§ 43. On art in general

1) Art is distinguished from nature just as doing (facere) differs from acting or operating at large (agere); and what the former yields, its product or upshot, counts as a work (opus), whereas what issues from the latter counts as an effect (effectus) .

By rights, one ought to call art only that bringing-forth through freedom, that is, through a power of choice that grounds its actions in reason. For even though we like to call the product of bees (those regularly constructed combs of wax) a work of art, we do so merely because of its analogy with the latter; for the moment it occurs to us that they found their labor upon no reasoning of their own, we promptly declare their handiwork to be an outgrowth of their nature (of instinct), and only their creator is credited with the art.

When, in searching through a peat bog, one comes upon a piece of hewn wood, as has occasionally happened, one does not call it a product of nature at all, but of art; the cause that brought it forth had an end in view, to which the thing owes its shape. In other respects one is indeed inclined to recognize an art in anything whose constitution is such that, within its cause, a representation of the thing had to run ahead of its actual existence (as happens even with bees), though without the effect's needing on that account to have been genuinely thought by the cause; but whenever one simply calls something a work of art, so as to set it off from a natural effect, one invariably means by it a work of human beings.

2) Art as a human skill is also distinguished from science (being able from knowing), as a practical faculty from a theoretical one, as technique from theory (as the art of surveying from geometry). And here too that which one can do, as soon as one merely knows what is to be done and is thus sufficiently acquainted with the desired effect, is not exactly called art. Only that for which, even when one knows it in the most complete way, one nevertheless does not thereby at once possess the skill to make it, belongs to that extent to art. Camper describes very precisely how the best shoe would have to be constructed, yet he certainly could not make one¹⁴.

3) Art, too, is distinguished from handicraft; the former one terms free, whereas the latter might equally be termed remunerative art. One regards the first as though it could turn out purposively (succeed) only as play, that is, an occupation that is agreeable in itself; the second in such a way that, as labor, that is, an occupation that is in itself disagreeable (burdensome) and alluring only through its effect (e.g., the wages), it can accordingly be compulsorily imposed. Whether, in the ranking of the guilds, watchmakers should count as artists but smiths as craftsmen: that requires a different point of view for judging than the one we adopt here, namely the proportion of the talents that must underlie one or the other of these occupations. Whether some of the so-called seven liberal arts that were included ought rather to be reckoned among the sciences, and certain others to be likened to handicrafts: on that question I shall not dwell here. Yet it is not unwise to recall that in every free art there is still required something of the compulsory sort — or, as it is called, a mechanism — without which the spirit, which in art must be free and which alone animates the work, would possess no body at all and would evaporate entirely (for instance, in poetic composition, grammatical correctness and a wealth of language, and equally prosody and metrical measure), for a number of modern educators suppose that they most effectively advance a free art when they strip every constraint from it and turn it out of labor into sheer play.

§ 44. On fine art

There is neither a science of the beautiful, but only a critique of it, nor is there any fine science, but only fine art. For as regards the first, it would have to be established within it scientifically, that is, through grounds of proof, whether or not something is to be counted as beautiful; hence the judgment about beauty, were it to belong to a science, would be no judgment of taste. As for the second, a science that is supposed to be beautiful as a science is an absurdity. For if, treating it as a science, one asked after grounds and proofs, one would be put off with tasteful sayings (bons mots). — The ordinary phrase fine sciences has surely arisen from nothing but the perfectly correct remark that fine art, brought to its full perfection, calls for a great deal of science — such as familiarity with the ancient tongues, wide reading in the authors held to be classic, history, an acquaintance with antiquity, and so forth — so that these historical branches of learning, since they furnish fine art with its indispensable groundwork and preparation, and partly, too, since they themselves take in the knowledge of the products of fine art (eloquence and poetry), have through a slippage of words come to be styled fine sciences in their own right.

When art, suited to the cognition of a possible object, does no more than perform the operations needed to bring that object into being, it is mechanical; should it, however, take the feeling of pleasure directly for its purpose, it is termed aesthetic art. The latter is either agreeable or fine art. It is the former when its end is that pleasure should accompany the representations as mere sensations, the latter when it should accompany them as modes of cognition.

Agreeable arts are ones whose sole aim is enjoyment; to them belong all the charms that can amuse a company gathered at table: telling stories in a diverting manner, prompting the company to open and animated talk, and, through joking and laughter, setting it in a certain merry key, where, as people say, all sorts of things may be prattled into the carousing while nobody means to answer for what he utters, since the whole is calculated only on the entertainment of the moment and not on any abiding material for later thought or retelling. (To this also belongs the manner in which the table is furnished for enjoyment, or indeed, at great banquets, the table music: a curious thing, which is meant only as an agreeable noise to sustain the mood of the minds toward cheerfulness and which, without anyone devoting the slightest attention to its composition, fosters the free conversation of one neighbor with the other .) To this belong, further, all games that carry with them no further interest than to make the time pass unnoticed.

Fine art, by contrast, is a mode of representation that is in itself purposive and that, although without an end, nevertheless furthers the cultivation of the mental powers for sociable communication.

The universal communicability of a pleasure already carries with it in its very concept that this pleasure must be one not of enjoyment arising from mere sensation, but of reflection; and thus aesthetic art, as fine art, is of a kind that takes the reflecting power of judgment, and not sensory sensation, as its standard.

§ 45. Fine art is an art insofar as it at the same time seems to be nature

In a product of fine art one must become aware that it is art and not nature; and yet the purposiveness in its form must seem so free of all compulsion of arbitrary rules as though it were a product of nothing but nature. That pleasure — uniquely capable of being shared with everyone, and this without resting on any concept — has its basis in the sense of liberty we feel as our cognitive powers play, a play that must at the same time still be purposive. Nature was beautiful when it at the same time looked like art; and art can be called beautiful only when we are conscious that it is art and it yet looks to us like nature.

