Aesthetics,
Ethics, and the Role of Teleology in the Third Critique
(*) To Valerio Rohden, in memoriam. All citations should comply with the published version in the special issue of Aurora v. 24, n. 34 (jan.-jun. 2012): p. 189-204.
Obituary, Brazilian Kant Society
Christian Hamm, Kant-Studien
Abstract:
Kant's
dualism in anthropology and morality is said to be bridged only by means of a
teleology which seems to betray the historical constitution of its
subjectivity. And yet the Kantian articulation of problems of theoretical and
practical reason can be explored only insofar as they help us understand the
correlated problems of the unity of reason, the relation of aesthetics and
ethics in the light of the three Critiques,
and the teleological conception of history.
Key Words: aesthetics, critique of
judgment, ethics, reason, teleology.
As they have been well recognized in Brazil, Valerio
Rohden's monumental translations of Kant's critical trilogy into Portuguese
contributed to the consolidation of a genuine philosophical culture and the
ongoing Kant-Forschung in Latin
America. Of particular interest, one cannot arguably exaggerate the role of
reason in the transition from theoretical to practical philosophy, and how
aesthetics relate to ethics. Whether one may resort to a theoretical conception
of teleology or to a rather moral view of purpose or finality in order to
account for the beautiful in nature or divine creation comes down to confusing
these different uses of our rational capacities and risks failing to do justice
to the original intent of Kant's critical philosophy. In effect, the problem of
articulating the higher faculties[1] of
cognition (Verstand, Vernunft, Urteilskraft) and the three Critiques as a function of Kant's transcendental
system as a whole has been the object of different interpretations, from the
various formulations of German idealism to our day. Part of the problematic had
been delineated by Kant himself, in particular, in the Introduction to the
second edition of the third Critique
(1793). Still in the Preface to the first edition of 1790, Kant defines the
twofold concern of investigating whether the faculty of judgment[2] also has
a priori principles of its own, whether these are constitutive or merely regulative,
and whether this faculty gives the rule a priori to the feeling of pleasure and
displeasure, the mediating link between the faculty of cognition (Erkenntnisvermögen) in general and the
faculty of desire (Begehrungsvermögen).(V-VI)
According to Kant, the unity of the theoretical and practical uses of pure
reason must be assured by "the unity of the suprasensible" (Einheit des Übersinnlichen), although
the cognition of the latter cannot be possible either from a theoretical or
from a practical standpoint. What had been delimited, in a negative sense, in
the theoretical use of pure reason is manifest by the practical use of reason,
now considered in light of the concept of purposiveness (Endzweckmäßigkeit) in nature:
The
understanding, inasmuch as it can give laws to nature a priori, proves that we
cognize nature only as appearance [als
Erscheinung], and hence at the same time points to a super-sensible
substrate [ein übersinnliches Substrat]
of nature; but it leaves this substrate wholly undetermined [unbestimmt]. Judgment [Beurteilung], through its a priori
principle of judging nature in terms of possible particular laws of nature,
provides nature's suprasensible substrate (within as well outside us) with determinability
[Bestimmbarkeit] by the intellectual
faculty. But reason, through its a priori practical law, gives this same
substrate determination [Bestimmung].
