First Section. Analytic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment

First Book. Analytic of the Beautiful

First Moment of the Judgment of Taste, as to Quality

§ 1. The judgment of taste is aesthetic

To settle whether something is beautiful or not, we do not refer the representation to the object for cognition by means of the understanding; instead we refer it, by means of the imagination (perhaps conjoined with the understanding), to the subject and to its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Accordingly, a judgment of taste is not a judgment of cognition and so is not logical but aesthetic — where by the latter is meant one whose determining ground can be nothing but subjective. Any relation among representations, even a relation among sensations, admits of being objective (in which case it denotes the real of an empirical representation) — with one exception: the relation to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, by which nothing at all gets marked out in the object, and in which, rather, the subject feels its own self as it is affected by the representation.

Apprehending a regular and purposive building with one's cognitive faculty (be the mode of representation distinct or confused) is quite another matter than being aware of that same representation as attended by the sensation of satisfaction. In this latter case the representation is referred wholly to the subject — specifically to the subject's feeling of life, under the heading of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure — and this founds an entirely peculiar faculty of discrimination and judging that adds nothing to cognition, but only sets the given representation within the subject over against the entire faculty of representations, of which the mind grows aware in feeling its own condition. The representations given within a judgment may be empirical, and thus aesthetic; but the judgment reached by their means is logical so long as they are referred, within that judgment, merely to the object. The reverse also holds: should the given representations be rational outright, yet within a judgment be referred solely to the subject (to its feeling), they are, just so far, invariably aesthetic.

§ 2. The satisfaction which determines the judgment of taste is devoid of all interest

That satisfaction which we link to the representation of an object's existence is called interest. Such a satisfaction accordingly always relates as well to the faculty of desire, either as the ground determining it or at least as necessarily bound up with what determines it. Yet when the question arises whether something is beautiful, one does not wish to know whether the existence of the thing is of any concern, or could even be of concern, to us or to anyone at all; but rather how we judge it in mere contemplation (intuition or reflection). Should anyone ask me whether the palace standing before my eyes strikes me as beautiful, I might well answer that I care nothing for such structures, built solely to be stared at, or, in the manner of that Iroquois sachem, that in Paris no place delighted him more than the eating-houses; beyond this I could, thoroughly in the Rousseauian vein, decry the vanity of the great, who lavish the people's sweat upon things so needless; and I might in the end persuade myself readily enough that, cast away on some uninhabited isle with no prospect of ever rejoining humankind, and able by a mere wish to summon such a splendid edifice into being, I would not stir myself even that much, provided I already possessed a hut affording me sufficient comfort. One may grant me all of this and give it approval; yet none of that is now the point under discussion. All one seeks to know is whether the mere representation of the object is accompanied within me by satisfaction, however indifferent I might remain regarding the existence of the object that this representation concerns. It is readily apparent that, when I declare it beautiful and demonstrate my possession of taste, everything turns on what I myself draw from this representation, rather than on that in which I remain dependent upon the object's existence. Everyone is bound to concede that any verdict upon beauty tainted by the slightest interest is thoroughly partial and no pure judgment of taste. To sit in judgment on questions of taste, one must harbor not the slightest partiality toward the thing's existence, but must remain wholly indifferent in this regard.

This proposition, however, being of outstanding importance, can be clarified in no better way than by setting the pure, disinterested⁴ satisfaction in the judgment of taste against that which is combined with interest: above all when we may at the same time be assured that there exist no further kinds of interest beyond those that are just now to be named.

§ 3. The satisfaction in the agreeable is combined with interest

That is agreeable which pleases the senses in sensation. Here at once an occasion presents itself to censure a very common confusion of the twofold meaning that the word sensation can carry, and to draw attention to it. All satisfaction (so one says or thinks) is itself sensation (of a pleasure). Consequently everything that pleases is, precisely in this, that it pleases, agreeable (and, according to the various degrees, or also relations to other agreeable sensations, graceful, lovely, delightful, gladdening and so forth). Once that is granted, however, then—as regards the effect on the feeling of pleasure—it is wholly indifferent whether inclination is determined by impressions of the senses, the will by principles of reason, or the power of judgment by mere reflected forms of intuition. For this effect would be the agreeableness in the sensation of one's own state, and since, after all, all working of our faculties must ultimately issue in the practical and converge there as in its goal, one could ask of them no other appraisal of things and of their worth than the one that consists in the gratification they promise. The manner in which they arrive at it is in the end of no consequence at all; and since here the choice of means alone can make any difference, human beings might indeed charge one another with folly and want of understanding, but never with baseness and malice: for after all they are, each according to his own way of viewing things, running toward one goal, which for everyone is gratification.

The word sensation, when applied to a determination of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, means something wholly other than it does when I apply it to the representation of a thing (given through the senses, as a receptivity pertaining to the faculty of cognition). For in the latter instance the representation is related to the object, whereas in the former it is connected merely with the subject and contributes to no cognition at all, not even to that whereby the subject cognizes itself.

In the above explanation, though, the word sensation stands for us as an objective representation of the senses; and, in order not to risk perpetual misinterpretation, we will designate whatever must forever remain purely subjective, and can by no means amount to a representation of an object, with the name otherwise customary for it, namely feeling. As the perception of an object of sense, the meadows' green color pertains to objective sensation; its agreeableness, however, pertains to subjective sensation, whereby no object at all is represented—that is, to feeling, whereby the object comes to be regarded as an object of satisfaction (which involves no cognition of it).