For we may state quite generally — whether the point at issue be natural beauty or artistic beauty — that beautiful is whatever, in the mere act of judging (not in sensory sensation, nor by means of a concept) gives pleasure. Now art always has a determinate intention of bringing something about. But if this were mere sensation (something merely subjective), which was meant to be accompanied by pleasure, then this product would please in the judging only by means of the feeling of sense. Were the intention directed at the bringing about of a determinate object, then, if it is attained through the art, the object would please only through concepts. Yet in either case the art would give its pleasure not in the mere act of judging, that is to say, it would please as a mechanical art and not as a beautiful one.

The purposiveness residing in a work of fine art, therefore, though it is admittedly deliberate, must all the same not look deliberate; fine art, in other words, has to be capable of being regarded as nature, notwithstanding that we remain aware of it as art. A product of art, however, appears as nature by virtue of this: that all punctiliousness is indeed met with in its conformity to the rules by which alone the product can turn out to be what it is meant to be, yet without painful exactitude, without the academic form showing through, that is, without betraying a trace that the rule hovered before the artist's eyes and laid fetters upon his powers of mind.

§ 46. Fine art is the art of genius

Genius is the talent (the gift of nature) that gives art the rule. Since talent, as the artist's innate productive faculty, itself belongs within nature, one could equally frame it thus: genius is the inborn cast of mind (ingenium) through which nature hands art its rule.

However this definition may stand, and regardless of whether it is purely arbitrary or, on the contrary, suited to the concept that people habitually connect with the word genius (a question to be taken up in the following §): even so, it can be shown beforehand that, given the sense of the word assumed here, the fine arts must of necessity be viewed as arts of genius.

For every art presupposes rules, through the laying down of which a product is in the first place represented as possible if it is to be called a product of art. The concept of fine art, however, does not permit that the judgment upon its product's beauty be traced back to some rule resting on a concept as its determining ground, one that would therefore ground the product in a concept of how it might come to be possible. Fine art therefore cannot itself think up the rule by which it is to bring its product into being. Yet since, in the absence of a rule going before it, a product can never bear the name of art, it is nature in the subject (and by way of the attunement of that subject's faculties) that must give art its rule; in other words, fine art proves possible solely as a product of genius.

One gathers from this that genius is 1) a talent for producing something to which no determinate rule can be assigned: not a disposition of skill toward what may be learned according to some rule; consequently, that originality must be its foremost characteristic. 2) That, because originality can also yield nonsense, its products must be at once patterns, that is, exemplary; and so, while not arising through imitation on their own part, they must nonetheless serve others precisely to this end, namely as a measure or rule for appraisal. 3) That it can neither describe for itself, nor indicate scientifically, the way in which it brings its product to completion, but instead furnishes the rule in the guise of nature; so that the author of a product he has to thank his genius for remains himself unaware of how the ideas for it take shape within him, and likewise lacks the power to devise the like deliberately or by plan at his pleasure and to impart it to others in such prescriptions as would put them in a position to bring forth products of equal kind. (This is presumably also why the word genius is derived from genius, the peculiar spirit allotted to a person at birth, the protecting and guiding one, from whose prompting those original ideas were held to arise.) 4) That nature, through genius, prescribes the rule not to science but to art, and this too only insofar as the latter is to be fine art.

§ 47. Elucidation and confirmation of the above explanation of genius

On this point everyone is agreed: that genius stands wholly opposed to the spirit of imitation. Now since learning is nothing but imitating, even the greatest aptitude—teachableness (capacity) taken as teachableness—still cannot count as genius. Yet even where a person thinks or writes poetry on his own, rather than simply absorbing what others have already thought, and indeed contributes various inventions of his own to art and science, this still furnishes no proper ground for calling such an (often eminent) head (as against the one who, since he is never able to do anything beyond mere learning and copying, goes by the name of dullard) a genius: for even that could have been picked up by learning, and hence still lies upon the natural road of investigation and reflection guided by rules, being in no way specifically distinct from what industriousness can acquire through imitation. Thus everything that Newton laid out in that immortal work of his on the principles of the philosophy of nature—no matter how great a head was needed to invent such things—can be learned quite well; but one cannot learn to write poetry with spirit, however exhaustive all the precepts for the art of poetry, and however excellent its models, may be. The reason is that Newton was able to demonstrate every one of his steps, from the first elements of geometry all the way to his great and profound discoveries, not only to himself but to everyone else, fully intuitively and determinately enough to be followed; whereas no Homer or Wieland can show how his imaginative and yet at the same time thought-laden ideas arise and come together in his head, for the reason that he himself does not know it and therefore cannot teach it to anyone else either. In scientific matters, then, the greatest discoverer differs from the most painstaking imitator and apprentice only in degree, whereas he differs specifically from one whom nature has endowed for fine art. This, however, involves no belittling of those great men—men to whom humankind is indebted for so much—as set against nature's favorites in view of their talent for fine art. That very fact—namely, that the former talent is directed toward the steadily progressing, ever fuller perfection of our cognitions, together with every benefit that hangs upon them, and equally toward instructing others in these self-same branches of knowledge—constitutes a signal superiority they hold over those who earn the honor of bearing the name of geniuses: for in the case of the latter, art at some point halts, a boundary having been fixed for it past which it can advance no further, a boundary in all likelihood attained long ago and incapable of any further widening; and besides, a proficiency of this sort admits of no communication, but insists rather on being conferred upon each person straight from nature's own hand, so that it perishes along with him, until such time as nature again bestows an equal endowment upon someone else, who requires no more than a single example to set the talent he is aware of possessing into operation in a like fashion.