Thus the faculty of judgment [Urteilskraft]
makes possible the transition [Übergang]
from the domain of the concept of nature to that the concept of freedom.(KU
LVI)
According
to Gérard Lebrun and Jean-François Lyotard, the KU is to a large extent
concerned with the transition (Übergang)
from the mode of thinking about nature to the mode of thinking about freedom.(B
XX)[3] Antonio
Marques's thorough study on Organism and
System in Kant[4],
reexamines the problematic of systematicity in Kant's philosophy, in terms of
teleological reflective judgments. These studies are here invoked, together
with texts by Gilles Deleuze, Donald Crawford, and Valerio Rohden,[5]
with a view to providing the
critical-textual background to the work of Kant as a whole, in light of which a
particular problem will be developed, namely, the relation between aestethics
and ethics in the third Critique. In
particular, I think worth reexamining Donald Crawford's work on Kant's
aestethics, so as to raise anew the problem of what would be an
"aestheticist" solution to the problem of the unity of the three Critiques, and how it relates to
aestheticism or the tendency to reduce ethical issues to aesthetic claims. Just
as the Marburg Neo-Kantians tended to reduce Kant's philosophy to an Erkenntnistheorie, his practical
philosophy can be easily turned into a moralism or into an aestheticism,
depending on how the conceptions of moral teleology and aesthetic judgments are
articulated in relation to reality. In effect, we find in both Schopenhauer and
Schiller an aestheticist critique of German idealism --that exerted a decisive
influence on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Adorno-- and that would be revived by
the post-modern critique of modernity and the Enlightenment (we may think of
Foucault, Lyotard, and Derrida). The question of aestheticism in both Nietzsche
and Foucault have been dealt with elsewhere, but remains a major issue for a better
understanding of non-cognitivist models in meta-ethics, as they tend to equate
the normative thrust of ethical and aesthetic claims.[6]
In his
work on Kant's aesthetic theory, Crawford starts from the fundamental thesis
that cognition is essentially judicative, so as to render possible the
articulation of judgments as theoretical, practical, and aesthetic
propositional formulations. Both in the first and in the second Critiques, understanding and reason
presuppose the agreement, by judgment, of the faculties between themselves.
Thus as the theoretical judgment expresses the agreement of the faculties in
the determination of the object according to understanding, likewise the
practical judgment presupposes the agreement of understanding with the reason that
presides it, in the determination of actions that are conformed to the moral
law. A crucial difference of the third Critique
in relation to the other two consists precisely in the focus given to the
faculty of reflective judgment in the KU, expressing thus the free and
indeterminate agreement between the faculties. The question of the deduction of
judgments is formulated in a priori terms in the KU by the universal and
necessary validity of aesthetic reflective judgments. Thus, as in the Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter, KrV)
it was shown how synthetic judgments are possible a priori and the Critique of Practical Reason (hereafter,
KpV) enunciated the principle of the autonomy of the will as a synthetic a
priori proposition (§ 7), the third Critique is also concerned with the
question of knowing "whether and how aesthetic a priori judgments are
possible"(KU § 9), that is, with the a priori grounding of judgments of
taste as pure, formal aesthetic judgments:
It
is true that in the Critique of Practical
Reason we did actually derive a priori from universal moral concepts the
feeling of respect (a special and peculiar modification of the feeling of
pleasure and displeasure which does seem to differ somehow from the both the
pleasure and displeasure we get from empirical objects). (...) Now the
situation is similar with the pleasure in an aesthetic judgment, except that
here the pleasure is merely contemplative, and does not bring about an interest
in the object, whereas in a moral judgment it is practical.(KU § 12/ET 67f.)[7]
It is
thus a problem of relating the question "how are possible the judgments of
the beautiful?" (first book of the Analytic of Aesthetic Urteilskraft) to the question of the subjective
universality to be established a priori by the transcendental deduction. It
must then be assumed that the judgments of taste be analyzed in terms of the
four moments of the table of categories (quality, quantity, relation, and
modality),--by analogy with the table of the categories in the Analytic of the
Pure Concepts of Understanding (KrV § 10) and the table of categories of
freedom in the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason (KpV A 101). In the first
moment, we see that judgments of taste--contrary to the judgments of
cognition-- do not subsume representation to a concept but establish the
relation between representation and a disinterested liking (Wohlgefallen), i.e., regardless of
desire and interest (§§ 1-5). In the second place, although expressed by a
particular formulation ("This rose
is beautiful") the judgment of taste is object of a universal liking ,
without demanding the universal agreement at the level of sensible pleasure. It
would not be the case, paradoxically, of arguing in order to constrain someone
by reason to agree with the judgment of taste.(§§ 6-9,cf.§ 33) "The
beautiful," as is inferred from the second moment, "is what, without
a concept, is liked universally."(KU 32) In the third moment, it is
concluded that, despite its purposiveness according to the form, the object of
the judgment of taste does not present any finality or purpose--Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck (§ 10-17; cf.