That my judgment concerning an object—by which I pronounce it agreeable—gives expression to an interest in it is already evident from this: that by means of sensation it arouses a craving for objects of that sort, so that the satisfaction presupposes, not the bare judging of the object, but rather the relation of its existence to my own state insofar as that state is affected by such an object. Hence of the agreeable one does not merely say: it pleases, but rather: it gratifies. It is not a mere assent that I bestow on it; rather, inclination is thereby produced; and to that which is agreeable in the liveliest way there belongs so utterly no judgment about the constitution of the object that those who are ever bent solely on enjoyment (for that is the word by which one denotes the inwardness of gratification) gladly excuse themselves from all judging.

§ 4. The satisfaction in the good is connected with an interest

Good is what pleases through the mere concept, by way of reason. We call some things good for something (the useful), which please only as a means; but others good in themselves, which please for their own sake. Each of these harbors, without exception, the concept of an end, and thus reason's bearing upon a willing that is at least possible, so that a satisfaction attaches to the existence of an object or of an action—in other words, an interest of some sort.

To find something good, I must in every case know what kind of thing the object is meant to be, that is, have a concept of it. To find beauty in something, I have no need of that. Flowers, free-hand drawings, tracery aimlessly wound into one another under the label of foliage—these mean nothing, rest upon no determinate concept, and please all the same. Satisfaction in the beautiful, by contrast, has to depend on reflecting upon an object—a reflection issuing in some concept or another, no matter which—and just here lies its difference from the agreeable, whose whole basis is sensation.

Admittedly, the agreeable seems in many cases to coincide with the good. Thus people will commonly say: every enjoyment (especially the lasting kind) is good in itself; which comes to roughly this, that to be lastingly agreeable or to be good is one and the same. Yet one soon notices that this is merely a faulty exchange of words, since the concepts that properly belong to these expressions can in no way be substituted for one another. As something agreeable, the agreeable presents an object merely in its bearing on sense; to be termed good as an object of the will, it has to be ranged under principles of reason by means of the concept of an end in the first place. That a quite different relation to the satisfaction is at stake once I call good the very thing that gives me pleasure becomes evident from the following: in the case of the good one always asks whether the thing is good only in a mediate way or good directly (that is, useful or good in itself), while in the case of the agreeable such a question cannot even arise, for that word always denotes whatever pleases at once. (It stands just the same way, too, with what I call beautiful.)

Even in the most ordinary discourse people distinguish the agreeable from the good. Of a dish that heightens the taste through spices and other additions, one says without hesitation that it is agreeable, while at the same time granting that it is not good: for although it immediately pleases the senses, mediately, that is, considered through reason, which looks to the consequences, it displeases. Even in the judging of health one can still notice this distinction. To everyone who possesses it, it is immediately agreeable (at least negatively, that is, as the keeping away of every bodily pain). But to pronounce it good, one must still, by means of reason, direct it toward ends, namely that it is a state which makes us disposed for all our affairs. With respect to happiness, everyone in the end nonetheless believes that he may call the greatest sum (in quantity as well as duration) of the agreeablenesses of life a true, indeed even the highest, good. Yet against this too reason revolts. Agreeableness is enjoyment. But if it is aimed at this alone, then it would be foolish to be scrupulous about the means that procure it for us, whether it were obtained passively, from the generosity of nature, or through our own activity and doing. But that the existence of a human being should have a worth in itself, one who merely lives (and however busily occupied he may be to that end) in order to enjoy, even if in doing so he were, as a means thereto, of the utmost service to others who likewise all aim solely at enjoyment, and this because through sympathy he shared in all their pleasure: of this reason will never let itself be convinced. Only through what he does without regard to enjoyment, in complete freedom and independently of whatever nature might procure for him even passively, does he give to his existence, as the existence of a person, an absolute worth; and happiness, with the entire fullness of its agreeableness, is far from being an unconditioned good⁵.

Yet for all the ways in which the agreeable and the good diverge, they still agree on one point: each is invariably bound up with an interest taken in its object—not merely the agreeable, § 3, together with what is good in mediate fashion (the useful, pleasing as a means toward one agreeableness or another), but likewise that which is good outright and in every respect, namely the moral, which carries the supreme interest along with it. For the good is the object of the will (that is, of a power of desire determined through reason). But to will a thing and to take a satisfaction in the existence of that thing, which is to say, to take an interest in it, amount to one and the same.

§ 5. Comparison of the three specifically distinct kinds of satisfaction

Both the agreeable and the good stand in a relation to the faculty of desire, and on that account each brings with it a satisfaction—the one pathologically conditioned (by incentives, stimulos), the other purely practical—whose determining ground lies not in the representation of the object alone but likewise in the subject's represented connection with that object's existence. Not merely the object, but its existence as well, is what pleases. The judgment of taste, on the other hand, is purely contemplative, that is, a judgment that, remaining indifferent toward whether an object exists, merely sets the object's character alongside the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. This contemplation, however, is for its own part not directed toward concepts; for a judgment of taste is no cognitive judgment (be it theoretical or practical), and accordingly it is neither grounded upon concepts nor aimed at any such.