Since the natural endowment must give art (as fine art) its rule, of what kind, then, is this rule? Set down in no formula, it can serve as no prescription; for were it otherwise, the judgment about the beautiful would admit of determination by way of concepts: instead, the rule has to be drawn from the deed, that is, from the product—on which others may put their own talent to the test, in order to let that product stand for them as a model, not of copying but of imitation. How this is possible is hard to explain. The artist's ideas arouse similar ideas in his apprentice, provided nature has furnished the latter with a similar proportion of the powers of mind. The models of fine art are therefore the only means of transmission for carrying it on to posterity: something that could not be done through mere descriptions (above all not in the field of the verbal arts); and even among these, only the ones in ancient, dead languages, now preserved merely as learned tongues, can become classical.

Although mechanical and fine art are very different from one another—the first as a mere art of diligence and of learning, the second as that of genius—there is nevertheless no fine art in which something mechanical, capable of being grasped and followed according to rules, and hence something academic, does not constitute the essential condition of the art. For in it something has to be thought of as a purpose, since otherwise its product could be credited to no art whatever; it would be nothing but a product of accident. Yet in order to carry a purpose into execution, definite rules are called for, and from these one is not at liberty to release oneself. Since, then, the originality of talent makes up one—though not the sole—essential ingredient in the character of genius, superficial minds imagine that they cannot better display themselves as blossoming geniuses than by renouncing the scholastic compulsion of all rules, convinced that one cuts a finer figure on a skittish horse than upon one broken in at the riding school. Genius can supply only rich material for the products of fine art; the working-up of that material and the form require a talent schooled through training, so as to make a use of it that can hold up before the power of judgment. But when someone, even in matters of the most careful inquiry of reason, speaks and pronounces like a genius, then it becomes utterly ridiculous; one hardly knows whether to laugh more at the charlatan who spreads so much haze about himself—amid which one can judge nothing distinctly, yet imagine all the more—or more at the public that guilelessly persuades itself that its inability to recognize and grasp this masterpiece of insight distinctly comes about because new truths are being tossed at it in whole heaps, against which the detail (by way of measured explanations and methodical examination of the principles) seems to it to be mere botchwork.

§ 48. On the relation of genius to taste

The judging of beautiful objects as such calls for taste; fine art itself, however — namely the bringing-forth of such objects — calls for genius.

If genius is taken to be a talent for fine art (this being the sense that properly belongs to the word), and if, on that understanding, one wants to break it down into the faculties whose combination is required to make up such a talent, then one must first fix precisely the difference between beauty in nature — for judging which taste alone is enough — and beauty in art, whose very possibility (a matter that judging such an object must likewise keep in view) presupposes genius.

Beauty in nature is a beautiful thing; beauty in art is a beautiful representation of a thing.

To judge something in nature as beautiful, I do not first require a concept of what kind of thing the object is supposed to be; in other words, I need not be acquainted with its material purposiveness (its end), for the bare form, even where the end is unknown, is what pleases on its own account in the judging. If, on the other hand, the object is presented as something produced by art and is to be pronounced beautiful in that capacity, then — since art always assumes an end in the cause (and in its causality) — one must first lay down a concept of what the thing is supposed to be; and because the perfection of a thing consists in the agreement of its manifold with an inner determination of it as an end, the judging of beauty in art will have to reckon with that perfection as well, something about which the judging of a beauty in nature (as such) raises no question whatever. — Admittedly, in judging above all the living objects of nature — say, a human being or a horse — one usually also takes objective purposiveness into account in order to pass verdict on their beauty; but in that case the judgment is no longer purely aesthetic, that is, a mere judgment of taste. Nature is then judged not as it seems to be art, but insofar as it genuinely is art (even if of a superhuman kind); and the teleological judgment supplies the aesthetic one with its ground and condition, on which the latter has to rely. Here too, when someone remarks, for instance, "that is a beautiful woman," what is actually being thought is nothing but this: that nature, in this shape, gives a beautiful presentation of the ends of the female frame; for one has to look past the bare form toward a concept, so that the object comes to be thought in this manner by way of a logically conditioned aesthetic judgment.

It is exactly here that fine art displays its excellence: it renders in beautiful description things that, in nature itself, would be ugly or displeasing. The Furies, diseases, the ravages of war, and suchlike can, taken as harmful things, be given a very beautiful description, and may even be depicted in a painting; there is but one species of ugliness that cannot be rendered true to nature without wrecking all aesthetic satisfaction, and with it beauty in art: namely, the kind that stirs up disgust. For in that strange sensation, which rests on sheer imagination, the object is presented as if it were pressing itself upon us to be enjoyed, a thing against which we nevertheless strive with all our force; and so, within our sensation, the artistic representation of the object ceases to be told apart from the nature of the object itself, whereupon the former can no longer possibly count as beautiful. The art of sculpture, likewise, because in its works art is nearly mistaken for nature, has barred from its figures any direct representation of ugly objects, allowing them instead — death, say (in the guise of a beautiful genius), or the courage of war (in the figure of Mars) — to be presented only through an allegory or through attributes that make a pleasing impression, and thus only indirectly, by way of an interpretation supplied by reason and not for a merely aesthetic power of judgment.

This is what may be said about the beautiful representation of an object — a representation that is, strictly, nothing more than the form of the presentation of a concept, the manner by which that concept comes to be communicated to everyone. — Yet the giving of this form to a product of fine art demands taste and nothing more; against taste the artist gauges his work, once he has trained and refined it on all sorts of examples drawn from art or from nature, and through repeated, frequently toilsome efforts to meet its demand he arrives at the form that satisfies him: so the form is not, so to speak, a matter of inspiration or of some free surge of the mental faculties, but of a slow and downright vexing correction, whose aim is to render it fit for the thought while still doing no harm to the freedom in the play of those faculties.