§ 65 and Introduction). Beauty is deduced as being "the form of the
object's form of purposiveness insofar as it is perceived in the object without
the presentation of a purpose."(KU 61) Finally, in the fourth moment, the
beautiful must be a necessary reference to the aesthetic liking (§ 18); not
only when we are led to say that such and such object is beautiful, but when we
assert that every other person must have the same liking in such an object.
Thus we arrive at the question of the legitimation of the necessity of a
subjective universality. What is at work here is a transition from the
constative expression "it is beautiful," asserted by all, to the
transcendental necessity of being thus judged by every rational being.
"Beautiful is what without a concept is cognized as the object of a
necessary liking" (KU § 22) It is therefore a question of recognizing the
transcendental deduction --as it was formulated in relation to nature and
freedom by pure reason, both theoretical and practical. (LVIII) As Kant put it in succinct and explicit
terms, "this problem of the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment is part of
the general problem of transcendental philosophy: how are synthetic judgments
possible a priori?"(KU § 36/ ET 153) Without falling into a structuralist
systematization of the Kantian architectonic, Crawford tries to rescue the
properly transcendental sense of the deduction, through an articulation between
aesthetics and ethics. His thesis differs from other interpretations not only
as for the role of the KU in relation to the KrV and to the KpV, but also
insofar as the harmony of the faculties is concerned, whether it is based on a
rational, epistemological requirement (as argues Paul Guyer)[8] or on
the universal communicability of representations (sensible, rational or
aesthetic), i.e., not so much in the intersubjectivity that prevails over the
individual interests, but as it refers us to the transcendental deduction
--such turns out to be the main thesis defended by Crawford. Accordingly, the
transcendental deduction in the KU can be understood through the five distinct
stages that culminate with the articulation between aesthetics and morality, as
the essential moment in the argumentation of the Kantian thesis that judgments
of taste do not relate a representation to a concept (KU § 8) but, as
sub-species of aesthetic judgments, refer a particular intuition to the feeling
of pleasure in the subject that judges at the same time as it presents
universal validity (disinterest). Hence the correlation to be established
between the solution of the antinomy and the fifth stage. According to
Crawford,
The
complete deduction of the judgments of taste must thus show the basis for
having interest in the beautiful and in its judging. This basis must be found
precisely in the link between beauty and morality. Since beauty is the symbol
of the basis of morality, there is a basis for demanding the agreement with the
judgments of taste, for the demand of the moral sensibility on the part of all
human beings is justifiable. (AT 28)
Crawford
divides the central argument of the KU in 5 stages, each one constituting a
fundamental aspect of the transcendental deduction so that it will be valid for
every rational being, requiring its agreement, and not only as an expression of
a personal liking of the object. As the judgment of taste is regarded as an
aesthetic judgment and not only as an expression of sensible pleasure
("this song is agreeable to my ears" in opposition to "this song
is beautiful"), it is a matter of clarifying how the foundation of
pleasure in the beautiful takes place. According to Crawford, we could thus
summarily review the five stages.