Thus the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good designate three different relations that representations have to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, in regard to which we set objects or kinds of representation off from one another. Moreover, the expressions suited to each, by which one designates the complacency in them, are not one and the same. Agreeable is the name a person gives to whatever delights him; beautiful, to what he simply finds pleasing; good, to what he prizes, approves, that is, to that in which he posits an objective worth. Agreeableness holds also for non-rational animals; beauty only for human beings, i.e., animal but nonetheless rational beings, yet also not merely as such (e.g., spirits), but at the same time as animal ones; the good, however, for every rational being in general; a proposition that can receive its complete justification and explanation only in what follows. One may observe that the satisfaction which taste takes in the beautiful stands alone among these three kinds of satisfaction as a disinterested and free one; for no interest, whether of the senses or of reason, compels the approval. Hence one could say of satisfaction that in the three cases mentioned it refers to inclination, or to favor, or to respect. For favor is the sole free satisfaction. An object of inclination, and one which a law of reason enjoins upon us for the purpose of desiring, allow us no freedom to make of anything whatsoever an object of pleasure for ourselves. Every interest presupposes a need, or else calls one forth; and once it serves as the determining ground of approval, it leaves the judgment upon the object no longer free.

As regards the interest that inclination takes in the agreeable, everyone says: hunger is the best cook, and to people of healthy appetite everything is palatable that is at all edible; hence such a satisfaction proves no choice governed by taste. It is only when the need has been met that one can tell, among many people, who has taste and who does not. In the very same way there are manners (Conduite) without virtue, courtesy without benevolence, decency without honorableness, and so forth. For wherever the ethical law pronounces, there is objectively no further free choice regarding what ought to be done; and to exhibit taste in one's conduct (or in judging that of others) is something quite other than to give voice to one's moral cast of mind: for the latter contains a command and brings forth a need, whereas ethical taste, by contrast, merely toys with the objects of satisfaction without binding itself to any one of them.

Explanation of the beautiful, inferred from the first moment.

Taste is the capacity for appraising an object, or a mode of representation, by means of a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest whatever. The object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful.

Second Moment of the Judgment of Taste, namely as to its Quantity

§ 6. The beautiful is what, without a concept, is represented as an object of universal satisfaction

This definition of the beautiful can be derived from the one given earlier, where it was characterized as an object of satisfaction wholly devoid of interest. For whenever someone is aware that his own satisfaction in a thing is free of all interest, he can appraise it in no other way than as necessarily holding a ground of satisfaction valid for everyone. For it rests upon no inclination belonging to the subject (nor upon any other reflective interest), while the one who judges feels himself utterly free in regard to the satisfaction he bestows on the object; and so he can discover no private conditions, such as his subject alone might cling to, to serve as grounds of the satisfaction, and he must therefore take it to be founded in something presupposable in every other person as well; hence he must suppose himself to have reason for expecting a like satisfaction from everyone. Accordingly he will talk about the beautiful as though beauty were a property of the object and the judgment logical (amounting, through concepts of the object, to a cognition of it), even though it is only aesthetic and holds merely a relation of the object's representation to the subject; the reason being that it does share with the logical the resemblance that its validity for everyone can be presupposed in it. Yet this universality cannot arise out of concepts either. For from concepts there is no passage to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure (save in pure practical laws, which, however, carry an interest along with them, such as is not tied to the pure judgment of taste ). Hence to the judgment of taste, along with the consciousness that within it all interest has been detached, there must attach a claim to validity for everyone without a universality directed at objects, i.e., with it there must be conjoined a claim to subjective universality.

§ 7. Comparison of the beautiful with the agreeable and the good through the above mark

Concerning the agreeable, everyone acquiesces: that the judgment which he bases on a private feeling, and through which he declares of an object that he finds it pleasing, is likewise restricted merely to his own person. Hence he is quite willing, when he says the Canary wine is agreeable, to let another correct his phrasing and remind him that he should say instead it is agreeable to me; and this obtains not only for what the tongue, the palate, and the gullet taste, but also for whatever may prove agreeable to each person's eyes and ears. For one person the violet color counts as soft and endearing, while another finds it dead and extinguished. The sound of wind instruments is dear to one man, whereas another prefers that of the stringed ones. To quarrel over this with the intention of censuring as incorrect the judgment of others which differs from our own, just as if it were logically opposed to it, would be folly; regarding the agreeable, therefore, the principle holds: everyone has his own taste (of the senses).

With the beautiful matters stand quite otherwise. It would (quite the reverse) be laughable if someone who fancied himself on his taste meant to vindicate himself thus: this object (the building before our eyes, the garment worn by that man, the concert now reaching our ears, the poem set out for judging) is for me beautiful. For he need not deem it beautiful if it merely pleases him. Many things may hold charm and pleasantness for him, and with that no one troubles himself; yet once he presents something as beautiful, he demands of others the very same satisfaction: his verdict is issued not for himself alone but for everyone, and from then on he treats beauty as though it were a quality belonging to things themselves. He says accordingly: the thing is beautiful, and does not reckon on others' concurrence in his judgment of satisfaction, because he has several times found theirs in agreement with his own, but rather demands it of them. He reproaches them if they judge otherwise, and refuses them the taste that he nonetheless insists they ought to possess; and to that extent one cannot say: everyone has his own peculiar taste. That would come to the same as saying: there is no taste whatever, i.e., no aesthetic judgment able to lay a rightful claim to the assent of everyone.

And yet even with regard to the agreeable one finds that a concordance among human beings can be encountered in the judging of it, in view of which one does after all deny taste to some and allow it to others, and indeed not in the sense of an organic sense, but as a capacity for judging with respect to the agreeable as such. Thus one says of a man who understands how to regale his guests with agreeable things (of enjoyment through every sense) so that they are pleased one and all: this man has taste. But in this case the universality is taken only comparatively; and here there are merely generale rules (as all empirical ones are), not universale ones, the latter being what the judgment of taste about the beautiful ventures upon or asserts a claim to. It amounts to a judgment bearing on sociability, to the extent that this sociability is grounded in empirical rules. As regards the good, judgments too, and justifiably so, assert a claim to validity for everyone; but the good is presented as an object of universal satisfaction solely through a concept, something that holds true of neither the agreeable nor the beautiful.