Taste, however, is only a power of judging, not a productive power; and something's being in accordance with it does not on that account make it a work of fine art: it might be a product that belongs to useful and mechanical art, or indeed to science, turned out in keeping with settled rules — rules that admit of being learned and have to be observed to the letter. The pleasing form one confers on it merely serves as a vehicle for communication and, so to say, a mode of presentation, in regard to which a certain latitude still remains, even where the thing is in other respects tied to a fixed end. So we require of a table service, or of a moral treatise, or even of a sermon, that it carry this form of fine art in itself, without on that account appearing affected; and yet we shall not for all that name such things works of fine art. Under that heading, by contrast, we count a poem, a musical composition, a gallery of pictures, and the like; and in a putative work of fine art of this sort one may frequently observe genius without taste in the one case, and taste without genius in the other.

§ 49. On the mental powers that make up genius

Of certain products, from which one expects that they should present themselves, at least in part, as fine art, one says: they are without spirit; even though, as far as taste is concerned, one finds nothing in them to censure. A poem can be quite pretty and elegant, yet it is without spirit. A story is precise and orderly, yet without spirit. A solemn address is thorough and at the same time refined, yet without spirit. Many a conversation is not without entertainment, yet still without spirit; even of a woman one may say: she is pretty, talkative, and well-mannered, yet without spirit. What, then, is it that one understands here by spirit?

Spirit, taken in its aesthetic sense, denotes the enlivening principle within the mind. But the means by which this principle animates the soul—the material that it puts to this use—is what sets the mind's powers purposively astir, that is, into a play of the sort that keeps itself going and of itself reinforces the powers directed to it.

Now I contend that this principle is nothing other than the faculty for presenting aesthetic ideas; and by an aesthetic idea I mean a representation of the imagination that occasions much thought without any determinate thought, that is, concept, being capable of being adequate to it, so that no language can ever wholly attain it and make it intelligible. — One sees readily enough that it is the counterpart (pendant) to a rational idea, which is, the other way about, a concept for which no intuition (imaginative representation) could ever prove adequate.

For the imagination, taken as a productive cognitive faculty, is exceedingly potent in fashioning, so to speak, a second nature out of the stuff supplied to it by the actual one. We divert ourselves with it wherever experience strikes us as too commonplace; and we recast that experience too—still, to be sure, on analogical laws, yet also on principles seated higher up, in reason (principles no less natural to us than those whereby the understanding grasps empirical nature)—and in doing so we are sensible of our liberty from that law of association which clings to the empirical use of the said faculty, a law under which nature does indeed lend us material, though this material can be worked up by us into something wholly other, namely into what outstrips nature.

Representations of the imagination of this sort one is entitled to call ideas: in part because they do at least strive after something that lies beyond the frontier of experience, thus attempting to approach a presentation of the concepts of reason (the intellectual ideas), which lends them the semblance of an objective reality; and, on the other side—indeed principally—because, as inner intuitions, they can have no concept fully answering to them. The poet makes bold to give sensible embodiment to rational ideas of invisible beings—the kingdom of the blessed, the kingdom of the damned, eternity, the creation, and suchlike; or else to bring within the reach of sense, past the barriers of experience, things that do have their instances in experience, such as death, envy, and every vice, and likewise love, renown, and suchlike, by means of an imagination that vies with reason's anticipatory play in reaching toward a maximum, doing so in a completeness for which nature affords no instance; and it is, properly speaking, the art of poetry wherein the faculty of aesthetic ideas can manifest itself in its full extent. This faculty, however, considered by itself alone, is strictly no more than a talent (belonging to the imagination).

When, now, a representation of the imagination is subsumed under a concept—one belonging to the concept's presentation, yet by itself provoking so much thought as could never be gathered into a determinate concept, and thereby enlarging the concept itself aesthetically without limit—then the imagination proves creative here and sets the faculty of intellectual ideas (reason) into activity, prompting it, on the occasion of a representation, to think more (something that does belong to the object's concept) than can be grasped and rendered distinct within it.

Forms which do not of themselves make up the presentation of a given concept, but which—merely as accessory representations of the imagination—give expression to the consequences tied to it and to its affinity with others, one terms attributes (aesthetic ones) of an object whose concept, being a rational idea, admits of no adequate presentation. Thus Jupiter's eagle, the lightning in its talons, serves as an attribute of the mighty sovereign of the heavens, and the peacock as an attribute of the splendid queen of heaven. They set before us not (as the logical attributes do) what our concepts of the sublimity and majesty of creation contain, but something else, which prompts the imagination to range over a host of kindred representations that awaken more thought than can be captured in any word-determined concept; and thereby they furnish an aesthetic idea, which serves that rational idea in lieu of a logical presentation, though properly in order to quicken the mind, insofar as it discloses to it the vista of a boundless field of kindred representations. But fine art accomplishes this not in painting or sculpture alone (where the term "attributes" is commonly employed); poetry and eloquence, too, draw the spirit that animates their works entirely from the aesthetic attributes of their objects, which run parallel to the logical ones and lend the imagination an impetus to think, in connection with them—though in an undeveloped fashion—more than admits of being gathered into a concept, and therefore into a determinate verbal expression. — To keep things brief, I must confine myself to just a few instances.

