Symbolism and Cognition in General in Kant PDF

Symbolism and Cognition in General in Kant's
Critique of Judgment*
by Ted Kinnaman (Fairfax)
I want to use Kant's claim that beauty is the symbol of the morally
good to illuminate the role of cognition in his Deduction of Judgments
of Taste in the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment". The precise nature of
the relation between cognition and aesthetic judgment is clearly central
to an understanding of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment". The De-
duction of Judgments of Taste is intended to vindicate the claim to
intersubjective validity implicit in the judgment of taste. This claim
can only be justified, Kant thinks, if the judgment of taste has as its
"determining basis" [Bestimmungsgrund\ some form or aspect of cogni-
tion, for "[n]othing [...]'can be communicated universally except cogni-
tion, as well as presentation insofar as it pertains to cognition". The
subjective feeling that grounds the judgment of taste must therefore be
that of the attunement of the cognitive faculties for "cognition in gen-
eral" [Erkenntnis überhaupt, V: 217].l
But this use of cognition to establish the intersubjective validity of
judgments of taste is also the source of the most serious problem with
Kant's aesthetic theory. On Kant's analysis, to say that an object is
beautiful is to say that it exhibits subjective purposiveness, which is the
property of appearances that occasions the "harmony of the faculties",
that is, the attunement of the cognitive faculties for "cognition über-
haupt". Thus it seems to be Kant's view that an object is beautiful if
and only if it is in some sense suited for cognition. Now, given Kant's
.characterization of the harmony of the faculties as involving under-
standing and imagination, it is plausible to suppose that the cognition
* The author would like to thank the Mathy Junior Faculty Award Program of
the College of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at
George Mason University for their support.
1
For references to the Critique of Judgment I have relied on the translation by
Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1987). References in the
text indicate the volume and page number of the Akademie edition of Kant's
works.
Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie 82' Bd., S. 266-296

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Symbolism and Cognition in General in Kant's Critique of Judgment 267
being referred to here is the subsumption of an object under a concept.

The theory of knowledge presented in the Critique of Pure Reason,
however, concludes that all objects are cognizable in the sense of being
subsumable under pure concepts of the understanding. Kant's analysis
of taste appears therefore to have the consequence that all objects are
beautiful. This is disturbing in the first place because it simply seems
implausible on its face, and in the second place because in a number
of places Kant refers to the possibility of taking displeasure in the
apprehension of an object. The result is that dealing with what I will
call the problem of ugliness2 has become, in the words of one commen-
tator, the "preeminent task" of interpretation of the third Critique.3
It is not necessary, however, to take the cognizability which is
claimed for the object in the judgment of taste to consist in its being
susceptible of subsumption under a concept. Rather, to say that an
object is suited for "cognition in general" is to attribute to it the more
specific property of being subsumable under a concept which can in
turn be included in a unified philosophical system. The argument of
the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" is, I will argue, intended by Kant
to show that every rational being must view at least some objects in
nature as being suited for inclusion in a philosophical system organized
around ideas of pure reason. The culmination of this argument is his
claim, at the end of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" that "beauty
is the symbol of the morally good" [V: 353]. The relation between
beauty and morality is only "indirect", which is why beauty is the sym-
bol but not the schema of the morally good. A key aspect of this read-
ing will be the claim that from an epistemological standpoint the rela-
tion between natural beauty and the idea of the morally good is just
the same as that between appearances and ideas of pure reason if the
systematization of cognition is to be possible — the existence of beauty
in nature serves to "establish the reality" of these ideas. Adopting this
2
For a forceful argument that Kant is committed to allowing negative aesthetic
judgments, that is, judgments that a thing is ugly, see Hud Hudson, "The Signifi-
cance of an Analytic of the Ugly in Kant's Deduction of Pure Judgments of
Taste", in Kant's Aesthetics, North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy,
Vol. 1 (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1991), pp. 87-104.
Properly speaking, the problem on which I will be focusing concerns the possi-
bility that Kant is commited to holding that all objects are beautiful. This there-
fore encompasses the phenomena not only of ugliness but also of the absence of
beauty, of counter- as well as nonpurposiveness.
3
Christel Fricke, Kants Theorie des reinen Geschmacksurteils (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter & Co., 1990), p. 4. Translation is my own.
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268 Ted Kinnaman
reading of the argument of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" not

only allows us to avoid saddling Kant with the view that all objects are
beautiful, but also makes clear the hitherto less than clear relation be-
tween the published Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, in which
Kant is primarily concerned with the concept of a philosophical system,
and the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment", which centers on the seem-
ingly unrelated notion of beauty as "purposiveness without purpose".
My argument proceeds as follows: After illustrating the problem I
am discussing through an examination of two prominent interpreters
of the third Critique, I will briefly examine the notion of a philosophi-
cal system as it is developed both in the Critique of Pure Reason ana
in the Critique of Judgment, and explain how this helps us to under-
stand the role of cognition in the Deduction of Judgments of Taste.
Next, I will show how the claim that beauty is the symbol of morality
is supposed to provide a deduction for the ideas of pure reason without
elevating them to conditions of the possibility of experience; I will con-
clude by explaining in detail how my reading helps Kant avoid the
problem of ugliness.
I.
I will begin by sketching the problem I hope to solve by discussing two important
interpretations of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment", namely those of Paul Guyer
and Christel Fricke. This ought to make clear why the possibility that Kant is com-
mitted to saying that all objects are beautiful as such poses such a serious threat to
the success of his theory of taste.
The task of the Deduction of Judgments of Taste, and thus of Kant's argument
in the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" as a whole, is defined by what he calls the
two "peculiarities" of the judgment of taste. On the one hand, says Kant, the judg-
ment of taste "makes a claim to everyone's assent, as if it were an objective judgment"
[V: 281]. We take judgments of taste to be true not just for ourselves but for every-
.one, just like the apparently similar judgment "The sun warms the stone". On the
other hand, the judgment of taste seems to be subjective in that it "cannot be deter-
mined by bases of proof" [V: 285], Someone who finds an object beautiful cannot
possibly be persuaded by force of argument to give up this view, whether this is done
by citing the judgments other people have made of the object or by showing him
that in the past he has judged objects similar to this one to be ugly. Instead, each of
us is led to declare objects beautiful or not through having (or not having) experi-
enced a feeling of disinterested pleasure occasioned by the object. The chief difficulty
confronting the Deduction of Judgments of Taste is therefore the problem of justify-
ing a claim to intersubjective validity based on feeling.

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Kant's solution to this puzzle is to say that the feeling that is the "determining
basis" of the judgment must be the feeling of "the mental state that we find in the
relation between the presentational powers insofar as they refer a given presentation
to cognition in generar [V: 217]. In this mental state, Kant says, the cognitive powers
are in a "free play", a harmony "in which no determinate concept restricts them to
a particular rule of cognition" [V: 217]. Due to the absence of a determinate concept,
the claim that I am experiencing the harmony of the faculties cannot be supported
with any sort of proof; however, because this harmony is based on the "subjective
conditions of cognition", it is also intersubjectively valid:
For we are conscious that this subjective relation suitable for cognition in general
must hold just as much for everyone, and hence be just as universally communi-
cable, as any determinate cognition, since cognition always rests on that relation
as its subjective condition. [V: 218]
The actual Deduction of Judgments of Taste, in § 38, cites claims already established
earlier in the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment". He begins by noting that "in a pure
judgment of taste our liking for the object is connected with our mere judging of
the form of the object" [V: 289]. In aesthetic judgment therefore the power of judg-
ment "can be directed only to the subjective conditions for our employment of the
power of judgment as such", and these conditions may be taken to apply to all
people. It follows from this that "we must be entitled to assume a priori that a
presentation's harmony with these conditions of the power of judgment is valid for
everyone" [V: 290], which is the proposition the Deduction was intended to prove.
Kant then seems to intend the link between aesthetic judgment and the subjective
conditions of cognition to ground the intersubjective validity of taste: It is precisely
because of the claim of the judgment of taste to be true for everyone that it must
be based on the conditions of cognition überhaupt. Some commentators have argued
that this reliance on the intersubjective validity of cognition to ground that of taste
need not have the consequence that all objects are beautiful, because strictly speak-
ing it is "attunement" [Stimmung] of the cognitive powers in a judgment of that is
universally communicable, and this attunement can, compatibly with Kant's text,
obtain in both positive and negative judgments of taste.4 Thus, it is argued, Kant is
committed not to the claim that all objects are beautiful, but merely to the innocuous
claim that all objects are susceptible to aesthetic appraisal. It is true that many places
in the text of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" refer to the possibility of a
negative aesthetic appraisal of an object. Nevertheless, I believe there is a real prob-
lem with ugliness in Kant's theory. One problem is that Kant says in some key places
that the universal communicability of the state of mind in an aesthetic judgment
occasions pleasure, and pleasure is associated with beauty, not ugliness. The result
of the crucial § 9, for example, is that "it must be the universal communicability of
the mental state, in the given presentation, which underlies the judgment of taste as
its subjective condition, and the pleasure in the object must be its consequence"
4
Most notably, see Hudson, Op. Cit., and Karl Ameriks, "How to Save Kant's
Deduction of Taste", Journal of Value Inquiry 16 (1982), pp. 297-302.