§ 8. The universality of satisfaction is represented in a judgment of taste only as subjective

This peculiar determination of the universality of an aesthetic judgment, one that can be met with in a judgment of taste, is a remarkable thing—not, to be sure, for the logician, but certainly for the transcendental philosopher—which demands of him no slight effort to discover its origin, but which in return also uncovers a property of our faculty of cognition that would have remained unknown without this analysis.

To begin with, one has to become entirely convinced of the following: that by means of the judgment of taste (regarding the beautiful) the satisfaction taken in an object is demanded of everyone, though not on the strength of any concept (since, were that so, it would be the good); and that such a claim to universal validity belongs so intrinsically to any judgment whereby we pronounce a thing beautiful that, were this claim not thought together with it, no one would ever hit upon employing that word, and instead whatever pleases without a concept would be counted as agreeable—a domain in which each is allowed his own view for himself, and none expects of anyone else concurrence with his judgment of taste, whereas in the judgment of taste about beauty this expectation is present at all times. The first of these I may term the taste of sense and the second the taste of reflection, insofar as the former passes merely private judgments while the second passes putatively commonly-valid (public) ones, though both pass aesthetic (not practical) judgments about an object merely in view of how its representation relates to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Now it is genuinely puzzling that, while with the taste of sense not merely does experience make plain that its judgment (of pleasure or displeasure in this or that) fails to hold universally, but each person is besides of his own accord modest enough not to press this agreement upon others (even if a really quite widespread concord is, in truth, frequently to be met with in such judgments too), the taste of reflection—which, as experience shows, is itself often enough turned away when it claims universal validity for its judgment (about the beautiful) on everyone's behalf—can nonetheless deem it possible (as it really does) to conceive of judgments that could demand this agreement universally, and indeed exacts it from everyone for each of its judgments of taste, without those who judge quarreling over whether such a claim is possible, being unable merely in particular instances to settle on the correct application of this faculty.

Here the very first thing to observe is that a universality resting not upon concepts of the object (albeit merely empirical ones) is by no means logical but rather aesthetic—that is, it holds no objective quantity of the judgment within it, only a subjective one, and it is for this that I likewise employ the term common validity, a term marking the validity that pertains not to a representation's relation to the faculty of cognition, but to its bearing on the feeling of pleasure and displeasure in every subject. (Yet one is equally free to apply the same term to the logical quantity of a judgment, so long as one appends the qualification objective universal validity, thereby setting it apart from the purely subjective sort, which is invariably aesthetic.)

Now an objectively universally valid judgment is also always subjective, i.e., if a judgment is valid for everything falling under a given concept, then it also holds for everyone who represents an object to himself by means of that concept. From a subjective universal validity, however—that is, the aesthetic one, which rests on no concept —the logical cannot be inferred: because that kind of judgment does not bear on the object at all. But for just that reason the aesthetic universality attributed to a judgment has likewise to be of a peculiar sort, inasmuch as it does not link the predicate of beauty to the concept of the object considered throughout its entire logical sphere, while nevertheless stretching that very predicate across the whole sphere of those who judge.

Regarded in terms of their logical quantity, all judgments of taste count as singular judgments. For inasmuch as I have to measure the object directly against my feeling of pleasure and displeasure, and precisely not by way of concepts, such judgments cannot possess the quantity belonging to objectively commonly-valid judgments; and yet, should the singular representation of the object of the judgment of taste be converted through comparison into a concept, following the conditions that fix the latter, there can emerge from it a logically universal judgment: for instance, the rose before my eyes I pronounce, by a judgment of taste, to be beautiful. By contrast, the judgment that arises through the comparison of many singular ones—roses in general are beautiful—is now asserted no longer merely as an aesthetic judgment, but as a logical judgment grounded on an aesthetic one. Now the judgment—the rose is agreeable (in its scent)—is, to be sure, also aesthetic and singular, yet not a judgment of taste but a judgment of sense. It differs from the former, namely, in this: that the judgment of taste carries with it an aesthetic quantity of universality—that is, validity holding for everyone, which cannot be met with in a judgment about the agreeable. The judgments about the good alone, although they likewise determine the satisfaction taken in an object, possess a logical and not merely aesthetic universality; for they hold of the object, as cognitions of it, and therefore for everyone.

When objects are judged solely by means of concepts, every representation of beauty is lost. There can therefore be no rule either that would oblige a person to recognize something as beautiful. As to whether a robe, a house, or a flower is beautiful: on that point one refuses to have one's judgment argued into one by any reasons or principles. One seeks to bring the object before one's own eyes, as though one's satisfaction hung upon the sensation; and nonetheless, once one calls the object beautiful at that point, one takes oneself to have a universal voice behind one and stakes a claim on the concurrence of everyone, while on the other hand a merely private sensation would be decisive for the beholder by himself and for his satisfaction alone.