When the great king gives expression to himself in one of his poems thus: »Let us take our leave of life without murmuring and with nothing to regret, leaving the world behind us even then still heaped with our benefactions. Even so the sun, having run its daily course, still sheds a gentle light across the heavens; and the final rays, which it dispatches into the air, are its parting sighs for the welfare of the world«: thus does he quicken his rational idea of a cosmopolitan cast of mind, at the very close of life, by an attribute which the imagination (recollecting all the pleasant things of a lovely summer's day now spent, such as a cloudless evening summons up in our minds) links to that representation, and which rouses a multitude of sensations and accessory representations to which no words answer. Conversely, an intellectual concept can, the other way round, serve as attribute to a representation of the senses, and so animate the latter through the idea of the supersensible—yet only insofar as the aesthetic element subjectively bound up with the consciousness of that representation is drawn upon for the purpose. Thus, to take an example, a certain poet, describing a fair morning, writes: »The sun poured forth, as peace pours forth from virtue.« The consciousness of virtue—even where one only imaginatively puts oneself in the position of a person of virtue—diffuses through the mind a wealth of sublime and tranquillizing feelings, together with a limitless prospect of a glad futurity such as no expression suited to a determinate concept can wholly capture.¹⁵

In a word, the aesthetic idea is a representation of the imagination adjoined to a given concept and combined with so rich a manifold of partial representations, in its free deployment, that no expression marking out a determinate concept can be discovered for it—an idea that accordingly lets one think, over and above a concept, a great deal that cannot be named, whose feeling animates the cognitive faculties and weds spirit to language, which is otherwise mere letter.

The mental powers, then, whose combination (in a certain proportion) makes up genius, are the imagination and the understanding. Only—since in employing the imagination for cognition the imagination stands under the coercion of the understanding and under the restriction of matching the latter's concept, whereas for aesthetic purposes the imagination is free to supply, over and above that agreement with the concept, unsought yet copious undeveloped material that the understanding disregarded in framing its concept, material which the understanding then turns to account not so much objectively, for cognition, as subjectively, for quickening the cognitive powers, and hence indirectly for cognitions after all—genius consists, strictly, in that fortunate relation, teachable by no science and learnable by no diligence, of lighting upon ideas for a given concept and, on the other hand, of striking the expression for them whereby the subjective disposition of mind so produced, as the accompaniment of a concept, may be imparted to others. It is this latter talent, strictly, that goes by the name of spirit; for to render the unnameable in the state of mind attending a given representation, and to make it universally communicable—whether the expression reside in words, in painting, or in sculpture—demands a faculty for seizing the fleeting play of the imagination and fusing it into a concept (one that is, just on that account, original, and that at the same time discloses a fresh rule derivable from no antecedent principles or examples), a concept that lets itself be communicated without any coercion of rules.

When, in the light of these analyses, we cast a backward glance at the explanation given above of what we term genius, the following emerges: first, that genius is a gift for art and not for science, where distinctly cognized rules have to precede and govern the procedure; second, that, being an artistic gift, it presupposes a determinate concept of the product as an end—hence understanding—but likewise a representation (indeterminate though it be) of the material, that is, of the intuition serving to present this concept, and thus a certain relation of imagination to understanding; that, third, it displays itself not so much in carrying out the intended end by presenting a determinate concept as rather in the delivery, or the expression, of aesthetic ideas that supply abundant material for that intention, and hence exhibits the imagination, in its emancipation from every rule-guided direction, as nonetheless purposive for presenting the given concept; and that, fourth and lastly, the unsought, undesigned subjective purposiveness in the free concord of the imagination with the lawful character of the understanding presupposes a proportion and disposition of these powers such as no observance of rules—be it of science or of mechanical imitation—could ever effect, and such as the subject's own nature alone can bring forth.

According to these presuppositions, genius is the exemplary originality of a subject's natural endowment in the free employment of its cognitive faculties. So considered, the product of a genius (with respect to what in it falls to genius rather than to learning that might be acquired or to schooling) is a model—not for imitation (for then the very thing in it that is genius, and that makes the work's spirit, would be forfeited), but for emulation by another genius, in whom it rouses the sense of his own originality to bring into art a freedom from rule-constraint of such a kind that art thereby gains for itself a fresh rule, and the talent shows itself thereby to be exemplary. But since genius is a favorite of nature, such as can be looked upon only as a rare phenomenon, its example gives rise, for other fine minds, to a school, that is, methodical instruction by rules, so far as these admit of being extracted from such products of spirit and their distinctive character; and for these persons fine art is to that degree an imitation, one for which nature, by way of a genius, furnished the rule.

But this imitation turns into aping when the pupil copies everything down to the very flaws that the genius was obliged to permit merely because they could not readily be removed without enfeebling the idea. This audacity is a merit in the genius alone; and a certain boldness of expression, and in general many a departure from the common rule, well befits it, yet is in no way worthy of imitation, but remains always, in itself, a defect that one is bound to try to remove—one for which, nonetheless, the genius is as it were licensed, since the inimitable quality of its flight of spirit would suffer under anxious circumspection. Mannering is a second sort of aping—that of mere peculiarity (originality) as such, undertaken so as to get as far as one possibly can from imitators, yet without possessing the talent to be, therewith, exemplary as well. — There are, admittedly, two sorts (modus) of arranging one's thoughts in delivery, the one termed manner (modus aestheticus), the other method (modus logicus), and they differ in this: that the former has no measuring-rod but the feeling of unity in the presentation, whereas the latter follows determinate principles in the matter; and so for fine art only the former holds good. But a product of art earns the name mannered only when the exposition of its idea in it is contrived for the sake of oddity, rather than made appropriate to the idea. The showy (the precious), the tortuous and the affected, resorted to merely in order to set oneself apart from the commonplace (but without spirit), resemble the demeanor of a man of whom it is said that he listens to himself talk, or who stands and moves as though he were on a stage to be gaped at—conduct that unfailingly gives away a bungler.

§ 50. On the combination of taste with genius in products of fine art

When the question is which matters more in things of fine art, whether that genius shows itself in them or that taste does, this amounts to just the same as if one were to ask whether in this more turns on imagination than on the power of judgment. Now since, with respect to the former, an art rather deserves to be called spirited, but with respect to the latter alone a beautiful art: the latter is at least, as the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non), the foremost thing to which one must attend in judging an art as fine art. For the sake of beauty it is not so indispensably necessary to be rich and original in ideas; what is required, rather, is that this imagination, in its freedom, should accord with the lawfulness of the understanding. For, in its lawless freedom, all the abundance of the former produces nothing but nonsense; by contrast, the power of judgment is the capacity for suiting it to the understanding.