At
Stage I, the transcendental deduction appears as the positive exposition of
what had been negatively exposed in the Analytic of the Beautiful (pleasure in
the beautiful cannot be based on interest, on the good, or on whatever is
merely agreeable to the senses, emotions or perfections). The deduction
envisages therefore explain how, by taking pleasure in the beautiful, it
attains the legitimation of the Kantian distinction between judgments of taste
and other judgments. The conclusion of the first stage is that pleasure in the
beautiful must be based on a universally communicable state of mind (die allgemeine Mitteilungsfähigkeit des
Gemütszustandes). It would not be the case of giving content to such state
of mind before arguing that there is such a state. This must be presupposed,
necessarily, so that judgments of taste be made possible. What is at stake is
not the discussion whether it is legitimate or even reasonable.(§ 9)
At
Stage II, we conclude that such a universally communicable state of mind must
be based upon the cognitive faculties --imagination (Einbildungskraft) and understanding (Verstand)-- which are related in a "free play" that makes
it knowable --since, for Kant, only cognition and representations can be said
to be "universally communicable."(AT 67) If the judgments of taste
must be legitimate, pleasure as the consciousness of the harmony of cognitive
faculties must be presented as "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."(KU § 9/ ET 61) In other words, the cognitive faculties must
be in harmony, in a free play, however without being determined by concepts so
that the merely subjective (aesthetic) judging of the object or of the
representation precedes the pleasure in the object and founds it in the harmony
of the faculties of cognition.
At
Stage III, the focus is the question of the conformity to formal purposiveness.
It is then asserted that the harmony of cognitive faculties must be based on
the mere conformity to the formal purposiveness of the object, to be
differentiated from the fact that such an object has a definite purpose (in the
case of conceptual judgment). In the experience of the beautiful, we reflect on
the purposiveness (design, regularity that can be regulated) of the internal
characteristics and of the relations of the object as it is experienced. It is
at this stage that the subjective experience of the one who judges (beurteilen) is linked to the formal
qualities of the appreciated object. The aesthetic judgment, contrary to
logical judgments, "refers the representing [Vorstellen], by which an object is given, solely to the subject; it
brings to our notice no characteristic of the object, but only the purposive
form in the [way] the faculties of representation are determined in their
engagement with the object."(KU § 15/ET 75) That is indeed the very reason
why it is called an "aesthetic" judgment, as the basis determining it
is "not a concept but a feeling of that accordance in the play on the
mental faculties [Gemütsvermögen]
insofar as it can be only sensed."
Stage
IV is dedicated to common sense (Gemeinsinn).
The procedure of the faculty of reflective judgment in the reflection on the
beautiful --the harmonious interrelation of the cognitive faculties in a
general reflection on the formal purposivenes of the experienced object-- is
the procedure that must be exercised in the commonest experience, i.e.,
whatever be the experience. Pleasure in the beautiful is therefore based on the
subjective element that we can presuppose in all human beings, since they are
necessary for all possible cognition. Such an element or common principle is
the sensus communis, not in the
vulgar sense of a concept-ruled set of beliefs, but as "ideal norm"
that cannot be grounded in experience, but requires the universal assent (allgemeine Beistimmung) --"it does
not say that everyone will agree with my judgment, but that he ought
to."(KU § 22) Kant is thus very careful to distinguish sensus communis from the "common
human understanding," which is not relevant to the KU:
...we must take sensus communis to mean
the idea of a sense shared [by all of us], i.e., a power to judge that
in reflecting takes account (a priori), in our thought, of everyone's way of
presenting [something], in order as it were to compare our own judgment
with human reason in general and thus escape the illusion that arises from the
ease of mistaking subjective and private conditions for objective ones, an
illusion that would have a prejudicial influence on the judgment.(KU § 40)
Crawford
concludes that the subjective principle subjacent to the judgments of taste is
analogous to the subjective principle subjacent to all the other judgments, and
this must be seen as a necessary assumption for all possible experience.