What must be seen here is that a judgment of taste posits nothing beyond such a universal voice concerning the satisfaction, with no concepts intervening; and thus the possibility of an aesthetic judgment that can at the same time be regarded as valid for everyone. The judgment of taste itself does not postulate everyone's agreement (for that only a logically universal judgment can do, since it can adduce grounds); rather it merely imputes to everyone that agreement, treating it as an instance of the rule, and in this regard it looks for its confirmation not from concepts but from the concurrence of others. The universal voice is thus only an idea (on what it rests is not yet investigated here). It may well remain unsettled whether someone who takes himself to be rendering a judgment of taste is really judging in keeping with this idea; but that he does refer it to that idea, and so that it is supposed to be a judgment of taste, he makes known by the very word beauty. On his own account, however, he can arrive at certainty of this merely by being conscious that he has separated out, from the satisfaction still left over for him, everything that pertains to the agreeable and to the good; and this is the full measure of what he promises himself as the assent of everyone: an entitlement he would indeed possess under such conditions, provided only that he did not transgress against them too frequently and thereby deliver a mistaken judgment of taste.

§ 9. Inquiry into the question: whether in the judgment of taste the feeling of pleasure comes before the judging of the object, or the judging comes before the pleasure

Resolving this task furnishes the key to the critique of taste, and it therefore warrants our fullest attention.

Were the pleasure in the given object to precede everything else, so that in the judgment of taste nothing but its universal communicability came to be ascribed to the representation of the object, then a procedure of this kind would stand in conflict with itself. For a pleasure of that sort could be nothing but the mere agreeableness in sensory sensation, and hence by its very nature could possess only private validity, since it would depend without mediation upon that representation whereby the object is given.

Accordingly, what must underlie the judgment of taste, as its subjective condition, and must give rise to the pleasure in the object, is the universal communicability of the mental state present in the given representation. But nothing admits of universal communication except cognition, and representation so far as it pertains to cognition. For it is only in that respect that the latter is purely objective, and it is thereby alone that it gains a universal point of reference, one to which the representational power of all is compelled to conform. Now, should the determining ground of the judgment regarding this universal communicability of the representation have to be conceived as merely subjective—that is, without any concept of the object—then it can be none other than the state of mind encountered in the mutual relation of the representational powers to one another, insofar as these set a given representation in relation to cognition in general.

The cognitive powers, set into play by this representation, are thereby caught up in a free play, for no determinate concept restricts them to any particular rule of cognition. The mental state in this representation must accordingly be that of a feeling of the free play of the representational powers, engaged with a given representation, toward a cognition in general. Now, for a representation through which an object is given to yield cognition at all, there are needed imagination to combine the manifold of the intuition, and understanding to supply the unity of the concept uniting these representations. This condition of a free play of the cognitive faculties, present where a representation gives us an object, must be capable of universal communication—since cognition, taken as the determining of the object to which given representations (in whatever subject they may be) are supposed to conform , is the one mode of representing that holds for everyone.

Since it is supposed to occur without a determinate concept being presupposed, the subjective universal communicability of the manner of representing in a judgment of taste can consist in nothing except that mental state which belongs to the free play of imagination and understanding (so far as these two harmonize with each other, as is needed for a cognition in general), our awareness being that this subjective relation, so fitted for cognition in general, must hold good for everyone, and hence be universally communicable, no less than every determinate cognition is—cognition which itself invariably rests, as upon its subjective condition, on that very relation.

This merely subjective (aesthetic) judging of the object—or of the representation whereby it is given—comes before any pleasure taken in it and is the ground of that pleasure in the harmony of the cognitive faculties; and it is solely on that generality of the subjective conditions of the judging of the objects that the universal subjective validity of the satisfaction rests—the satisfaction we associate with the representation of the object we pronounce beautiful.

That being able to communicate one's mental state, even if only with respect to the cognitive faculties, carries a pleasure with it could easily be shown from the natural human propensity to sociability (empirically and psychologically). But that is not enough for our purpose. The pleasure we feel we demand of every other person, in a judgment of taste, as something necessary, as though, whenever we pronounce a thing beautiful, this pleasure were to count as a quality belonging to the object and determined in it by concepts; yet beauty, taken apart from any bearing on the subject's feeling, is, of itself, nothing at all. The discussion of this question, however, we must reserve until the answering of that one: whether and how aesthetic judgments are possible a priori.

For the present we turn to the slighter question of how, within the judgment of taste, we come to be conscious of a mutual subjective concord of the cognitive powers among themselves—whether by aesthetic means, through inner sense and sensation alone, or intellectually, through the awareness of the deliberate activity by which we bring those powers into play.

Suppose the given representation that prompts the judgment of taste were a concept—one that, in the judging of the object, brought understanding and imagination together so as to cognize the object; then our awareness of this relation would be an intellectual one (just as it is in that objective schematism of the power of judgment which the Critique treats). But then the judgment would also not have been made in relation to pleasure and displeasure, and hence would be no judgment of taste. Now, however, the judgment of taste determines the object, independently of concepts, with respect to satisfaction and the predicate of beauty. That subjective unity of the relation, therefore, can become recognizable only by way of sensation. The animation of the two faculties (imagination and understanding) toward an activity indeterminate and yet, by occasion of the given representation, unanimous—namely the activity that belongs to a cognition in general—is that sensation of which the judgment of taste postulates the universal communicability. An objective relation, to be sure, admits only of being thought; yet, so far as it is subjective in respect of its conditions, it can all the same be felt in the effect it has upon the mind; and where a relation places no concept at its foundation (as with that of the representational powers to a cognitive faculty in general), there is likewise no consciousness of it available except by the sensing of the effect—the effect residing in the eased play of the two powers of the mind (imagination and understanding), quickened by their mutual attunement. A representation that, though singular and without comparison to others, nevertheless has an accord with the conditions of universality that make up the general business of the understanding, puts the cognitive faculties into the proportioned attunement that we demand for all cognition and therefore hold to be valid for everyone who is determined to judge through understanding and senses in combination (for every human being).