Taste, just like the power of judgment as such, is the discipline (or chastening) of genius; it trims its wings severely and renders it civil or refined; yet it likewise supplies it with guidance about what, and how far, it may spread itself so as to stay purposive; and, by introducing clarity and order into the abundance of thought, it renders the ideas enduring, fit for a lasting and withal universal acclaim, for emulation by others, and for a culture that ever presses forward. If, therefore, in the clash of these two properties within a single product something has to be surrendered, it ought sooner to occur on genius's side: for it is the power of judgment—delivering its pronouncement in matters of fine art from principles all its own—that will more readily countenance a curtailment of the imagination's freedom and wealth than of the understanding.

For fine art, then, imagination, understanding, spirit, and taste would be required¹⁶.

§ 51. On the division of the fine arts

Beauty in general — be it the beauty of nature or of art — may be called the expression of aesthetic ideas: save that in fine art this idea has to be occasioned by a concept of the object, whereas in beautiful nature mere reflection on some given intuition, apart from any concept of what the thing is meant to be, is enough to awaken and communicate the idea for which that object counts as the expression.

So, if we mean to divide the fine arts, we can find — at least for a trial — no principle more convenient than the analogy between art and that manner of expression which human beings use when they speak, so as to communicate to one another, as fully as can be done, not their concepts alone but their sensations too¹⁷. — Such expression lies in the word, the gesture, and the tone (that is, articulation, gesticulation, and modulation). Only the joining of these three modes of expression yields the speaker's complete communication. For thereby thought, intuition, and sensation are carried over to the other person at one and the same time and in union.

Accordingly there exist just three sorts of fine art: the verbal, the formative, and that of the play of sensations (taken as outer impressions of sense). One might also set up this division dichotomously, so that fine art would be split into the art expressing thoughts and the art expressing intuitions, and this last again according merely to its form or else its material (sensation). But it would then turn out too abstract and less answerable to ordinary concepts.

1) The verbal arts comprise rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the skill of pursuing a task of the understanding as though it were a free play of imagination; poetry, the skill of executing a free play of imagination as though it were a task of the understanding.

The orator, then, gives notice of a task and executes it as though it were nothing but a play with ideas, meant to divert his listeners. The poet gives notice of nothing but an entertaining play with ideas, and yet the yield for the understanding turns out as great as if his aim had merely been to carry on its work. The union and concord of the two cognitive faculties — sensibility and understanding — which, though they cannot dispense with one another, still cannot readily be brought together except under compulsion and reciprocal damage, must seem to come about unintentionally and to fall into place of its own accord; otherwise it is not fine art. For this reason all that is contrived and painstaking must be kept out of it; for fine art has to be free art in a twofold sense: first, that it not be a wage-earning labor whose extent could be assessed, exacted, or remunerated by some fixed measure; and second, that the mind, while engaged, should nonetheless — with no eye to any further end — feel itself (regardless of pay) satisfied and stirred.

The orator, then, does supply something he never pledged, namely a diverting play of imagination; yet he also curtails what he did pledge, and what is after all his declared task, namely to keep the understanding purposively engaged. The poet, by contrast, pledges little and gives notice of a bare play with ideas, yet delivers something worthy of a task, namely to feed the understanding as if in sport and, through imagination, to breathe life into its concepts: so that the one, at bottom, gives less, and the other more, than is promised.

2) The formative arts — those that express ideas in sensory intuition (not by way of representations of mere imagination, which words call forth) — fall either under sensory truth or under sensory semblance. The first is termed plastic art, the second painting. Both turn shapes in space into the expression of ideas: the former makes shapes recognizable to two senses, sight and touch (though to touch not on the score of beauty), the latter to sight alone. The aesthetic idea (the archetype, the original image) underlies both in imagination; but the shape that gives it expression (the ectype, the after-image) is furnished either through its corporeal extension (the way the object exists in itself) or through the manner in which it depicts itself to the eye (its appearance across a surface); or — this coming to the same as the former — either the reference to an actual end, or merely the semblance of one, is made the condition for reflection.

Under plastic art, the first species of the fine formative arts, fall sculpture and architecture. The first is the one that renders in bodily form concepts of things as they might exist in nature (yet, being fine art, with an eye to aesthetic purposiveness); the second is the art whose task is to render — for this aim, though at once in an aesthetically purposive manner — concepts of things possible only through art, things whose form takes as its determining ground, not nature, but some arbitrary end. With the latter a certain use of the artificial object is the chief matter, to which, as a condition, the aesthetic ideas stand confined. With the former the bare expression of aesthetic ideas is the chief aim. Thus statues of men, gods, animals, and suchlike belong to the first species; whereas temples, or splendid edifices meant for public gatherings, and likewise dwellings, triumphal arches, columns, cenotaphs, and suchlike raised for commemorative honor, pertain to architecture. Indeed every article of household furnishing (the cabinetmaker's work and suchlike things for use) may be reckoned here: because the product's fitness for a certain use makes up the essence of a work of building; whereas a bare sculptural work, fashioned solely to be looked at and meant to please in its own right, is, considered as a corporeal presentation, nothing but an imitation of nature, though still with an eye to aesthetic ideas: in which the sensory truth must not be pressed so far that the thing ceases to look like art and a product of choice.