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270 Ted Kinnaman
[V: 217]. Furthermore, in this same section Kant refers to the view that "the ability
to communicate one's mental state [...] carries a pleasure with it" [V: 218], although
he does so in the context of referring to a merely "empirical and psychological"
proof of this claim. This suggests that only positive judgments of taste could be
universally communicable, and thus intersubjectively valid. Another difficulty con-
cerns the purposiveness that is the content of the (positive) judgment of taste: In
§ VII of the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment Kant says that pleasure we
take in a beautiful object "cannot be anything other than the object's suitability for
[Angemessenheit zu] the cognitive powers", namely understanding and imagination
(Υ: 189].5 Now, the task of these powers is to subsume intuitions under concepts.
But according to the theory of knowledge developed in the first Critique, every intu-
ition can and indeed must be subsumed under some concept, specifically pure con-
cepts of the understanding. Thus for an object to fail to be purposive would contra-
dict the central doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason.6
Interpreters of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" therefore face an apparent
dilemma: On the one hand, if we take the intersubjective validity of taste to be
entailed by the intersubjective validity of cognition, Kant's theory may have the
consequence that all objects are beautiful, which is to say the least highly implausi-
ble. On the other hand, if the intersubjective validity of cognition does not entail
that of taste, there is the danger that Kant's deduction of judgments of taste does
not succeed in its aim.
Paul Guyer is one prominent interpreter who takes the former approach, empha-
sizing the dependence of the intersubjective validity of taste on that of cognition. In
discussing the Deduction of Judgments of Taste, Guyer notes that Kant is "obviously
committed to the view that the intersubjective validity of knowledge in general en-
tails the intersubjective validity of aesthetic response". Guyer is referring specifically
to Kant's claim in § 39 that the "proportion" which obtains between the imagination
and understanding in aesthetic response is the same as that which obtains in "ordi-
nary experience". This raises the question of why this proportion does not obtain
with regard to every object. Guyer suggests that the only way to resolve this problem
is to introduce a psychological element into Kant's theory of beauty. On Guyer's
reading, the harmony of the faculties is a mental state in which the given manifold
5
It is worth emphasizing that by taking purposiveness to consist strictly in the
suitability of appearances for cognition in general, I am departing, for example,
from Guyer's interpretation, who says that properly speaking purposiveness "is
nothing more than [the object's] disposition to produce the harmony of the facul-
ties". This will be important for the distinction I draw between the content of a
judgment of taste and the evidence that can be given for it. Paul Guyer, Kant
and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 88.
6
Guyer too sees a problem in reconciling Kant's account of aesthetic response
with the central positions articulated in the first Critique. He argues that this
tension can be resolved with a clear distinction between psychological and episte-
mological elements in Kant's theory, a move I would prefer to avoid. Guyer,
Op. Cit., pp. 96-99.

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is perceived as unified, but without subsuming it under a concept. Specifically, the

manifold is subjected to the first and second of the three syntheses required for
cognition of an object - the manifold is "run through" and "held together", but
without the third synthesis, which is the application of a concept.7 But although this
move solves the problem of explaining why not all objects are beautiful, it does so
only at the expense of undermining the strength of Kant's argument for the intersub-
jective validity of taste, as Guyer points out:
The addition of such a psychological component to the model of the harmony of
the faculties will constitute a difference between the proportion requisite for cog-
nition in general and the particular ratio best adapted for quickening the two
faculties of knowledge or producing their free and harmonious accord. But once
such a step is taken, the chain of necessary conditions, or of necessary possession
of capabilities, which Kant's deduction requires is broken. [...] Once a capacity
which is not an absolutely necessary condition of knowledge is introduced into
the explanation of aesthetic response, so is an element of contingency, and the
possibility of an entirely justifiable a priori imputation of aesthetic response to
others is precluded.8
Of course, because he sees this as the correct way of reading the "Critique of Aesthe-
tic Judgment", Guyer takes the problem just outlined to pertain to Kant's argument
rather than to his interpretation of that argument.
Christel Fricke, on the other hand, chooses the other horn of the dilemma, em-
phasizing the differences between aesthetic and cognitive judgment. Most fundamen-
tally, on Fricke's reading, the harmony of the faculties is based on an "aesthetic
synthesis" of the manifold in intuition. This synthesis is quite distinct from the syn-
thesis entailed by cognition, in which the manifold is subjected to a concept of the
understanding.9 The notion of a specifically aesthetic synthesis helps to explain sev-
eral significant differences between judgments of taste and of cognition; for example,
whereas in ordinary experience the manifold is unified in relation to the goal of
specific cognition, which consists in subjecting the manifold to a determinate rule,
in aesthetic judgment the goal is merely that of the agreement of imagination and
understanding for "cognition in general". Specifically, an aesthetic judgment consists
not in the application to the manifold of an objective concept, but rather in the
estimation of the "form of purposiveness without purpose" of the object. The con-
cept of "purposiveness without purpose" or "subjective formal purposiveness" em-
ployed in the judgment of taste is indeterminate, rather than determinate, and the
"principle of taste" underlying the judgment of taste is merely regulative rather than
constitutive.
One of the chief motivations for Fricke's reading of the "Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment" is that it makes possible a fairly simple response to the charge that Kant's
7
Paul Guyer, Op. CiL, pp. 85-86. Guyer is referring here to the first edition ver-
sion of the Deduction.
8
Ibid., p. 323.
9 Christel Fricke, Op. Cit.> p. 3.

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272 Ted Kinnaman
theory of taste entails that all objects are beautiful: While it is true that Kant is
committed to the view that every manifold must be susceptible of subsumption under
pure concepts of the understanding, he is not (at least not obviously) committed to
the view that every manifold must be capable of aesthetic synthesis. The problem
with this approach, of course, is that it renders deeply problematic Kant's attempt
to defend the intersubjective validity of judgments based on this synthesis. Fricke
notes this difficulty in the context of her discussion of Kant's argument for an aesthe-
tic "common sense" (the latter term is, I think, really just another label for the
intersubjective validity of taste). She notes the possibility of interpreting in two dif-
ferent ways Kant's claim that we are justified in presupposing a common sense in
other people, either as an aesthetic or as an objective common sense. Neither of
these alternatives, however, avoids the following dilemma:
Either one assumes [...] that in Section 21 Kant wants to justify the assumption
of the aesthetic common sense; then one must admit that this attempt is not
successful. For the assumption of the aesthetic common sense cannot be justified
merely on the basis of the universal communicability of true cognitions and their
conditions. For an object to be cognized, that is, determined appropriately
through objective concepts, it is not necessary that it be estimated [beurteilt]. Or
on the other hand one assumes that in Section 21 Kant wants to justify the as-
sumption of the objective common sense; then one comes to the conclusion that
this justification is successful, but nevertheless admit that this justification does
not contribute to proving that disinterested feelings of aesthetic pleasure and pain
are universally communicable.10
Fricke tries to resolve this dilemma, but ultimately concludes that it is inherent in
Kant's theory. Thus here again we find the problem of reconciling Kant's desire to
explain the phenomenon of beauty and his attempt to link this explanation to his
account of knowledge.
To sum up: The subjective formal purposiveness Kant identifies with the concept
of beauty is to be understood as the property of being suitable for cognition. But it
seems that all the available ways of understanding this claim lead to difficulty. If we
take suitability for cognition to be suitability for application of a concept, whether
pure or empirical, Kant is thereby committed to the view that all objects are beauti-
ful. Moreover, and perhaps more seriously, tying the validity of judgments of taste
to the validity of cognition seems impossible to square with Kant's insistence that
judgments of taste are in some sense subjective, and that the concept of subjective
formal purposiveness which Kant identifies with beauty is an indeterminate concept.
If, on the other hand, we take suitability for cognition to consist in some other
sense, the chances appear slight that Kant can succeed in his attempt to use the
intersubjective validity of cognition to ground the intersubjective validity of taste.
What is needed, then, is a way of understanding subjective formal purposiveness so
that it retains the close relation to Kant's theory of cognition but does not entail
that all objects are beautiful.
10
Ibid9 p. 173.