Explanation of the beautiful inferred from the second moment.

Beautiful is what, without a concept, pleases universally.

Third Moment of judgments of taste, according to the relation of the ends that is taken into consideration in them

§ 10. On purposiveness in general

If we set out to explain what an end is according to its transcendental determinations (presupposing nothing empirical, of the sort that the feeling of pleasure is, ), then an end is a concept's object, in so far as this concept is regarded as the cause of that object (the real ground of the latter's possibility); and purposiveness (forma finalis) is the causality of a concept in view of its object. Hence, wherever that which is thought to be possible as an effect only through a concept of that effect is not the mere cognition of an object but the very object — namely its form or existence — there one is thinking of an end. In this case the representation of the effect functions as the ground that determines its cause , preceding the cause itself. The consciousness of the causality of a representation with regard to the subject's state, so as to maintain the subject in this state, may here designate in general what is called pleasure; displeasure, by contrast, is that representation which contains in itself the ground for determining the representations' state into their own opposite (for warding them off or doing away with them).

The faculty of desire, to the extent that it can be determined solely by concepts — that is, to act in conformity with the representation of an end — would amount to the will. An object, a state of mind, or an action is likewise called purposive even when the representation of an end is not necessarily presupposed for its possibility, and this merely because its possibility can be explained and grasped by us only in so far as we lay at its ground a causality according to ends — that is, a will that, following the representation of a certain rule, would have arranged it in just this way. Purposiveness may thus be present even in the absence of an end, provided we do not situate the causes of such a form within a will, while nevertheless being able to render the account of its possibility comprehensible to ourselves only by tracing it back to a will. Now we do not always have need to grasp through reason (as regards its possibility) that which we observe. Thus we can at least observe a purposiveness as to form, even without placing an end (taken as the matter of the nexus finalis) at its ground, and can remark it in objects, although not otherwise than by means of reflection.

§ 11. The judgment of taste rests on nothing but the form of purposiveness in an object (or in the manner of representing it)

Any end, once it is viewed as the ground of the satisfaction, invariably brings an interest along with it, serving as the determining ground of the judgment upon the object of the pleasure. No subjective end, therefore, can serve as the basis of a judgment of taste. But neither can any representation of an objective end, that is, of how the object itself is possible in accordance with principles that link ends together, nor consequently any concept of the good, determine the judgment of taste: since it is aesthetic rather than cognitive, it concerns no concept of the object's constitution and inner or outer possibility through this or that cause, but solely how the representational powers stand toward one another insofar as some representation determines them.

Now, in the determining of an object as beautiful, this relation is tied to a feeling of pleasure which the judgment of taste at once pronounces valid for everybody; and so an agreeableness that goes along with the representation is no more able to supply the determining ground than are the representation of the object's perfection and the concept of the good. Accordingly, the satisfaction that we appraise as universally communicable without any concept — and, along with it, the determining ground of the judgment of taste — can be constituted solely by the subjective purposiveness carried by the representation of an object in the absence of any end (objective or subjective alike), and thus by the mere form of purposiveness in that representation whereby we are given an object, insofar as we are conscious of it.

§ 12. The judgment of taste rests on grounds a priori

It is utterly impossible to make out a priori the linkage between a feeling of pleasure or displeasure, taken as an effect, and any representation (sensation or concept) serving as its cause; for such a thing would be a causal relation that, among objects of experience, can at all times be known only a posteriori and through experience itself . It is true that in the Critique of Practical Reason we did indeed derive the feeling of respect (as a particular and distinctive modification of this feeling, one that will not quite square either with the pleasure or the displeasure that we obtain from empirical objects) a priori from universal ethical concepts. Yet in that context we could also step beyond the limits of experience and call forth a causality grounded in a supersensible constitution of the subject — the causality, namely, of freedom. Yet even there we did not, properly speaking, derive this feeling from the idea of the ethical as its cause; rather, only the determination of the will was derived from it. The mental state, however, of a will determined by whatever means is already in itself a feeling of pleasure, indeed one and the same with it, and so does not issue from it as an effect: this last would need to be supposed only were the concept of the ethical, taken as a good, to run ahead of the will's determination by the law; since in that case the pleasure joined to that concept would be drawn from it, as a mere cognition, in vain.

Now with the pleasure in the aesthetic judgment the case stands in a similar way: only that here it is merely contemplative, and brings about no interest in the object, whereas in the moral judgment it is practical. That awareness of the merely formal purposiveness at work in the play of the subject's cognitive powers , upon a representation whereby some object is given, simply is the pleasure itself; for within an aesthetic judgment it comprises a ground that determines the subject's activity as regards the enlivening of those very cognitive powers — hence an inner causality (one that is purposive) bearing upon cognition in general, yet without being confined to any determinate cognition, and consequently a mere form of the subjective purposiveness of a representation. This pleasure is likewise in no way practical, neither in the manner of that stemming from the pathological ground of agreeableness, nor of that stemming from the intellectual ground of the good as represented. It does, however, carry a causality within itself, namely that of preserving the state of the representation itself and the engagement of the cognitive powers without any further aim. We dwell upon the beholding of the beautiful, because this beholding reinforces and reproduces itself: which is analogous to (though yet not the same as) that lingering in which a charm in the representation of the object repeatedly rouses the attention, while the mind remains passive.