Finally, at Stage V, Crawford proposes the fundamental articulation between
aesthetics and morality as a decisive moment in the transcendental deduction,
for only here the mere universal communicability of the feeling of pleasure can
be imputed to any other person as a duty. The sensus communis as a principle that underlies the faculty of
judgment is a condition for every experience but does not constitute an
argument that completes the deduction of the judgments of taste for it neither
explains nor legitimizes the fact that we require pleasure in the beautiful
from other persons as necessary. The pleasure that we feel in the judgment of
taste is required from everyone, on the contrary, as a duty (Pflicht) (KU § 40), as we require
universal agreement (KU § 8) and blame others if they deny the taste.(§ 7) It
is necessary that the deduction be thus "completed" with the question
of the interest, which in its turn, establishes the link between beauty and
morality. Since the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good ("das
Schöne ist das Symbol des Sittlichguten," KU § 59) it is thus required the
agreement in the judgments of taste, for the demand of moral sensibility in all
human beings is justifiable.(AT 143-5) According to Crawford, the stages I
through IV of the deduction constitute the deduction of universal
communicability, while the stage V constitutes the transitory moment for the
realm of morality.
If
Kant's quest for a post-critical, philosophical anthropology finds no response
in the system of transcendental idealism and its subsequent criticisms, it will
indeed depart from the ideal of personality (second formulation of the
categorical imperative, if we equate Menschheit and Persönlichkeit) towards the embodiment
of freedom (Freiheit) in the
historical experiences of national identity. Neither Hegel nor the Young
Hegelians --including Marx himself-- addressed the challenge posed by Kant's
anthropology, insofar as the self-creation of a human Gattungswesen out of the interstices of social, political existence
ultimately fails to refer to a level of subjectivity (be it the absolute Geist or the proletariat) without resort
to another subtle form of metaphysical teleology. Such was the inevitable
predicament of Hegelian-Marxian versions of a necessitarian historicism
inseparable from their teleological conceptions of history. On the
one hand, humans as self-conscious beings only come of age in the exercise of
their ethical, political intersubjectivity as members of the modern State. On
the other hand, as we find in Hegel's critique of Kant, even as individual
citizens interact to be constituted themselves as such and constitute the
State, human nature seems to fall short of a broader teleology that accounts
for its destiny, through the very negation of an alien nature and its
transformation. It is at this very limit-point, that the question of teleology
in Kant's critique seems to prepare the soil for both Hegel's spiritual rupture
and Nietzsche's self-overcoming of human nature. I must conclude this essay
with an alternative reading of the problem of the unity of the three Critiques, invoked by Paul Guyer as over
against Donald Crawford.
Starting from the traditional
interpretation of Kantian formalism in § 10, Crawford seems to believe that
there are certain phenomenal forms that are characteristic of designed objects
--hence the postulate of a formal purposiveness-- which would imply that such
forms were adequate objects of taste. It is precisely in this point that Guyer
criticizes Crawford when the latter affirms that "we can call an object purposive
on the basis of its formal organization (structure) even when we do not or cannot
actually place the cause of this form in a will."(AT 93) In this case, the
object's purposiveness is what can be perceived (its form or organization),
that which leads us to say that it resulted from a concept. According to Guyer,
there is simply nothing about the pure form of the objects involved in Kant's
examples (§§ 10, 15, 64) that requires the idea of purposiveness. It would be
impossible to deduce the idea of a will, for instance, that had created the
hexagonal form in the cells of a beehive or in a crystal. Starting from chapter
7 ("The Task of the Deduction"), Guyer guides us through a reflection
on the universal validity of pleasure. To say that an object would be
considered beautiful by all who observe it does not mean that everyone will actually
like such an object but only that all must agree with such a judgment and call
it beautiful, in harmonious accordance of understanding and imagination. The
Kantian argument is that the harmony of the faculties occurs in different
people under the same conditions, and that leads us to the deduction of the
pure aesthetic judgment. The intersubjective validity of the foundation of the
aesthetic judgment is not yet established in § 30, as he introduces the
deduction, but only in paragraphs 31 through 37, being formally presented in §
38. Here we find the main point of divergence between Guyer's and Crawford's
interpretations as the latter upholds that according to Kant, the
presupposition of taste is not limited to an epistemological imputing of
pleasure to others, but it also assigns a certain kind of duty or obligation to
feel pleasure in certain objects. Besides the demonstration of the harmony of
faculties, argues Crawford, it is necessary to prove that there is a moral
signification of taste. Guyer criticizes Crawford for confusing the two realms
(epistemological and moral), that is, the deduction is essentially
epistemological as morality can be regarded in an analogous manner albeit
independent of the first.