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II.
The best way to solve this problem, I suggest, is to interpret Kant as

arguing that to judge an object beautiful is to judge that it is suitable
not for subsumption under a concept, but rather for inclusion in a
philosophical system organized around ideas of pure reason. The "pur-
posiveness without purpose" Kant identifies with beauty, and which he
says symbolizes the idea of the morally-good, is the manifestation
among objects in nature of the purposiveness that is the central concept
of the "principle of the purposiveness of nature", with which Kant says
the entire Critique of Judgment is concerned. The proper place to begin,
then, is with Kant's use of the notion of purposiveness and his concep-
tion of a philosophical system in both the first and third Critique. In
this section I will look at Kant's account of reason in the Critique of
Pure Reason. In addition to explaining Kant's views, I will argue that
his defense of reason in the first Critique is inadequate, because in the
absence of some sort of argument for the purposiveness of nature, we
have no reason to accept Kant's claim that the ideas of reason are
necessary concepts. In the next section I will examine the role of sys-
tematicity in the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment.
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant expresses the view that in addi-
tion to the understanding's task of applying concepts to sensible mani-
folds, there is also a further cognitive task, assigned in the first Critique
to reason and in the third Critique to reflective judgement, namely the
systematization of cognition. A system, as Kant is using the term, is a
hierarchy of cognitions, with those of least generality at the bottom
and those of the greatest generality, namely the ideas of pure reason,
at the top. Kant discusses the systematization of cognition in three
different contexts in the Critique of Pure Reason. In the Appendix to
the Dialectic of Pure Reason, he presents an account of a system con-
cerned with theoretical cognition. Beyond the pure and empirical con-
cepts of the understanding, which unify intuitions, there are also ideas
of pure reason, which serve to unify these concepts. The goal is a hier-
archy (Kant equivocates here) either of concepts, where the highest
concept denotes a class that includes all lower concepts, or of laws,
where the highest law is so general that the lower-order laws can be
deduced from it. Second, beyond its purely speculative or theoretical
employment reason also has a practical or moral employment. Here
the crucial idea is that of the "ideal of the highest good", which is the
idea of a world in which everyone is rewarded with happiness just in
proportion as they make themselves worthy of it. [A810/B838J Since

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274 Ted K i n n a m a n
(Kant claims) this is only conceivable if we imagine it as the will of a

"Supreme Reason" who rewards us appropriately in a world that is
distinct from the world of appearance, we find that (practical) reason
also requires that we suppose that God exists and that there is a life
after death. [A811/B839] Finally, the third and final form of system
Kant discusses can, for want of better term, be labeled philosophical,
and is meant both to encompass and to unite the theoretical and practi-
cal employments of reason. Philosophy itself aims at producing a sys-
tem of human knowledge, that is, "the unity of the manifold cognitions
under an idea, in which it is possible that every part can be missed if
the remaining parts are familiar, and [...] that there is no place for any
contingent addition or indeterminate magnitude of the whole's dimen-
sion" [A832/B860]. This would seem to involve knowing the domain as
well as the limits of theoretical reason, practical reason, or the power
of judgment, and being able to determine, for any given proposition,
which of these faculties it belongs to.11 Kant also says that the philo-
sopher is a "legislator" who unifies human knowledge by studying "the
reference of all cognition to the essential purposes of human reason"
[A839/B867]. This suggests that although the true philosopher is con-
cerned with both theory and morality, practical concerns are her truly
central preoccupation.
All of these sorts of philosophical system have several important
features in common. First, in each case the system consists in an or-
dered hierarchy. Second, in each case the organizing principle of the
system is an idea, which Kant defines as "a necessary concept of reason
for which no congruent object can be given in the senses" [A327/B383].
Because of this, it is impossible to demonstrate the possibility of achiev-
ing such a systematic ordering in the same way that the Transcendental
Deduction of the Categories demonstrated the possibility of applying
the categories of the understanding to intuition. Finally, each of the
sorts of system requires for its possibility the truth of a nontrivial claim
about appearances, namely that appearances are such as to allow for
the creation of the systematic hierarchy in question. Kant refers to the
property of appearances which makes them susceptible of being in-
cluded in a rational system as their purposiveness [Zweckmäßigkeit].
Although Kant does not in the Critique of Pure Reason explain his use
of the terms 'purpose' and 'purposiveness', it seems that it is based on
the simple idea that the construction of such a system is a goal of all
11
The latter activity is described in more detail under the rubric of "deliberation"
(Überlegung) in the section "On the Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection" at
the end of the Transcendental Analytic.

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rational agents as such; the suitability of an object for inclusion in such

a system is thus also its conduciveness to this purpose. I will argue later
that on the theory advanced in the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment",
the "purposiveness without purpose" exhibited by beautiful objects is
intended to serve as limited support for the more general claim that
nature as a whole is purposive, and thus to ground transcendentally
the ideas of pure reason.
But although ideas of pure reason are supposed to assist in achieving
knowledge of objects of experience, Kant of course does not want to
say that these ideas have objective validity as the categories of the
understanding do.12 Kant's principal way of describing the difference
between concepts of the understanding and ideas of reason is to say
that the employment of the former is constitutive whereas that of the
latter is (merely) regulative. The precise nature of this distinction is a
matter of some difficulty, partly because Kant uses this distinction in
so many places and seems to explain it in a number of different ways. I
think however that the picture can be cleared up a bit by distinguishing
between two distinct senses of the constitutive/regulative distinction.
On the one hand, it denotes the different functions of the two sorts of
concept: Categories unify intuitions, while ideas unify concepts of the
understanding. On the other hand, it denotes their different epistemo-
logical status: The objective validity of the categories is guaranteed be-
cause it can be shown to be a condition of any experience of an object;
whereas, because ideas cannot be given in any possible experience,
nothing of the sort can be shown for them. From an epistemological
standpoint, that is, the main difference between a principle of the un-
derstanding (corresponding to a category) and a principle of reason is
the sort of proof of which each is susceptible.
Despite this limitation on their epistemological status, ideas of pure
reason are nevertheless a priori concepts. Indeed, Kant emphasizes that
ideas are not mere "empty thought-entities", and even entertains the
possibility that ideas could "have at least some objective validity -
even if only an indeterminate one" [A669/B697]. They therefore require
a "transcendental deduction", although again it is clear from the start
12
The discussion of the next few paragraphs is based largely on the sections "On
the Regulative Use of the Ideas of Pure Reason" and "On the Final Aim of the
Natural Dialectic of Human Reason", at the end of the Transcendental Dialectic.
Kant's primary concern here is with ideas of theoretical reason, rather than ideas
in general. Nevertheless, these sections are Kant's clearest and lengthiest account
of the positive role of the ideas (as opposed to their role in leading to transcen-
dental illusion), and most of what he has to say there applies as well to ideas in
their practical and philosophical employments as well.

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276 Ted Kinnaman
that this transcendental deduction cannot take the form of an argument

from the conditions of the possibility of experience. The promised tran-
scendental deduction is offered in the section "On the Final Aim of the
Natural Dialectic of Human Reason":
Thus the three different transcendental ideas (psychological, cosmological, and
theological) are indeed not referred directly to any object corresponding to them
and to the determination thereof. But if one can show that, nonetheless, under
the presupposition of such an object in one's idea all rules of reason's empirical
use lead to systematic unity and always expand experiential cognition and never
go against it, then proceeding according to such ideas is a necessary maxim of
reason. And this is the transcendental deduction of all ideas of speculative reason.
[A671/B699]
In short, the transcendental deduction of the ideas consists in showing
that they are useful for science and do not (if properly understood)
lead to contradiction.
This argument is however woefully inadequate, for the simple reason
that it does not address the main issue in the question of the validity
of the ideas of pure reason. The applicability of ideas to appearances
depends on appearances being in fact capable of systematic unification
— in other words, on their purposiveness. This is the case both with
regard to reason's theoretical use, where systematic unification requires
that the empirical laws of natural science allow of arrangement in a
deductive hierarchy, and with regard to its practical use, which requires
that the world and human nature be perfectible. A fortiori, then, the
complete philosophical system, which unites the theoretical and the
practical, also depends on the purposiveness of appearances. Without
some reason for thinking that appearances are purposive in this sense,
there is also no reason for thinking that goal of systematic unity is
attainable, and thus no grounds for any sort of validity for the ideas.
But Kant's argument in "Final Aim" does nothing to show that nature
is purposive.13 Kant has shown here at most that it is useful to pretend
that nature is purposive, and that doing so will at least not contradict
what we find in nature. As a "transcendental deduction" this is hardly
adequate. The only attempt Kant makes to support the necessity of the
ideas is his claim, expressed in a rather off-hand manner in various
places in "On the Regulative Use", that attaining systematic unity
among our cognitions is an "interest of reason" [A648/B676]. This an-
ticipates Kant's claim in the 1786 essay "Was heisst: sich im Denken
orientieren?" that use of ideas is a "need of reason" [Bedürfnis der
13
I am taking 'nature' here in Kant's "material" sense, namely as "the sum of all
appearances55 [B163],

