Name: Eric S.

Sanguita
Course: BSECE 1B
Instructor: JP Camino

“THE POWER OF JUDGEMENT”

By: Immanuel Kant

CRITIQUE PAPER

The first part of the book discusses the four possible aesthetic reflective
judgments: the agreeable, the beautiful, the sublime, and the good. Kant
makes it clear that these are the only four possible reflective judgements, as he
relates them to the Table of Judgments from the Critique of Pure Reason.
"Reflective judgments" differ from determinative judgments those of the first
two critiques. In reflective judgement we seek to find unknown universals for
given particulars; whereas in determinative judgment, we just subsume given
particulars under universals that are already known, as Kant puts it.

It is then one thing to say, “the production of certain things of nature or that of
collective nature is only possible through a cause which determines itself to
action according to design”; and quite another to say, “I can according to the
peculiar constitution of my cognitive faculties judge concerning the possibility
of these things and their production, in no other fashion than by conceiving for
this a cause working according to design, example being which is productive in
a way analogous to the causality of an intelligence.” In the former case I wish to
establish something concerning the Object, and I am bound to establish the
objective reality of an assumed concept; in the latter, reason only determines
the use of my cognitive faculties, conformably to their peculiarities and to the
essential conditions of their range and their limits. Thus the former principle is
an objective proposition for the determinant Judgement, the latter merely a
subjective proposition for the reflective Judgement, another example of it is a
maximum which reason prescribes to it.

The agreeable is a purely sensory judgement, judgements in the form of "This

steak is good," or "This chair is soft." These are purely subjective judgements,
based on inclination alone. The good is essentially a judgement that something
is ethical the judgement that something conforms with moral law, which, in
the Kantian sense, is essentially a claim of modality a coherence with a fixed
and absolute notion of reason. It is in many ways the absolute opposite of the
agreeable, in that it is a purely objective judgement things are either moral or
they are not, according to Kant. The remaining two judgements the beautiful
and the sublime and it differ from both the agreeable and the good. They are
what Kant refers to as "subjective universal" judgements. This apparently
oxymoronic term means that, in practice, the judgements are subjective, and
are not tied to any absolute and determinate concept. However, the judgement
that something is beautiful or sublime is made with the belief that other people
ought to agree with this judgement even though it is known that many will not.
The force of this "ought to" comes from a reference to a census communist a
community of taste. Hannah Arendt, in her Lectures on Kant's Political
Philosophy, suggests the possibility that this census communist might be the
basis of a political theory that is markedly different from the one that Kant lays
out in the Metaphysic of Morals.

The central concept of Kant's analysis of the judgement of beauty is what he

called the ″free play″ between the cognitive powers of imagination and
understanding. We call an object beautiful, because its form fits our cognitive
powers and enables such a ″free play″ the experience of which is pleasurable to
us. The judgement that something is beautiful is a claim that it possesses the
"form of finality" that is, that it appears to have been designed with a purpose,
even though it does not have any apparent practical function. We also do not
need to have a determinate concept for an object in order to find it beautiful.

In this regard, Kant further distinguishes between free and adherent beauty.
Whereas judgements of free beauty are made without having one determinate
concept for the object being judged example an ornament or well-formed line, a
judgement of beauty is adherent if we do have such a determined concept in
mind example a well-built horse that is recognized as such. The main
difference between these two judgements is that purpose or use of the object
plays no role in the case of free beauty. In contrast, adherent judgements of
beauty are only possible if the object is not ill-suited for its purpose. The
judgement that something is sublime is a judgement that it is beyond the limits
of comprehension that it is an object of fear.

However, Kant makes clear that the object must not actually be threatening it
merely must be recognized as deserving of fear. Kant's view of the beautiful and
the sublime is frequently read as an attempt to resolve one of the problems left
following his depiction of moral law in the Critique of Practical Reason namely
that it is impossible to prove that we have free will, and thus impossible to
prove that we are bound under moral law. The beautiful and the sublime both
seem to refer to some external nominal order and thus to the possibility of a
nominal self that possesses free will. In this section of the critique Kant also
establishes a faculty of mind that is in many ways the inverse of judgement the
faculty of genius. Whereas judgement allows one to determine whether
something is beautiful or sublime, genius allows one to produce what is
beautiful or sublime.
References:
Kantian Review , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , 08 June 2012 , pp. 297 - 326
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000076