby.
How much gratification games must afford,
without any necessity of placing at their basis an
interested design, all our evening parties show;
for hardly any of them can be carried on without a
game. But the affections of hope, fear, joy, wrath,
scorn, are put in play by them, alternating every
moment; and they are so vivid that by them, as
by a kind of internal motion, all the vital processes
of the body seem to be promoted, as is shown by
the mental vivacity excited by them, although
nothing is gained or learnt thereby. But as the
beautiful does not enter into games of chance, we
will here set them aside. On the other hand, music
and that which excites laughter are two different
kinds of play with aesthetical Ideas, or with representations
of the Understanding through which
ultimately nothing is thought; and yet they can
give lively gratification merely by their changes.
Thus we recognise pretty clearly that the animation
in both cases is merely bodily, although it is excited
by Ideas of the mind; and that the feeling of
health produced by a motion of the intestines
corresponding to the play in question makes up
that whole gratification of a gay party, which is
regarded as so refined and so spiritual. It is not
the judging the harmony in tones or sallies of wit,—which
serves only in combination with their
beauty as a necessary vehicle,—but the furtherance
of the vital bodily processes, the affection that
moves the intestines and the diaphragm, in a word,
the feeling of health (which without such inducements
one does not feel) that makes up the gratification
felt by us; so that we can thus reach the body
through the soul and use the latter as the physician
of the former.
In music this play proceeds from bodily sensations
to aesthetical Ideas (the Objects of our
affections), and then from these back again to the
body with redoubled force. In the case of jokes
(the art of which, just like music, should rather be
reckoned as pleasant than beautiful) the play begins
with the thoughts which together occupy the body,
so far as they admit of sensible expression; and
as the Understanding stops suddenly short at this
presentment, in which it does not find what it expected,
we feel the effect of this slackening in the
body by the oscillation of the organs, which promotes
the restoration of equilibrium and has a favourable
influence upon health.
In everything that is to excite a lively convulsive
laugh there must be something absurd (in which the
Understanding, therefore, can find no satisfaction).
Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden
transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.95
This transformation, which is certainly not enjoyable
by the Understanding, yet indirectly gives it very
active enjoyment for a moment. Therefore its
cause must consist in the influence of the representation
upon the body, and the reflex effect of
this upon the mind; not, indeed, through the
representation being objectively an object of gratification96
(for how could a delusive expectation
gratify?), but simply through it as a mere play of
representations bringing about an equilibrium of
the vital powers in the body.
Suppose this story to be told: An Indian at the
table of an Englishman in Surat, when he saw a
bottle of ale opened and all the beer turned into
froth and overflowing, testified his great astonishment
with many exclamations. When the Englishman
asked him, “What is there in this to astonish you so
much?” he answered, “I am not at all astonished
that it should flow out, but I do wonder how you
ever got it in.” At this story we laugh, and it gives
us hearty pleasure; not because we deem ourselves
cleverer than this ignorant man, or because of anything
else in it that we note as satisfactory to the
Understanding, but because our expectation was
strained [for a time] and then was suddenly
dissipated into nothing. Again: The heir of a
rich relative wished to arrange for an imposing
funeral, but he lamented that he could not properly
succeed; “for” (said he) “the more money I give
my mourners to look sad, the more cheerful they
look!”97 When we hear this story we laugh loud,
and the reason is that an expectation is suddenly
transformed into nothing. We must note well that
it does not transform itself into the positive opposite
of an expected object—for then there would still be
something, which might even be a cause of grief—but
it must be transformed into nothing. For if a
man arouses great expectations in us when telling a
story, and at the end we see its falsehood immediately,
it displeases us; e.g. the story of the people
whose hair in consequence of great grief turned
gray in one night. But if a wag, to repair the effect
of this story, describes very circumstantially the
grief of the merchant returning from India to
Europe with all his wealth in merchandise who was
forced to throw it overboard in a heavy storm,
and who grieved thereat so much that his wig
turned gray the same night—we laugh and it gives
us gratification. For we treat our own mistake in
the case of an object otherwise indifferent to us, or
rather the Idea which we are following out, as we
treat a ball which we knock to and fro for a time,
though our only serious intention is to seize it and
hold it fast. It is not the mere rebuff of a liar or
a simpleton that arouses our gratification; for the
latter story told with assumed seriousness would set
a whole company in a roar of laughter, while the
former would ordinarily not be regarded as worth
attending to.