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Vernunft] [VII: 137]. But Kant offers no argument to show that there
is such a need or interest, and I see little way of defending this assertion
without presupposing the necessity of either the ideas or systematiza-
tion of knowledge, thus making Kant's argument circular.
It seems to me that this is a crucial shortcoming in Kant's account
of reason, and that the argument of the first Critique ought to be
judged much more successful in the negative task of limiting reason
than in the positive goal of defending it. And this is a very serious
problem indeed, because it means that Kant has offered no argument
to convince someone who rejects the claim that reason (as he construes
it) ought to guide human life. Even with the necessary limitations on
the validity of the ideas of pure reason, after all, Kant's view is far
from being uncontroversial: He is committed not just to the view that
every rational being ought to believe in God, the soul, etc., but also to
the claims that these beliefs ought to be regarded as epistemologically
weaker than belief in the causal principle (because the only proper use
of ideas is "merely" regulative); that reason is capable of arriving at
substantive truths independent of the contingencies of history, geogra-
phy, and language (because ideas are a priori concepts, and as such are
necessary and universal); and that all rational beings ought to have the
same idea of, e. g., God (for the same reason). These are claims with
which a reasonable person might disagree, and in fact reasonable per-
sons in Kant's time did disagree with them. Johann Georg Hamann, for
example, argued forcefully that Kant's failure to demonstrate reason's
independence of language and traditions is the Achilles heel of the Cri-
tique of Pure Reason, and his critique in turn had a great influence on
Johann Gottfried Herder.14 In the absence of some sort of argument
for the claim that nature is purposive, I think, Kant's defense of reason
can seem convincing only to someone already disposed to accept
reason's authority - a group that of course includes most philosophers.
III.
The notion of a philosophical system takes center stage in the Critique of Judgment.
Kant opens the Introduction to the work by summarizing the conclusions reached
in the Critique of Pure Reason concerning theoretical and practical reason. First,
14
For Hamann, see his "Metakritik über den Purismus der Vernunft", in Schriften
zur Sprache, ed. by Josef Simon (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1967). For
Herder, see Ideen zur Geschichte der Philosophie der Menschheit^ in Werke (Berlin
and Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1978), Bd. 4.

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there is an "immense gulf [V: 175] between the theoretical and practical employ-
ments of reason (or, as Kant now prefers to term it, between understanding and
reason). Second, both reason and understanding require, though in different ways,
the notion of a realm beyond the world of appearance. Kant calls this realm "the
supersensible". Third, despite the gulf between theoretical understanding and practi-
cal reason, the latter must nonetheless "have an influence" [V: 176] on the former,
in that reason is supposed to lead us to remake the world of our experience in order
to conform to the commands of morality. Fourth and finally, although the first
Critique showed that it is possible for both of these "legislations" to "coexist in the
same subject", still
there must be a basis uniting the supersensible that underlies nature and the super-
sensible that the concept of freedom contains practically [so as to] make possible
the transition from our way of thinking in terms of principles of nature to our
way of thinking in terms of principles of freedom. [V: 176]
The faculty of judgment, Kant informs us in the next section, supplies this "transi-
tion".
But when Kant then goes on in § 4 to discuss judgment as a cognitive power that
legislates a priori, he appears to drop entirely the subject of uniting theory and
practice. There he distinguishes between determinative judgment, which subsumes
the particular under an already given universal, and reflective judgment, which be-
gins with the particular and searches for a universal under which the particular can
be subsumed. The result aimed for is "the unity of all empirical principles under
higher though still empirical principles", and thus "to subordinate empirical prin-
ciples to one another in a systematic way" [V: 180], In order to do this, however,
judgment requires a principle to. guide its systematization of knowledge. This prin-
ciple, Kant says, is the proposition that
particular empirical laws must [...] be viewed in terms of such a unity as if they
too had been given by an understanding (although not ours) so as to assist our
cognitive powers by making possible a system of experience in terms of particular
natural laws. [V: 180]
Kant calls this principle the "principle of the purposiveness of nature" [hereafter
PPN]. But the PPN is not merely a helpful device. On the contrary, Kant says that
this principle does not just describe how we in fact do judge, but rather embodies a
claim about how we ought to judge. The laws of nature composing the philosophical
system Kant describes are, as laws, necessary, although the possibility of con-
structing such as system cannot be demonstrated by deriving it from the conditions
of the possibility of experience. Thus although it is merely regulative rather than
constitutive, the PPN is nevertheless a transcendental principle, and "requires a tran-
scendental deduction, by means of which we must try to find the basis for such
judging in the a priori sources of cognition" [V: 182].
One of the most difficult questions in interpreting the Introduction to the Critique
of Judgment is that of determining the connection Kant sees between the problem
of achieving a "transition" from theory to practice and the problem of unifying

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scientific laws in an ordered hierarchy. The principle of the purposiveness of nature

as presented in § 4 of the Introduction seems to pertain only to the latter problem.
I will not attempt to answer this complicated interpretive question here. For now it
is enough to note that Kant clearly thinks that the two problems are closely linked.
We have seen that in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment,
Kant discusses both questions under the rubric of systematization and purpos-
iveness. In the crucial § 59 as well, Kant moves with little explanation from the claim
that beauty is the symbol of the morally-good to the notion of the unity of theory
and practice. As he will make clear in the "Critique of Teleological Judgment", the
philosophical system in which theory and morality are unified is to be pictured not
as a coordination of equals, but rather as a subordination of theory to morality. The
task of grounding the ideas of practical reason is thus at the same time the task of
grounding the ideas of reason in general.
It is my contention that the argument of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" is
intended to supply the needed argument for the principle of the purposiveness of
nature. But before I conclude by showing just how this reading of the "Critique of
Aesthetic Judgment" solves the problem of ugliness, there is one significant issue
that needs to be addressed. I am claiming that by arguing that beauty is the symbol
of the morally good, Kant intends to show that nature is systematizable in the man-
ner described in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic in the Critique of Pure
Reason, and again in the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment. But this can
appear highly counterintuitive, because the judgment of taste on Kant's account
makes use of the indeterminate concept of nature's subjective formal purposiveness,
and takes as its "determining basis" the subjective feeling of the harmony of the
faculties; the possibility of building the complete philosophical system, on the other
hand, would seem to require determinate cognition of the objects of experience, and
to involve objective cognition of objects. I must therefore examine Kant's account
of the symbolic relationship between beauty and morality, and show that the sym-
bolic relation between beauty and the morally good is a relation of epistemic justifi-
cation15 of just the sort needed to support the systematizability of nature. I will
argue that the sense in which the judgment of taste is subjective is an epistemological
one: Judgments of taste for Kant are "referred to the subject" in the sense that,
while they are about objects, the only evidence that can be given for them - the
"determining basis" of such judgments - is subjective, namely the occurrence of the
harmony of the faculties.
IV.
My argument in this section falls into two parts. In the first, after a
brief examination of Kant's argument in § 59, I show that in claiming
that beauty is the symbol of the morally good, Kant is looking to
15
I use this phrase to indicate that Kant's argument is intended, as he puts it, to
show that certain concepts have reality. Put another way, I want to claim that
the proposition corresponding to each idea (e, g. "God exists" for the idea of
God) is true, and not merely justified on moral grounds.

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280 Ted Kinnaman
"establish the reality" not only of ideas of practical reason but indeed
of ideas of reason in general. In the second part, I consider the objec-
tion that the subjectivity and indeterminacy Kant attributes to taste
refute my thesis that the symbolism claim is intended to support the
systematizability of appearances, and thus the validity of the ideas of
pure reason-
Kant's claim that beauty is the symbol of the morally good [des
Sittlich-guten] appears in the very last section (apart from an Appendix
on the "Doctrine of Method of Taste") of the "Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment", and its placement can be taken as an indication that this
claim is central to Kant's purpose in the first major division of the
Critique of Judgment. Kant makes very clear in the first sentence of
§ 59 that the symbolism claim is intended to provide epistemic support
for transcendental ideas: "Establishing that our concepts have reality",
he says, "always requires intuitions" [V: 351]. Whereas concepts of the
understanding can be given schemata, rational concepts, L e. ideas, can
be given only symbols. Both schemata and symbols "exhibit" their re-
spective concepts, but schemata do so directly while symbols do so
only indirectly [V: 352]. As Kant explains it,
Symbolic exhibition uses an analogy [...] in which judgment performs a double
function: it applies the concept to the object of a sensible intuition; and then it
applies the mere rule by which it reflects on that intuition to an entirely different
object, of which the former object is only the symbol. [V: 352]
Kant gives the example of using an.animate body as a symbol of a
constitutional monarchy: Although there is.of course no physical re-
semblance between these two things, there is a relation of analogy be-
tween them that becomes apparent when we examine how we think
about each. But despite the indirect nature of the symbol-relation, the
symbol nevertheless serves to "exhibit", that is, to "make sensible" the
concept of which it is the symbol, and far from contrasting symbolism
with intuition, Kant says that in fact "symbolic presentation is only a
kind of intuitive presentation" [V: 351].
Finally, Kant offers four parallels between beauty and the morally-
good that are intended to spell out the analogical relation between
them, as well as the important differences between them: The beautiful
is "liked directly", but only through an intuition, not through a concept
as in the case of morality; our liking for the beautiful is disinterested,
while our liking for the morally-good is interested, but not with an
interest that "precedes the liking"; the judgment of taste represents the
harmony of the imagination and the understanding, whereas moral
judgment represents the harmony of the will with itself; in both aesthe-