§ 13. The pure judgment of taste is independent of charm and emotion

Any interest whatever spoils the judgment of taste, robbing it of its impartiality, most especially when, in contrast to the interest of reason , it fails to place purposiveness before the feeling of pleasure and instead founds that purposiveness on the feeling; and this second alternative invariably occurs whenever an aesthetic judgment is passed on something to the degree that the thing pleases or pains. Hence judgments affected in this way can lay either no claim at all to universally valid satisfaction, or so much less of one as there are sensations of the kind just described among the determining grounds of taste. A taste still remains barbaric in every instance where it requires charms and emotions to be mixed into the satisfaction, indeed where it goes so far as to make these the standard of its approval.

Meanwhile charms are frequently not only reckoned to beauty (which properly should have to do with the form alone) as contributing to the universal aesthetic satisfaction, but are indeed proclaimed to be beauties in themselves, the matter of the satisfaction thus being presented as its form: a misunderstanding which, like many another that still has some truth lying at its root, can be dispelled by defining these concepts with care.

A judgment of taste on which neither charm nor emotion exerts any influence (although these can indeed be combined with the satisfaction in the beautiful), one whose determining ground is thus solely the purposiveness of the form, is a pure judgment of taste.

§ 14. Elucidation by examples

Aesthetic judgments can, just like theoretical (logical) ones, be divided into empirical and pure. The former are those that assert the agreeableness or disagreeableness, the latter those that assert the beauty of an object or of the way in which it is represented; the former are judgments of sense (material aesthetic judgments), while the latter (as formal ones) are alone properly judgments of taste.

A judgment of taste, accordingly, counts as pure only to the extent that its determining ground has no merely empirical satisfaction blended into it. This, however, always happens whenever charm or emotion has a share in the judgment through which something is to be declared beautiful.

Now once again various objections come forward that ultimately make it appear as though charm were not merely a necessary ingredient of beauty, but were even sufficient on its own for a thing to be called beautiful. Most people pronounce a mere color—say the green of a grassy plot—or a mere tone (to be distinguished from sound and noise), like that of a violin, to be beautiful in its own right; and yet both appear to rest merely upon the matter of the representations, that is, upon nothing but sensation, and would on that account merit being termed no more than agreeable . One will nevertheless observe at the same time that color-sensations no less than tone-sensations regard themselves as warranted in passing for beautiful only to the degree that each is pure—a specification that bears already on the form, and moreover the sole feature of such representations that admits of certain and universal communication: for the qualitative character of the sensations cannot be presupposed as concordant in every subject, nor can it readily be granted that the agreeableness of one color above another, or of the tone of one musical instrument above that of a different one, is appraised alike by all.

Suppose, with Euler, that the colors are simultaneous beats (pulsus) of the ether succeeding one another, as tones are of the air made to vibrate in sound, and—what matters most—that the mind apprehends not only, by way of sense, their effect upon the enlivening of the organ, but also, by way of reflection, the orderly play of the impressions (and thus the form in the combining of diverse representations) (something I do not in the least doubt): then color and tone would be, not bare sensations, but would already constitute a formal determination of a manifold's unity among them, and could accordingly be reckoned as beauties in their own right.

The purity of a simple mode of sensation, however, signifies that no alien sensation troubles or breaks in upon its uniformity, and such purity pertains to the form alone: for here one may leave out of account the quality of that mode of sensation (whether, and which, color it presents, or whether, and which, tone). For this reason every simple color, provided it is pure, passes for beautiful, whereas the mixed ones lack this distinction: exactly because, not being simple, they leave us without any measure for deciding whether to call them pure or impure.

As for the beauty attributed to an object because of its form, in respect of which people fancy that charm might actually enhance it, this is a widespread mistake, and one gravely damaging to taste that is genuine, incorruptible, and thorough; even though charms may, to be sure, be joined to the beauty besides, so as to interest the mind, through the object's representation, beyond the dry satisfaction, and thereby to commend taste together with its cultivation, above all while it is still raw and untrained. They do, however, genuinely detract from the judgment of taste once they attract notice to themselves as grounds for appraising the beauty. For it is so far from being the case that they contribute to it, that rather, as strangers, they must be admitted only with indulgence, and only insofar as they do not disturb that beautiful form, when taste is still weak and unpracticed.

In painting, in sculpture, indeed throughout all the plastic arts, in architecture and in gardening, so far as these count as fine arts, it is the drawing that is essential, wherein not that which delights in sensation, but merely that which is pleasing through its form, constitutes the ground of every arrangement directed at taste. The colors that light up the sketch fall under charm; while they can, for sensation, quicken the object in itself, they cannot render it beautiful and worthy of intuition: on the contrary, whatever the beautiful form demands mostly confines them very severely, and even in cases where charm is permitted, it is by that form alone that they are ennobled.

All form belonging to the objects of the senses (those of the outer, and, mediately, those of the inner as well) is either shape or play; and in the latter case it is either a play of shapes (in space: mimicry and the dance) or a mere play of sensations (in time). The charm of the colors, or of the pleasant tones of the instrument, may indeed be superadded, yet it is the drawing in the first case and the composition in the second that make up the genuine object of a pure judgment of taste; and if the purity of the colors and of the tones alike, or even their variety and their contrast, seems to add to the beauty, this does not mean that, being agreeable on their own, they supply thereby a kind of like-natured supplement to the satisfaction in the form, but rather that they only make this latter more exactly, more definitely, and more fully intuitable, and besides enliven the representation by their charm, in that they awaken and hold attention upon the object itself.