As he
opens the last chapter on "aesthetics and morality" with the question
"Completing the Deduction?," Guyer explicitly places his study of the
KU in an epistemological perspective (p. 351). The universal validation of the
aesthetic judgment is thus justified in epistemological terms. On the other
hand, in light of § 22 and other passages, we can infer that Kant proposes that
the justification be completed with an allusion to practical reason. This is a
plausible way to account for formulations in the Third Critique such as the assertion that "we require from everyone
as a duty, as it were, the feeling [contained] in a judgment of taste."(KU
§ 40/ET 162) Guyer concedes that it would be impossible to confine the allusion
to duty in merely epistemological terms or to the reflective judgment. Hence the
procedure adopted by Crawford, as he seeks the foundations in morality.
According to Guyer, Crawford would have seen there a transition from the
justification by universal intersubjectivity to the moral feeling as the
decisive moment required by the transcendental deduction of the judgments of
taste. I think that the great merit of Guyer's critique of Crawford lies
precisely in having detected the teleological interest that guides the
articulation between aesthetics and ethics proposed by the latter. After all,
Crawford starts from the problematic that opposes disinterest in the judgment
of taste related to pleasure occasioned by the object that is declared
beautiful to the interest that can be linked to pleasure in the beautiful.(§
41) As he concludes Stage IV with the postulate of the common sense, Crawford
resorts thus to Stage V so as to raise the question "Why should we
require, after all, the agreement of others when judging the beautiful?,"
"why do we say, with Kant, that everyone must find such an object
beautiful?"(AT 143) To simply assume the communicable universality does
not seem for him to be a sufficient argument to have completed the deduction.
It is necessary to relate the judgment of taste to interest, in an indirect
manner, just as interest in the good in itself, the morally good, is linked to
intellectual interest.(KU § 42) According to Kant, the sociability peculiar to
human beings is what moves one to cultivate and communicate to others his or
her taste. But the empirical interest in the beautiful would not be, in this
case, relevant to our discussion. We must examine therefore if there is an
actual transition from the pleasure of aesthetic experience to the moral
feeling. There must be a connection, however indirect it might be, between the
moral virtue and the contemplation of the beautiful and the sublime. Pleasure
in the beautiful, contrary to the pleasure in the good (including moral good)
and pleasure in sensation, is not the interested pleasure. Kant asserts that
"a judgment of taste, by which we declare something to be beautiful must
not have an interest as its determining
basis."(§ 41/ET 163) Already in the title of § 2, we find the
formulation of a central thesis, namely, "The liking that determines a
judgment of taste is devoid of all interest." As we saw above, Kant
establishes an analogy between the KpV and the KU (KU § 12), as for the
transcendental foundations of the critique of both faculties. In order to
corroborate his thesis, Crawford resorts to a teleological analogy: the
intellect would have an interest in any indication or natural vestige of a
correspondence (harmony, fairness) displayed between what was naturally
produced and our faculties, insofar as morality --as a human legislation of
universal laws-- presupposes the possibility of exerting causal influence over
the natural, phenomenal world.(AT 148) According to Kant,
[R]eason
must take an interest in any manifestation in nature of a harmony that
resembles the mentioned [kind of] harmony, and hence the mind [Gemüt] cannot meditate about the beauty
of nature without at the same time finding its interest aroused. But in
terms of its kinship this interest is moral, and whoever takes such an interest
in the beautiful in nature can do so only to the extent that he has beforehand
already solidly established an interest in the morally good. Hence if someone
is directly interested in the beauty of nature, we have cause to suppose that
he has at least a predisposition to a good moral attitude.(KU § 42 / ET 167)
For
Crawford, the analogy between our moral destination (final purpose of our
existence) and the "purposiveness without purpose" that grounds the
judgment of taste, that is, the analogy between the moral judgment and the
judgment of pure taste, would converge thus to establish "the foundation
of the unity of the supra-sensible," announced in the Introduction to the
Second Edition (KU II, B XX). According to Crawford, this foundation, which is
the basis for morality, is symbolized by the beautiful and by the sublime.(AT
157) Beauty is therefore the symbol of the basis for morality, argues Crawford,
insofar as the experience of the beautiful results from ourselves suprasensibly
legislating the principle that determines the world as we know it by
experience.