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tic and moral judgments, the "subjective principle" at the base of the
judgment is presented as universally valid, although in the case of
moral judgment this is "knowable through a universal [allgemeinen]
concept" [V: 353-4],
Several features of Kant's argument in "Beauty as the Symbol" indi-
cate that, while it is only morality with which beauty is explicitly con-
nected, the existence of natural beauty in fact has important implica-
tions for reason more generally. The first such feature is the context in
which the section on symbolism appears. "On Beauty as the Symbol of
Morality" follows Kant's discussion of the Antinomy of Taste. This
antinomy concerns the role of concepts in the judgment of taste: On
the one hand, if beauty (that is, subjective formal purposiveness) is a
concept, then judgments of taste ought to be determinate, and thus be
subject to proof. But of course judgments of taste are not determinate
in this way, and disagreements about matters of taste cannot be re-
solved by appeal to rules. On the other hand, if beauty is not a concept,
then we have no right to demand that others agree with our judgments
of taste; but that we do in fact make this demand is constitutive of the
difference between the judgment of taste and mere judgments of sense.
Kant's solution to the Antinomy of Taste is to say that
[a] judgment of taste is based on a concept (the concept of a general basis of
nature's subjective purposiveness for our power of judgment), but this concept
does not allow us to cognize and prove anything concerning the object because
it is intrinsically indeterminable and inadequate for cognition; and yet this same
concept does make the judgment of taste valid for everyone, because (though
each person's judgment is singular and directly accompanies his intuition) the
basis that determines the judgment lies, perhaps, in the concept of what may be
considered the supersensible substrate of humanity. [V: 340]
As Kant puts it a few paragraphs later, the concept of subjective formal
purposiveness is an indeterminate concept. I will return to this crucial
passage again below. For now, the important point is that Kant solves
the antinomy of taste by appealing to a transcendental idea, namely the
idea of a "supersensible substrate of humanity".16 This supersensible
substrate is the same supersensible substrate that underlies the employ-
16
Although Kant does not use the word 'idea' in the solution to the antinomy of
taste itself, later in the second comment on this solution he says indirectly that
this is what he has done ["On this alternative we could declare it unnecessary
and idle to solve the antinomy by means of transcendental ideas..." [V: 346]],
and he draws a connection between the solution to this antinomy and those
concerning theoretical and practical reason, which he describes as also demon-
strating the necessity of the notion of a supersensible substrate.

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282 Ted Kinnaman
ment of all transcendental ideas, whether theoretical or practical

Through the Deduction of Judgments of Taste, Kant says, "we are led
to three ideas: first, the idea of the supersensible in general, not further
determined, as the substrate of nature; second, the idea of the same
supersensible as the principle of nature's subjective purposiveness for
our cognitive power; third, the idea of the same supersensible as the
principle of the purposes of freedom and of the harmony of these
purposes with nature in the moral sphere" [V: 346]. Notice that al-
though the Deduction of Judgments of Taste leads us to three transcen-
dental ideas, these ideas are concerned with one supersensible.
The importance of the symbolism-claim for reason in general is also
apparent in Kant's references in key passages not only to the idea of
the morally-good, but also to the notion of the unity of theory and
morality. In the section on "Beauty as a Symbol" itself, Kant moves
immediately from the claim that beauty symbolizes the morally-good
to the claim that beauty constitutes the sought-after link between theo-
retical understanding and moral reason. After making the symbolism-
claim, for example, Kant identifies the morally-good with the "intelligi-
ble" with which "our higher powers harmonize" [zusammenstimmen}
[V: 353].17 Furthermore, he says, because we find in ourselves the abil-
ity to make pure judgments of taste, "judgment finds itself referred to
something that is both in the subject and outside him, something that
is neither nature nor freedom and yet is linked with the basis of free-
dom, the supersensible, in which the theoretical and practical power
are in an unknown unity" [V: 353]. Finally, note that the third respect
in which Kant says that beauty parallels the morally-good refers not
to moral reason per se, but rather to the free harmony among our
cognitive faculties, including imagination (which Kant links to our
"power of sensibility") and understanding. [V: 354] This move from
discussion of beauty as a symbol of morality to talk of the unity of
morality and understanding makes sense, I think, only as a reference
to the idea, already present in the Critique of Pure Reason, that in the
unified philosophical system theoretical understanding is subordinated
to moral reason. Although this doctrine is enunciated most clearly in
17
Kant says that this claim — that judgments of taste refer to a supersensible
substrate — was already discussed in the previous section. Although there is a
brief mention of the notion of the supersensible in § 58, it seems clear (following
Windelband) that Kant is actually referring to § 57, where the solution to the
Antinomy of Taste is followed by a long discussion of rational ideas and their
relation to the supersensible.

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the "Critique of Teleological Judgment", already in the Critique of Pure

Reason it is clear that moral considerations are central to reason's quest
for systematic unity. It is through analysis of the ideal of the highest
good, after all, that ideas such as that of God receive the only sort of
objective validity of which they are capable.
We thus have two important results for understanding the connec-
tion between the symbolism-claim and the defense of reason. First,
when Kant says that beauty is the symbol of morality, this claim has
implications not only for practical reason but for reason in general as
well. Second, the claim that beauty is the symbol of morality provides
ideas of reason with epistemic justification they otherwise lack.18 But
while it is clear that the symbolism-claim is intended to establish the
reality of the idea of the morally good, the epistemic justification the
idea thereby receives is quite different from that accorded the categories
of the understanding by the Transcendental Deduction in the first Cri-
tique. This is of course essential to the connection between the concept
of nature's subjective formal purposiveness and the ideas of pure
reason, for the major result of Kant's argument in the Critique of Pure
Reason is that whereas categories allow of constitutive employment,
ideas allow only of regulative employment. But there is a likely objec-
tion to this reading that needs to be addressed. Because the complete
philosophical system Kant describes includes within it natural laws
governing empirical objects, it might seem that the concept of the pur-
posiveness of nature needed to ground the possibility of such a system
would have to be an objective, determinate concept. But Kant clearly
and repeatedly maintains that the concept of beauty is indeterminate,
and it might therefore seem that it is impossible for beauty in any way
to establish the reality of ideas of reason. The indeterminacy of the
concept of beauty is in turn a consequence of the subjectivity of judg-
ments of taste. I will argue that the sense in which taste is subjective
for Kant is fundamentally epistemological: Like determinate,objective
judgments of the understanding, judgments of taste are about appear-
ances, but unlike objective judgments, they can be supported not
through appeal to a determinate rule, but only through appeal to the
subjective feeling of the harmony of the faculties.
18
I thus agree with Ted Cohen's view that the purposiveness associated with beauty
indicates a "fit" of nature with the good will, with the difference, however, that
I also see this fit as relating to ideas of reason in general. Cohen, "Why Beauty
Is a Symbol of Morality", in Essays in Kant's Aesthetics (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982), p. 235.

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284 Ted Kinnaman
The subjectivity of taste forms the main theme of the Analytic of the
Beautiful in the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment". A complete inter-
pretation of Kant's argument in this section is beyond the scope of this
paper. For my present purposes it is enough to dispel one possible
understanding of the subjectivity of taste, according to which the sub-
jectivity of judgments of taste consists in their being about the subject
making the judgment. On the contrary, I will show that judgments
of taste, like the principle of the purposiveness of nature, are about
appearances, defined as the "undetermined object [Gegenstand] of em-
pirical intuition" [A20/B34].
Kant's language at a number of places in the Analytic of the Beauti-
ful certainly could tempt one to think that the judgment of taste refers
to nothing at all outside the judging subject. The "Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment" opens with the claim that "the judgment of taste is aesthe-
tic", which Kant defines as referring to any judgment "whose determin-
ing basis cannot be other than subjective" [V: 203]. He contrasts the
judgment of taste with objective judgments formed by the understand-
ing:
If we wish to decide whether something is beautiful or not, we do not use under-
standing to refer the presentation [Vorstellung] to the object [Objekt] so as to
give rise to cognition; rather, we use imagination (perhaps in connection with
understanding) to refer the presentation to the subject and his feeling of pleasure
and displeasure. Hence a judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment and so is
not a logical judgment but rather an aesthetic one [...]. [V: 203]
Later in the same section, Kant says that in the judgment of taste the
presentation is referred only to the subject's "feeling of life, under the
name feeling of pleasure or displeasure", and thus "does not contribute
anything to cognition" [V: 204].l9
The "feeling" that forms the "determining basis" of the judgment of
taste is the so-called "harmony of the faculties", and in explaining this
too Kant gives the strong impression that judgments of taste are about
.the judging subject. He defines the feeling of pleasure or displeasure as
"that subjective [feature] of a presentation which cannot at all become
19
One prominent example of an interpreter of Kant who takes judgments of taste
to be about the judging subject rather than about objects is Guyer, who argues
that the principle of taste "makes no claim about either natural or artificial
objects of taste, but concerns only ourselves as the makers of such judgments".
Guyer cites this as a reason for viewing the discussion of systematicity in the
Introduction to the Critique of Judgment as "Irrelevant" to the theory of taste
advanced in the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment". Guyer, Op. Cit.,p. 50.