Even what one calls decorations (Parerga), that is, whatever does not belong internally to the whole representation of the object as a constituent part, but only externally as an addition, and which enlarges the satisfaction of taste, still does this too only through its form: as with the frames of paintings, or the drapery on statues, or the colonnades around magnificent buildings. But should the decoration not consist in the beautiful form itself—should it, like a gilt frame, be attached merely so as to commend the painting to approval by means of its charm—then it goes by the name of adornment and does injury to genuine beauty.

Emotion—a sensation in which agreeableness comes about solely through a momentary checking, and the more forceful surge of the vital force that thereupon follows—has no place whatever in beauty. Sublimity, on the other hand—the feeling of emotion being bound up with it—calls for a criterion of appraisal other than the one taste lays down as its foundation; and so a pure judgment of taste possesses, for its determining ground, neither a charm nor an emotion—in short, no sensation of any kind—as the matter of the aesthetic judgment.

§ 15. The judgment of taste is entirely independent of the concept of perfection

Objective purposiveness is something we can cognize solely through the manifold's relation to some determinate end, and thus solely by way of a concept. This by itself already makes clear: that the beautiful—whose judging has as its basis a purposiveness that is merely formal, that is, a purposiveness devoid of any end—stands wholly apart from the representation of the good, since this latter presupposes a purposiveness that is objective, that is, the object's relation to some determinate end.

Objective purposiveness comes in two forms: the external kind, that is, usefulness, and the internal kind, that is, an object's perfection. That the satisfaction whereby we pronounce an object beautiful cannot be founded upon any representation of its usefulness is sufficiently evident from the two foregoing sections: for were it otherwise, the satisfaction would then not be an immediate one taken in the object, and it is immediacy of just this kind that forms the indispensable condition of any judgment about beauty. An internal objective purposiveness, however—that is, perfection—already lies nearer to the predicate of beauty, and for that reason renowned philosophers have even equated it with beauty, albeit under the proviso when it is confusedly conceived . For a critique of taste, it is a matter of the utmost importance to settle whether beauty too may genuinely be reduced to the concept of perfection.

To judge an objective purposiveness we invariably need the concept of an end, and—supposing this purposiveness is meant to be internal rather than external [usefulness]—the concept of an inner end that would hold the ground of the object's inner possibility. Since an end as such is precisely that whose concept may be taken for the very ground on which the object's own possibility rests: so too, if one is to picture an objective purposiveness in a given thing, there must come first the concept of what kind of thing it is intended to be; and the accord of the manifold within that thing with this concept (which lays down the rule for combining the manifold in it) makes up the qualitative perfection of a thing. Wholly different from this is quantitative perfection, namely the completeness that any thing possesses within its own kind—a bare concept of quantity (of allness), one in which what the thing is to be is already presupposed as settled beforehand, so that the only question is whether everything demanded for it is actually there in it. The formal aspect in the representation of a thing—that is, the agreement of the manifold into a unity (with what that unity is to be left undetermined)—discloses of itself no objective purposiveness whatsoever: for once abstraction is made from this unity taken as an end (what the thing is to be), there is left over nothing beyond the subjective purposiveness belonging to the representations in the mind of the one who beholds them, a purposiveness that does indeed betoken a certain purposiveness of the representational state within the subject, and within that state an ease it feels in taking up a given form into the imagination, yet that points to no perfection of any object, the object being thought here by means of no concept of an end. So, for instance, should I chance upon a patch of turf in the woods, ringed about by trees standing in a circle, and yet form for myself no end there—say, that the spot might be used for country dancing—then not the slightest concept of perfection is furnished by the bare form alone. But to form for oneself a formal objective purposiveness that has no end—that is, the naked form of a perfection (stripped of all matter and of any concept of that toward which the harmonizing is directed, even were this nothing more than the idea of a conformity to law in general)—is a downright contradiction.

Now the judgment of taste is an aesthetic judgment, that is, one resting upon subjective grounds, whose determining ground can be no concept at all, and therefore not the concept of a determinate end. Hence beauty, as a formal subjective purposiveness, in no way brings to mind any perfection of the object under the guise of an allegedly formal, yet for all that objective, purposiveness; and the difference between the concept of the beautiful and that of the good—as though the two were set apart merely by logical form, the former a confused and the latter a distinct concept of perfection while otherwise agreeing in content and origin—amounts to nothing: for on that supposition no specific difference would separate them, and a judgment of taste would count as a cognitive judgment just as fully as the judgment whereby a thing is pronounced good, much as the common man, when he calls deceit wrong, grounds his judgment on confused, and the philosopher his on distinct, yet both at bottom on one and the same principles of reason. Yet I have already remarked that an aesthetic judgment is one of a kind and delivers no cognition at all (not even a confused one) of the object: the latter coming about only through a logical judgment, whereas an aesthetic judgment instead refers the representation through which an object is given entirely to the subject and calls attention to no property of the object, but solely to the purposive form in the determination of the powers of representation that busy themselves with that object. It is for just this reason, too, that the judgment is termed aesthetic: because what determines it is no concept but rather the feeling (belonging to the inner sense) of that harmony in the play of the mental powers, so far as such harmony admits only of being felt. Were one, on the other hand, to give the name aesthetic to confused concepts and to the objective judgment that rests upon them, one would be positing an understanding that judges by way of the senses, or else a sense that pictured its objects through concepts—each of which is a contradiction in itself. The power that deals in concepts, be they confused or distinct, is the understanding; and although the judgment of taste, as an aesthetic judgment, does call upon the understanding too (as every judgment does), it draws on it not as the power to cognize an object, but as the power to determine the judgment together with its representation (apart from any concept) according to the bearing this has upon the subject and the subject's inner feeling—and this only so far as such a judgment is possible under a universal rule.