The
articulation between aesthetics and ethics in the Third Critique problematizes the transcendental grounding of the System
as a whole, as Crawford has shown, but can be approached only by analogy, even
as one starts from the notion of purposiveness. In effect, it is the concept of
purposiveness in nature that allows for the link between the sensible and the
intelligible, according to the articulation between the three Critiques, delineated by Kant himself.
More precisely, it is in the Kantian conception of an anthropology from a
pragmatic point of view that we find an entire articulation of the three
faculties within the "human nature," simultaneously conceived as
noumenal and phenomenal. Through a conception of man as ultimate purpose of
nature (lezter Zweck) and final
purpose (Endzweck) of creation under
moral laws, thus teleologically conceived, we may reformulate the Kantian
problem of understanding freedom as the suprasensible intervenes in the phenomenal
course of the natural world. We see also that we may draw an analogy between
the regulative use of the reason in the KrV and the teleological argument in
the KU: far from concluding in favor of the existence of a transcendent
causality, above the course of nature, it has simply reaffirmed the autonomy of
practical reason. Now, does this mean that morality is implied in a
teleological reflection, or that ethics is presupposed in a formulation of the
deduction of aesthetic judgments? All we conclude is that there is indeed an
agreement between the faculties and their a priori principles (Gesetzmäßigkeit, Zweckmäßigkeit, Endzweck).
As Lebrun remarks,
Agreement
[Zusammenstimmung] is one of the key words of the Critique [of the
Faculty] of Judgment. While the first Critique makes intelligible
the agreement between the form of nature and our understanding, the faculty of
judgment places us in the presence of contingent agreements, and yet, too
marvelous to be assigned to chance... It is this formal purposiveness that the
judgment of taste allows to analyze: when I say that one thing is beautiful, I
mean that its representation seems destined to place my imagination in unison
with my understanding; I appreciate the spontaneous agreement between the representation
of a natural thing and my faculties of knowledge, and the feeling of pleasure
that then I experience is nothing else than the recognition of such an
agreement. But the faculty of judgment, by itself, cannot go beyond this
recognition. That final forms have been actually laid with a view to their
exercise and that this is the end of nature, the faculty of judgment cannot
affirm.[9]
By way
of conclusion, as Lebrun shows in the same essay, we must recall that the
agreement between the aesthetic Urteilskraft
and the practical Vernunft reveals
the propaedeutic function of teleology for a moral theology and for a
philosophy of history. But this is not exactly a subtle return to metaphysical
finalism, for Kant keeps the distinction between the theoretical and practical
uses of reason in a systematic manner, throughout the three Critiques, as Rohden has convincingly
upheld. It was in the light of this particular point, that Nietzsche
--following Schopenhauer—would later develop a misreading of Kant so as to attack
the latter's teleology of human nature. This was never intended by Kant as a
metaphysical device, let alone to betray his systematic critique of
metaphysics. Therefore, resorting to aesthetic, reflective judgments so as to
unveil the
historical constitution of intersubjectivity and empirical subjectivity
ultimately misses the non-essentialist thrust of Kant's dualism and its teleological
implications. Even though art and history refer us back to human subjectivity
and to our free choice to intervene in the natural course of events we judge
and act upon, normative claims are not revised in the same manner that one
generation or culture can always review their aesthetic judgments, precisely
because of the different status of their ontological commitments.
ENDNOTES