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an element of cognition", and it is for this reason that the purposiveness

affirmed of a thing in the judgment "is [...] not a characteristic of
the object itself [des Objekts selbst] (for no such characteristic can be
perceived), even though it can be inferred from a cognition of things"
[V: 189]. Kant's talk of "referring" the judgment of taste to the feeling
of pleasure and displeasure suggests that on his view while my judg-
ment that a flower is beautiful appears to be about the flower, in fact
it is about my state of mind, asserting that I have experienced disinter-
ested pleasure in viewing the flower. But I think that this is a mistake,
for several reasons.
The first serious problem with this reading is that it requires attribut-
ing to Kant the extremely implausible view that it is not things but
rather people's states of minds that are beautiful. Indeed, if this were
really Kant's view, his argument in the "Critique of Aesthetic Judg-
ment" would constitute not so much an analysis of beauty as a debunk-
ing of it. Furthermore, Kant certainly never explicitly states this impor-
tant and radical view, and indeed continues to refer to things as beauti-
ful, always however using the word 'Gegenstand' rather than Objekt'.
In § VII in the Introduction, for example, where he introduces the no-
tion of the "aesthetic presentation of the purposiveness of nature",
Kant says repeatedly that in a judgment concerning such purposiveness
it is the object that is called purposive or beautiful. [V: 189 and 190]
Similarly, at the end of the first "moment" of the Analytic of the Beau-
tiful, Kant summarizes the results obtained to that point with the state-
ment that
[tjaste is the ability to judge an object, or a way of presenting it, by means of a
liking or disliking devoid of all interest. The object of such a liking is called beauti-
ful. [V: 211; emphasis in last sentence added]
This is but one of many similar passages. Statements such as this raise
the question of why, if Kant was arguing that strictly speaking objects
are not beautiful, he nonetheless continued to speak of objects as beau-
tiful.
A second problem with attributing to Kant the view that beauty is
properly predicated only of the states of mind of judging subjects con-
cerns the distinction between beauty and sublimity. In introducing the
Analytic of the Sublime Kant says very clearly that the "intrinsic and
most important difference" between the sublime and the beautiful is
that
we express ourselves entirely incorrectly when we call this or that object of nature
[Gegenstand der Natur] sublime, even though we may quite correctly call a great
many natural objects beautiful; for how can we call something by a term of ap-

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proval if we apprehend it as in itself as counterpurposive? Instead, all we are

entitled to say is that the object is suitable for exhibiting a sublimity that can be
found in the mind. [V: 245]
Here Kant seems clearly to be offering with regard to the sublime just
the position the reading we are considering attributes to him, but deny-
ing that a similar analysis can be made for beauty. Indeed, in the para-
graph immediately after the one just quoted, Kant explains that
whereas the beautiful in nature "reveals to us a technic of nature that
allows us to present nature as a system in terms of laws", in the sublime
"there is [...] an utter lack of anything leading to particular objective
principles and to forms of nature conforming to them". In contrast to
beauty, therefore, sublimity "indicates nothing purposive whatever in
nature itself but only in what use we can make of our intuitions of
nature so that we can feel a purposiveness within ourselves entirely
independent of nature" [V: 246]. Note that the "technic" Kant says is
revealed by beauty is a technic of nature. I think it is clear that 'nature'
here is again being used in its "material" sense as the "sum of all ap-
pearances", not in the formal sense, which would involve reference to
determinate objects of experience.
The third major problem with this reading is that it relies on Kant's
claim that pleasure cannot be an object of cognition, a claim that I
believe does not stand up to close scrutiny. Even if a judgment of taste
were only about the pleasure felt in judging an object, then our knowl-
edge of the connection between the object and the pleasure would con-
stitute possible cognition. That is, it would be perfectly possible to form
the empirical judgment that, for example, roses of a certain sort have
always occasioned disinterested pleasure in me. Beauty would be not a
primary but rather a secondary quality of objects — a propensity on
the part of objects to cause us to have certain sensations. Beauty would
thus be a real property of objects, but not one ascribable to objects
independently of our perception of them.20 A similar move can be
made with regard to Kant's claim that beauty is not a determinate
concept: In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant defines a concept as a
cognition which relates to an object "by means of a characteristic
[Merkmal] that may be common to several things" [A320/B377]. Since
some objects might very well be regularly associated with disinterested
20
I take this suggestion from Berel Lang, "Kant and the Subjective Objects of
Taste", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 25 (1967), p. 249. Lang's thesis is
that Kant is inescapably committed to opposing positions on the objectivity of
taste.

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pleasure, this association could serve as a characteristic common to all

beautiful things. Thus beauty would qualify as an empirical concept,
which of course contradicts Kant's emphatically stated view.
Fortunately, it is not necessary to read Kant's frequent claim that in
the judgment of taste we "refer [beziehen] the presentation"21 to our
feeling of pleasure or displeasure to mean that the judgment of taste is
in any sense about that feeling. On the contrary, judgments of taste are
judgments about appearances. In his explanation of the claim that the
judgment of taste is aesthetic, in his discussion of the role of the feeling
of pleasure or displeasure in grounding such judgments, and in drawing
the contrast between determinate and indeterminate concepts, Kant's
concern is primarily epistemological, having to do specifically with the
sort of evidence that can be given for judgments of taste. Kant's crucial
claim, for example, that the feeling of pleasure or displeasure is the
"determining basis" [Bestimmungsgrund\ of the judgment of taste is
most naturally read, I think, to suggest that the feeling is the evidence
or ground for, not the subject of, the judgment. Similarly, what distin-
guishes an indeterminate from a determinate concept is that it "does
not allow us to cognize and prove anything concerning the object"; by
contrast, an "objective principle of taste", were such a thing possible,
"would allow us to guide, to test, and to prove [our] judgments"
[V: 340—1; emphasis added]. Both in the case of a judgment involving
a determinate concept and one involving the indeterminate concept
of subjective formal purposiveness, appearances are judged to have a
particular property (that is, it is claimed that the appearances fall under
the concept), but in the former case one asserts that the correctness of
the judgment can be demonstrated by appealing to a rule under which
the appearances fall, whereas in a judgment of taste, employing an
indeterminate concept, no such rule is available. This difference in
methods of proof is reflected in Kant's use of the two German words
for Object': when he is talking in the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment"
21
The German verb 'sich beziehen' is generally, and correctly, translated as 'to
refer'. But I do not think it is necessary to take this to mean linguistic reference.
He may mean this, but I believe that my reading, according to which to say that
we "refer" the judgment of taste to our feeling of pleasure or displeasure is to
say that this feeling serves as the evidence for the judgment, is also compatible
with the text. Kant was writing, after all, one hundred years before Frege. Note
also that in some of the key passages (§ 1, for example), Kant uses not 'sich
beziehen' but rather 'beziehen', saying, that is, not "the judgment of taste refers
[...]" but rather "We refer the judgment", which sits somewhat awkwardly with
taking the reference in question to be linguistic reference.

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288 Ted Kinnaman
about beautiful objects, Kant always uses the word 'Gegenstand',

which does not imply the determinacy associated with objects through
the argument of the Transcendental Analytic in the first Critique. When
on the other hand he is denying that aesthetic judgments can yield
cognition of objects, he uses Objekt', which does imply such determi-
nacy.
This distinction between what is asserted in a judgment and the
means of proving the assertion may imply a change in doctrine on
Kant's part. In the Schematism section of the first Critique, Kant ar-
gues that his theory of concepts avoids the problem Berkeley saw in
Locke's notion of abstract ideas. The problem with Locke's theory, and
Berkeley's as well, is that they take ideas to be images or pictures. Kant
on the other hand, says that "it is schemata, not images of objects,
which underlie our pure sensible concepts" [A140/B180]. The schema
of a concept is a rule for the application of the concept to appearances;
schemata must be provided for the pure categories of the understand-
ing, but the problem of abstract ideas does not plague empirical con-
cepts, Kant says, because here the concept just is its schema: Thus
[t]he concept 'dog' signifies [bedeutet] Ά rule according to which my imagination
can delineate the figure of a four-footed animal in a general manner, without
limitation to any single determinate figure such as experience, or any possible
image that I can represent in concrete, actually presents. [A141/B180]
Saying that the concept of a dog "signifies" the rule for its application
suggests that the content of the concept just is its schema.22 This can-
not, however, be the case for the indeterminate concept of nature's
subjective formal purposiveness, whose indeterminateness consists in
the fact that there are no criteria for its application, but clearly does
have content. The content of the concept is the suitability of appear-
ances for organization into a rational system; it has no schema because
disagreements about whether an object is beautiful cannot be settled
by appeal to any rule, but only by appeal to the feeling of the harmony
of the faculties.
This contrast needs some explaining/On Kant's analysis, the content
of a judgment of taste is radically different from that of apparently
similar empirical judgments. In making the empirical judgment "x is a
dog", I subsume χ under the concept 'dog', which is to say that I assert
of χ that it shares with other dogs the characteristic in virtue of which
22
Donald Crawford makes the same point in Kant's Aesthetic Theory (Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), pp. 138-9.