It is remarkable that in all such cases the jest
must contain something that is capable of deceiving
for a moment. Hence, when the illusion is dissipated,
the mind turns back to try it once again, and
thus through a rapidly alternating tension and relaxation
it is jerked back and put into a state of
oscillation. This, because the strain on the cord as
it were is suddenly (and not gradually) relaxed, must
occasion a mental movement, and an inner bodily
movement harmonising therewith, which continues
involuntarily and fatigues, even while cheering us
(the effects of a motion conducive to health).
For if we admit that with all our thoughts is
harmonically combined a movement in the organs
of the body, we shall easily comprehend how to this
sudden transposition of the mind, now to one now
to another standpoint in order to contemplate its
object, may correspond an alternating tension and
relaxation of the elastic portions of our intestines,
which communicates itself to the diaphragm (like
that which ticklish people feel). In connexion with
this the lungs expel the air at rapidly succeeding
intervals, and thus bring about a movement
beneficial to health; which alone, and not what
precedes it in the mind, is the proper cause of the
gratification in a thought that at bottom represents
nothing.—Voltaire said that heaven had given us
two things to counterbalance the many miseries of
life, hope and sleep.98 He could have added laughter,
if the means of exciting it in reasonable men were
only as easily attainable, and the requisite wit or
originality of humour were not so rare, as the talent
is common of imagining things which break one’s
head, as mystic dreamers do, or which break one’s
neck, as your genius does, or which break one’s heart,
as sentimental romance-writers (and even moralists
of the same kidney) do.
We may therefore, as it seems to me, readily
concede to Epicurus that all gratification, even that
which is occasioned through concepts, excited by
aesthetical Ideas, is animal, i.e. bodily sensation;
without the least prejudice to the spiritual feeling
of respect for moral Ideas, which is not gratification
at all but an esteem for self (for humanity in us),
that raises us above the need of gratification, and
even without the slightest prejudice to the less
noble [feeling] of taste.
We find a combination of these two last in
naiveté, which is the breaking out of the sincerity
originally natural to humanity in opposition to that
art of dissimulation which has become a second
nature. We laugh at the simplicity that does not
understand how to dissemble; and yet we are
delighted with the simplicity of the nature which
thwarts that art. We look for the commonplace
manner of artificial utterance devised with foresight
to make a fair show; and behold! it is the
unspoiled innocent nature which we do not expect
to find, and which he who displays it did not think
of disclosing. That the fair but false show which
generally has so much influence upon our judgement
is here suddenly transformed into nothing, so that,
as it were, the rogue in us is laid bare, produces a
movement of the mind in two opposite directions,
which gives a wholesome shock to the body. But
the fact that something infinitely better than all
assumed manner, viz. purity of disposition (or at
least the tendency thereto), is not quite extinguished
yet in human nature, blends seriousness and high
esteem with this play of the Judgement. But because
it is only a transitory phenomenon and the
veil of dissimulation is soon drawn over it again,
there is mingled therewith a compassion which is
an emotion of tenderness; this, as play, readily
admits of combination with a good-hearted laugh,
and ordinarily is actually so combined, and withal is
wont to compensate him who supplies its material
for the embarrassment which results from not yet
being wise after the manner of men.—An art that
is to be naive is thus a contradiction; but the
representation of naiveté in a fictitious personage
is quite possible, and is a beautiful though a
rare art. Naiveté must not be confounded with
open-hearted simplicity, which does not artificially
spoil nature solely because it does not understand
the art of social intercourse.
The humorous manner again may be classified
as that which, as exhilarating us, is near akin to
the gratification that proceeds from laughter; and
belongs to the originality of spirit, but not to
the talent of beautiful art. Humour in the good
sense means the talent of being able voluntarily
to put oneself into a certain mental disposition,
in which everything is judged quite differently
from the ordinary method (reversed, in fact), and
yet in accordance with certain rational principles
in such a frame of mind. He who is involuntarily
subject to such mutations is called a man of humours
[launisch]; but he who can assume them voluntarily
and purposively (on behalf of a lively presentment
brought about by the aid of a contrast that excites
a laugh)—he and his manner of speech are called
humorous [launigt]. This manner, however, belongs
rather to pleasant than to beautiful art, because the
object of the latter must always exhibit intrinsic
worth, and hence requires a certain seriousness in
the presentation, as taste does in the act of
judgement.