Painting, the second species of formative art, which sets forth sensory semblance artificially bound up with ideas, I would separate into the beautiful depiction of nature and the beautiful assembling of her products. The former would be proper painting, the latter landscape gardening. For the first gives merely the semblance of corporeal extension; the second gives that in truth, but only the semblance of employment and use toward ends other than the bare play of fancy in the beholding of its forms¹⁸. This latter amounts to nothing more than decking the ground with that same variety (grasses, flowers, shrubs, and trees, and even waters, hills, and dales) with which nature sets it out for intuition, only put together in another way and to suit certain ideas. Yet the beautiful assembling of corporeal things, too, is offered to the eye alone, just as painting is; the sense of touch can supply no intuitive representation of a form of that kind. Under painting in the wide sense I would further reckon the adorning of rooms with tapestries, ornamental fixtures, and every kind of beautiful furnishing that serves only for viewing; likewise the art of dressing with taste (rings, snuffboxes, and the rest). For a bed of every sort of flower, a room with every sort of trinket (even the ladies' finery included) make up, at some grand celebration, a kind of picture which, like the pictures properly so named (those not perhaps aiming to teach history or natural science), is there only to be gazed at, so as to keep the imagination busy in its free play among ideas and, with no fixed end, to engage the aesthetic power of judgment. However much the workmanship in all this ornamentation may differ mechanically and call for wholly different artificers, the judgment of taste is, as to what is beautiful in this art, still settled in one and the same way: namely, to appraise the forms alone (with no regard for any end), in the way they offer themselves to the eye, whether singly or in combination, by the effect they work upon the imagination. — That formative art may, on the analogy, be reckoned as gesture within a language finds its warrant in this: through such shapes the artist's spirit lends a corporeal expression to what he has thought and how, and gets the thing itself, as it were, to speak in mime — a most everyday play of our fancy, which reads into lifeless things, in keeping with their form, a spirit uttering itself out of them.

3) The art of the beautiful play of the sensations (sensations produced from without, and which must all the same admit of universal communication) can bear on nothing but the ratio among the several degrees of attunement (tension) belonging to the sense in which the sensation resides, that is, on its tone; and in this wide acceptation of the term it may be split into the artificial play of the sensations of hearing and of those of sight, hence into music on the one hand and the art of color on the other. — It is a striking thing that these two senses, over and above the receptivity for impressions needed to derive something from outer objects by means of their concepts, are further capable of a special sensation coupled with that receptivity, one of which it cannot rightly be settled whether it rests on sense or on reflection; and that this affectibility can nonetheless at times be wanting, even though in other respects the sense, so far as its employment for cognizing objects goes, is not in the least defective, but on the contrary quite exceptionally refined . That is to say, one cannot declare with certainty whether a color or a tone (sound) is a merely agreeable sensation, or is already of itself a beautiful play of sensations that, as such, brings with it in aesthetic judging a satisfaction in the form. If one reflects on how fast the tremors of light — or, in the second case, of the air — occur, a rapidity that in all likelihood far outstrips our whole capacity to appraise, directly in perception, the ratio of the temporal division they involve, one would suppose that only the effect of these oscillations upon the elastic portions of our body is felt, while the temporal division they produce goes unremarked and undrawn into judging, so that with colors and tones only agreeableness, and not beauty of their composition, is conjoined. If one weighs, on the other side, first, the mathematics that may be stated concerning the ratio of these vibrations in music and their appraisal, and appraises the contrast of colors, as is only fair, on the analogy with music; if one calls to mind, secondly, the admittedly rare cases of persons who, though blessed with the keenest eyes in the world, could not tell colors apart, and with the sharpest ears could not tell tones apart, and likewise, for those capable of it, the noticing of an altered quality (and not just of the sensation's intensity) across the different tensions on the color-scale or tone-scale, and likewise that the number of these is fixed for comprehensible distinctions: then one might well feel driven to view the sensations of both, not as a bare sense-impression, but as the effect of an appraisal of form within the play of many sensations. The difference made by adopting the one view or the other in judging the ground of music would, however, alter only the definition to this extent, that one would declare it either, as we have done, the beautiful play of sensations (through hearing) or the play of agreeable sensations. On the first mode of explanation alone is music represented wholly as beautiful, whereas on the second it comes out as agreeable art (at least in part).

§ 52. On the combination of the fine arts in one and the same product

Eloquence, in a play, admits of union with a pictorial rendering of its subjects and no less of objects; poetry unites with music in song, and song, in turn, with pictorial (theatrical) staging in an opera; while in a dance the play of sensations within music is matched with the play of figures — and so on. So too the presentation of the sublime, so far as it counts as fine art, may be joined with beauty in a rhymed tragedy, a didactic poem, or an oratorio ; and though such couplings render fine art still more ingenious, whether they render it more beautiful as well — given that so many differing sorts of satisfaction here intersect — may in several of these instances be called into question. In all fine art, however, what is essential resides in the form that proves purposive for observing and appraising it — where the pleasure is at the same time culture and tunes the spirit toward ideas, thereby rendering it open to yet more such pleasure and diversion — and not in the matter of sensation (in charm or emotion), where the aim is mere enjoyment, which leaves nothing lasting in the idea, blunts the spirit, comes to sicken one of the object by degrees, and, through the mind's awareness of a disposition that reason's judgment finds counter-purposive, turns it discontented with itself and capricious.

Should the fine arts fail to be linked, whether nearly or distantly, to moral ideas — which alone bring with them a satisfaction that stands on its own — then this latter outcome proves their final destiny. Thereafter they merely furnish diversion, a need that grows all the greater the more one resorts to it so as to banish the mind's discontent with itself — and one thereby only grows ever more useless and still more discontented with oneself. On the whole, nature's beauties best serve that first purpose when one is trained from early on to watch them, to appraise them, and to admire them.