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they are all dogs - say, being able to breed with other dogs, or sharing
a certain amount of genetic material. The concept 'dog' is an empirical
concept, which is to say that it is an a posteriori rule for unifying the
manifold in an intuition, and by asserting that χ is a dog I am claiming
that this fact can be proven by showing that the intuition in question
can be shown to fall under the appropriate rule for 'dog'. Indeed, as
Kant explains in the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena,
this appeal to a rule is what distinguishes the empirical judgment "x is
a dog" from a mere subjective appearance report: We represent states
of affairs as objective by representing them as necessary, and this neces-
sity in turn is represented by the application of a concept to the mani-
fold of intuition [A103-5]. Then if someone were to disagree with my
judgment that χ is a dog, I am committed to giving empirical evidence
for my claim by showing that the object in question falls under the
relevant rule, that is, exhibits the relevant feature. The mere fact that
someone has judged the object differently does not, by itself, count
against the truth of the judgment, for their judgment could simply be
wrong.
The case is quite different with regard to judgments of taste and the
indeterminate concept of beauty. The feature that all beautiful objects
share is that they are associated with a universally valid pleasure, or,
in what Kant takes to be an equivalent formulation, that one takes
pleasure "in the mere judging" of the object. When I judge that the rose
is beautiful, I am not only reporting that I have experienced pleasure
in judging the object, but also claiming that my judgment is entirely
disinterested, that is, that it is not dependent on the object's actually
existing and is thus detached from any merely contingent desire of
mine. The disinterestedness of the judgment of taste licenses the de-
mand that others agree with this judgment, and hence the quasi-objec-
tivity of taste as well:
[I]f someone likes something and is conscious that he himself does so without any
interest, then he cannot help judging that it must contain a basis for being liked
that holds for everyone. He must believe that he is justified in requiring a similar
liking from everyone because he cannot discover, underlying this liking, any pri-
vate conditions, on which only he might be dependent, so that he must regard it
as based on what he can presuppose in everyone else as well. He cannot discover
such private conditions because his liking is not based on any inclination he has
(nor on any other considered interest whatever): rather, the judging person feels
completely free as regards the liking he accords the object. Hence he will talk
about the beautiful as if beauty were a characteristic of the object... [V: 2111

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290 Ted Kinnaman
Like an empirical jugment, a judgment of taste is a claim about a state

of affairs in the world, and as such it demands agreement from others.
But the only evidence that can be given for this judgment is one's own
subjective feeling of (disinterested) pleasure felt in the judging of the
object; someone else can be brought to agree with the judgment neither
through appeal to empirical evidence (as in the case of an empirical
judgment) nor through a transcendental deduction involving condi-
tions of the possibility of experience, as in the case of a pure concept
or category.
It is this crucial difference between empirical and aesthetic judgments
that Kant means to emphasize when he says that in a judgment of taste
we cognize nothing at all in the object, or that beauty is not a predicate
of objects. According to the way in which Kant uses the term 'cogni-
tion' [Erkenntnis], cognition requires appeal to a rule, and the judgment
of taste clearly cannot constitute cognition in this sense. This does not
however rule out the possibility that the attribution to objects of sub-
jective formal purposiveness expressed in a judgment of taste consti-
tutes cognition in a sense looser than the one in which Kant uses the
term — that the judgment of taste is about objects, and shares with
other propositions about objects the feature of claiming to be true for
everyone, although this claim cannot be established through appeal to
a rule.
A similar analysis is possible for Kant's claim that the judgment of
taste employs a concept of "purposiveness without purpose": Although
this paradoxical formulation seems to suggest that this "subjective for-
mal purposiveness" is not really purposiveness at all, in fact the addi-
tion of the modifier "without purpose" is only meant to indicate a
peculiarity in the way we justify the attribution of this purposiveness
to objects. To say that something is purposive in the most general sense
is to say that it is the product of an intelligent will (in the case of
purposiveness in nature, of course, the will in question is that of God).
But it is possible to talk of purposiveness without committing oneself
to there actually being such a will: we do this, Kant says, when we
assert that we "can grasp the explanation of its [the purposive object's]
possibility only by deriving it from a will" [V: 220]. Here it might be
objected that as I am interpreting Kant's argument, the purposiveness
involved in a judgment of taste — suitability of the given object for
inclusion in a philosophical system of nature — constitutes objective
purposiveness, which Kant clearly distinguishes from subjective formal
purposiveness or "purposiveness without purpose". Suitability for in-
clusion in a system seems like a fairly determinate purpose or goal. But

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a close examination of the text reveals that in fact the distinction be-
tween objective and subjective purposiveness rests upon the distinction
between determinate and indeterminate concepts, which, as I have
shown, is itself primarily an epistemological distinction. Here is how
Kant explains objective purposiveness in the Introduction:
When an object is given in experience, there are two ways in which we can present
purposiveness in it. We can present it on a merely subjective basis: as the harmony
of the form of the object (the form that is in the apprehension (apprehensio) of the
object prior to any concept), with the cognitive powers - i. e., the harmony re-
quired in general to unite an intuition with concepts so as to produce cognition.
But we can also present it on an objective basis as the harmony of the form of
the object with the possibility of the thing itself according to a prior concept of
the thing that contains the basis of that form. We have seen that the presentation
of the first kind of purposiveness rests on the pleasure we take directly in the
form of the object when we reflect on it. Since the presentation of the second
kind of purposiveness does not refer the object's form, in its apprehension, to the
subject's cognitive powers, but instead to a determinate cognition of the object
under a given concept, the presentation of this purposiveness has nothing to do
with a feeling of pleasure in things but rather with the understanding in our
judging of them. [V: 192]
Whereas subjective purposiveness rests on reflection on the harmony
between the mere form of an object, objective purposiveness involves
a "determinate cognition under a given concept". The same contrast is
invoked in § 11 of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment". The purpos-
iveness asserted of the beautiful object cannot, Kant says, be objective
purposiveness, because "it is an aesthetic and not a cognitive judgment,
and hence does not involve a concept of the character and internal or
external possibility of the object through this or that cause; rather, it
involves merely the relation of the presentational powers to each other,
so far as they are determined by a presentation" [V: 221]. But, as we
have seen, the reason that beauty cannot involve a concept is not that
it is impossible to discover some feature that all beautiful objects share,
but rather that a judgment of taste cannot be proven or supported by
appeal to any sort of rule, but only by referring to one's experience of
the harmony of the faculties. It shares this epistemic limitation with the
principle of the purposiveness of nature, which, though it is a necessary
presupposition for judgment, cannot be established through the sort of
transcendental deduction given for the categories of the understanding.
Taking an object's subjective formal purposiveness to be equivalent to
its suitability for inclusion in a philosophical system therefore does not
turn subjective purposiveness into objective. The judgment of taste thus

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292 Ted Kinnaman
does attribute purposiveness to the beautiful object, but it does so only

because of a limitation in our ability to cognize the object.
This brings us a good deal closer to understanding Kant's claim that
the judgment of taste is subjective. Ordinarily, this claim would have
to be taken in one of two ways: Either Kant is saying that the judgment
of taste is about the subject, or he is saying that its validity is limited
to the subject. We have already seen, however, that judgments of taste
are subjective in neither of these senses. There is no good reason to
think that judgments of taste are not about objects because the pas-
sages usually taken to support this reading do not in fact do so, and in
any case this reading attributes to Kant views on linguistic reference
that he does not articulate and that were not available to him. Nor can
judgments of taste be subjective in the sense of being valid only for the
judging subject, because it is precisely due to the fact that their validity
is not so limited that judgments of taste, in contrast to judgments of
sense, require a transcendental deduction. Instead, judgments of taste
are subjective in a third, characteristically Kantian way: Although they
are judgments about objects, the evidence for such judgments is sub-
jective, namely a feeling in the person making the judgment. But this
feeling is a feeling associated not with sensation but rather with the
subjective conditions of cognition , and may therefore be demanded of
every judging agent who meets these conditions. Thus in the crucially
important Section 9, Kant says although the aesthetic judging of the
object precedes the pleasure we take in it, "the universal subjective
validity of this liking, the liking we connect with the representation of
the object we call beautiful, is based solely on the mentioned universal-
ity of the subjective conditions for judging objects" [V: 218]. For Kant
therefore the judgment of taste is subjective in the sense that it is justi-
fied by appeal to the subjective, but nonetheless universally valid, condi-
tions for cognition of objects.
V.
Let us see then what progress we have made toward solving Kant's
problem of ugliness. The problem arose from the fact that on Kant's
view to say that an object is beautiful is to say that it is in some sense
suitable for cognition, but since according to the Critique of Pure
Reason every object is cognizable, Kant seems committed to the view
that every object is beautiful — unless he is to retract some of the most
crucial epistemological doctrines. I have argued that this problem can

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be solved by taking the cognition for which the beautiful object is

suited to be not the general suitability of the object for subsumption
under a concept, but rather the possibility of its inclusion in a philo-
sophical system. It is this possibility that is manifested in the "sub-
jective formal purposiveness" Kant identifies with beauty, and which
underlies the symbolic relation between beauty and morality. The pre-
vious section disposed, I think, of the most important objection to this
reading; I will conclude by explaining how this proposal solves the
problem at hand. There are two questions that need to be answered
here, which I will deal with in the order given: First, is the principle of
the purposiveness of nature cognition in the sense that Kant's theory
of taste requires? Second, if the PPN qualifies as cognition, does read-
ing Kant's theory in this way help him to avoid the consequence that
all objects are beautiful?
That for which Kant says the beautiful object is judged to be suitable
is not cognition but rather cognition "in general" - Erkenntnis über-
haupt. Kant unfortunately does not say precisely what cognition in
general consists in, but this key term can be given a sense by examining
the relevant passages in § 9, the section Kant calls "the key to the cri-
tique of taste". He begins by reaching the by now familiar conclusion
that in the judgment of taste, "it must be the universal communicability
of the mental state, in the given presentation, which underlies the judg-
ment of taste as its subjective condition, and the pleasure in the object
must be its consequence" [V: 217]. Because cognition is the only "way
of presenting" that possesses universal validity, but the judgment of
taste is not a cognitive judgment, Kant faces the difficulty of explaining
just what the mental state is that grounds the judgment of taste:
But the way of presenting which occurs in a judgment of taste is to have subjective
universal communicability without presupposing a determinate concept; hence
this subjective universal communicability can be nothing but that of the mental
state in which we are when imagination and understanding are in free play (inso-
far as they harmonize with each other as required for cognition in general). For
we are conscious that this subjective relation must hold just as much for everyone,
and hence be just as universally communicable, as any determinate cognition,
since cognition always rests on that relation as its universal condition. [V: 217-8]
Clearly, the aspect of the judgment of taste that grounds this connec-
tion to cognition in general is its intersubjective validity - the fact that
"this subjective relation must hold just as much for everyone [...] as
determinate cognition". The intersubjective validity of the judgment of
taste is in turn closely linked to its necessity, for it is precisely because
of the fact that we demand that others agree with our judgments of

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taste that the liking expressed in these judgments is said to be a neces-

sary one. [V: 240] And this raises the possibility that the PPN is a tran-
scendental principle, for as Kant insists in all his major works, "[a]ny
necessity is always based on a transcendental condition" [A106].
All of this supports the view that the "cognition in general" for
which the beautiful object is judged to be beautiful is cognition in the
sense of inclusion in a philosophical system. Kant's account in § 9 of
Erkenntnis überhaupt closely matches the account of the principle of
the purposiveness of nature in the relevant sections of the Introduction.
There Kant notes that the PPN makes a claim not just about how we
do judge, but how we ought to judge. This means that the hierarchy of
laws composing the philosophical system must be necessary, and that
the PPN is a transcendental principle requiring a transcendental deduc-
tion. But in contrast to the pure categories of the understanding, the
objective validity of the principle of the purposiveness of nature cannot
be demonstrated by a deduction from the conditions of the possibility
of experience. I suggest that we take the "überhaupt" in "Erkenntnis
überhaupt" to refer to only the most general requirement of cognition
on Kant's account, namely that it be true for everyone, without how-
ever having the more determinate feature of being capable of proof by
appeal to a rule. Thus, in common with the purposiveness of nature
that is asserted in the judgment of taste, the principle of the purpos-
iveness of nature demands agreement from others for a claim about the
cognizability of nature, a claim which cannot however be definitively
established through any sort of proof. The difference between the pur-
posiveness of nature discussed in the Introduction and the subjective
formal purposiveness discussed in the "Critique of Aesthetic Judg-
ment" is that Kant does not tell us how, in the absence of methods of
definite proof, the former claim can be supported, but he does tell us
how the latter can be supported, namely through appeal to one's feeling
of the harmony of the faculties. But this is just what we would expect
if we take the Deduction of Judgments of Taste to be providing the
deduction that the Introduction tells us the PPN requires. Still, filling
this gap does not raise the purposiveness of nature to a transcendental
principle on a par with the categories, because the only evidence that
can be given for it is by reference to a subjective feeling.
Thus cognition as "subsumability in a philosophical system of na-
ture" qualifies as "cognition in general" as Kant uses the term in § 9 of
the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment". We are left only with our second
question, as to whether reading the Critique of Judgment in this way
helps Kant to avoid the problem of ugliness. The key issue in this

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regard is whether Kant is committed to the view that all objects in

nature necessarily exhibit subjective formal purposiveness. Clearly, if
all objects in nature are included in the final philosophical system, and
Kant holds the view that such a system can indeed necessarily be con-
structed (that is, that all objects are purposive in this sense), then he
seems perilously close to the claim that all objects necessarily are pur-
posive. But here again the connection between purposiveness and ideas
of pure reason is important. Because beauty is the property of appear-
ances that makes them suitable for inclusion in a philosophical system,
the conclusion to draw from Kant's analysis of taste is not that all
objects necessarily are beautiful, but rather that to find all things beau-
tiful is a goal for all rational beings. Just as the goal of creating such
a system among our cognitions is one that can be approached but not
attained, so too must the regulative goal of finding all things beautiful
remain unfulfilled. This emerges very clearly in the passages in the Cri-
tique of Judgment where Kant introduces the notion of purposiveness.
Thus in § 5 in the Introduction, Kant introduces the principle of the
purposiveness of nature by contrasting it with the pure categories of
the understanding. While the categories determine objects in ways that
the human understanding is capable of grasping fully, this does not
satisfy judgment's need to see the individual laws discovered by the
understanding put together in a coherent whole.
Hence judgment must assume, as an a priori principle for its own use, that what
to human insight is contingent in the particular (empirical) natural laws does
nevertheless contain a law-governed unity, unfathomable but still conceivable by
us [für uns zwar nicht zu ergründende aber doch denkbare], in the combination of
what is diverse in them to an experience that is intrinsically possible. Now when
we find in such a combination a law-governed unity cognized by us as conforming
to a necessary aim that we have (a need for our understanding), but at the same
time as in itself contingent, then we present this unity as a purposiveness of ob-
jects (of nature, in this case). [V: 183-84]
Here the sense in which the principles of the understanding are neces-
sary, whereas the principle of the purposiveness of nature is contingent,
is an epistemological one — the unity of particular laws of nature can
be conceived or thought, even though it cannot be "fathomed"23. This
23
Kant's use of the word 'ergründen' here, translated as 'to fathom', with its roots
'gründen' closely related to the notion of justification, reinforces the distinction
he is drawing between affirming a principle while not being able to demonstrate
its truth.
The author would like to thank the Mathy Junior Faculty Award Program of
the College of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at
George Mason University for their support.

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296 Ted Kinnaman
is clearly echoed in the argument of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judg-

ment", in the crucial claim that judgments of taste make a claim to
everyone's assent, but without committing the person making the claim
to backing up her judgment by appeal to a rule. Thus the reading
offered here helps Kant avoid the consequence that all objects are
beautiful by replacing the claim that all objects are beautiful, to which
Kant would be committed if he grounded the intersubjectivity of judg-
ments of taste in the mere subsumability of intuitions under concepts,
with the claim that it is a regulative goal of all rational beings as such
to find all objects beautiful.
This is not to say that there are no textual difficulties with this read-
ing; far from it. But if we see Kant as concerned in the "Critique of
Aesthetic Judgment" with giving some, very limited support for the
proposition that objects in nature can be systematized, not only can
we solve one of the most vexing problems with his aesthetic theory, but
we can also shed light on the murky relation between the body of the
work and the stated purpose of the Critique of Judgment as a whole.

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Symbolism and Cognition in General in Kant's

Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie 82' Bd., S. 266-296

being referred to here is the subsumption of an object under a concept.

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reading of the argument of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" not

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is perceived as unified, but without subsuming it under a concept. Specifically, the

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The best way to solve this problem, I suggest, is to interpret Kant as

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(Kant claims) this is only conceivable if we imagine it as the will of a

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rational agents as such; the suitability of an object for inclusion in such

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that this transcendental deduction cannot take the form of an argument

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scientific laws in an ordered hierarchy. The principle of the purposiveness of nature

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ment of all transcendental ideas, whether theoretical or practical

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the "Critique of Teleological Judgment", already in the Critique of Pure

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an element of cognition", and it is for this reason that the purposiveness

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proval if we apprehend it as in itself as counterpurposive? Instead, all we are

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pleasure, this association could serve as a characteristic common to all

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about beautiful objects, Kant always uses the word 'Gegenstand',

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Like an empirical jugment, a judgment of taste is a claim about a state

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does attribute purposiveness to the beautiful object, but it does so only

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be solved by taking the cognition for which the beautiful object is

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taste that the liking expressed in these judgments is said to be a neces-

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regard is whether Kant is committed to the view that all objects in

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is clearly echoed in the argument of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judg-

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