§ 53. Comparison of the aesthetic value of the fine arts with one another

Of them all, the art of poetry—indebted for its origin almost wholly to genius, and least willing of any to be steered by precept or by example—lays claim to the foremost rank. It broadens the mind in that it releases the imagination into freedom and, within the bounds of a given concept and among the unlimited variety of possible forms consonant with it, brings forward the one form that unites the presentation of that concept with a fullness of thought which no linguistic expression ever wholly matches, and so raises itself aesthetically to ideas. It strengthens the mind by letting it feel its own capacity—free, spontaneously active, and independent of any determination through nature—to survey and appraise nature as appearance under aspects that experience does not of its own accord offer, either to sense or to the understanding, and so to enlist it for the purposes of the supersensible and, as it were, as its schema. It toys with the semblance it calls forth at its own pleasure, and yet deceives no one in doing so; for it openly declares its occupation to be mere play, which all the same the understanding can turn to purposive account for its own business. — Eloquent oratory—taken as the art of persuasion, in other words of misleading through beautiful semblance (as ars oratoria), rather than as mere skill in speaking well (eloquence and style)—amounts to a dialectic that draws upon poetry only so far as it must, so as to sway minds toward the speaker, for his own benefit, before any judgment is reached, and to strip them of their freedom; hence it can be commended neither at the bar nor from the pulpit. For where civil laws are at stake, or the rights of particular individuals, or the enduring edification of minds and their direction toward a proper acquaintance with their duty and its scrupulous discharge, it falls below the dignity of so weighty an undertaking to betray even the faintest hint of exuberance in wit and imagination—and less still any trace of the art of talking people round and winning them over to someone's benefit. For granted that it may now and then be put to ends that are, in themselves, rightful and worthy of praise, it becomes reprehensible all the same, because in this fashion the maxims and dispositions are corrupted at the subjective level, however lawful the deed may be objectively: for merely doing what is right does not suffice; one must also carry it out on that ground alone—namely, because it is right. Besides, the plain distinct concept of such kinds of human business—joined to a vivid illustration through examples, and committing no breach of the rules governing the euphony of language or the seemliness of expression suited to ideas of reason (which taken together constitute fine speech)—already carries in itself influence enough upon human minds that there is no call to enlist, over and above it, the machinery of persuasion; and this machinery, precisely because it lends itself equally to varnishing over or masking vice and error, can never quite root out the covert suspicion of a contrived deception. In the art of poetry everything proceeds honestly and sincerely. It avows that it means to conduct a merely diverting play with the imagination, one whose form accords with the laws of the understanding; and it makes no claim to creep up on the understanding and ensnare it by means of sensible presentation.¹⁹

Next after poetry I would rank—where what is at issue is charm and the stirring of the mind—that art which, of all the speaking arts, stands nearest to it and blends with it, moreover, quite naturally, namely the art of tone. For though it does indeed speak by means of sensations alone, devoid of concepts, and thus, unlike poetry, leaves nothing behind for one to ponder, it nevertheless stirs the mind in more varied fashion and—transient though this be—more intimately; yet it is, to be sure, enjoyment rather than culture (the byplay of thought that it rouses along the way is nothing but the upshot of an association that is, so to speak, mechanical); and, weighed by reason, it ranks below every other of the fine arts in worth. Hence, like every enjoyment, it demands frequent change and does not bear repeated reiteration without producing weariness. The charm it exerts, being so universally communicable, appears to rest upon the following: that each expression of a language carries, within its connected use, a tone fitted to that expression's sense; that such a tone marks, to a greater or lesser degree, an affect in the one speaking and calls forth the same, reciprocally, in the one listening, in whom it in turn kindles the very idea that language voices by means of such a tone; and that, just as modulation amounts to a kind of universal language of sensations intelligible to every human being, so the art of tone wields this language by itself alone, in its whole force, that is, as the language of the affects, and in this way, obeying the law of association, imparts to all the aesthetic ideas that are by nature bound up with it; but that, since those aesthetic ideas are neither concepts nor determinate thoughts, the manner in which these sensations are put together (harmony and melody) takes the place merely of the form of a language, serving—through a proportioned attunement of those sensations (which, seeing that with tones it depends on the ratio between the number of vibrations of the air within one and the same span of time, insofar as the tones are joined whether simultaneously or in succession, can be set mathematically under certain rules)—to express the aesthetic idea of a coherent whole of an unnameable fullness of thought, answering to a certain theme that makes up the affect reigning in the piece. It is upon this mathematical form—even though determinate concepts do not represent it—that the whole of the satisfaction depends, the satisfaction which mere reflection upon so great a throng of sensations, whether these accompany or succeed one another, attaches to their interplay as a condition, holding for all alike, of its beauty; and this form alone is that by which taste may venture to lay claim, ahead of time, to a right over the judgment of every person.

Yet mathematics certainly plays not the least part in the charm and the emotional stirring that music brings about; it is merely the unavoidable prerequisite (conditio sine qua non) for the proportion among these impressions, both as they are joined together and as they succeed one another, which makes it possible to gather them into a unity, keeping them from cancelling each other out and letting them instead coalesce, through affects that resonate with them, into an uninterrupted stirring and animation of the mind, and so into an agreeable enjoyment of oneself.

If, by contrast, one appraises the worth of the fine arts according to the culture they impart to the mind, taking as one's yardstick the enlargement of those powers that have to converge, within the power of judgment, toward cognition, then music occupies, in that regard, the lowest rank among the fine arts (whereas among those prized at once for their agreeableness it stands perhaps at the top), since it does no more than play with sensations. The formative arts, accordingly, far outstrip it in this regard; for by setting the imagination into a play that is free and yet, at the same time, answerable to the understanding, they carry on a business alongside, since what they bring forth is a product that supplies the concepts of the understanding with a lasting vehicle, one commending itself to those very concepts, so as to advance their union with sensibility and thereby, so to speak, the urbanity of the higher powers of cognition. Arts of the two kinds follow wholly divergent paths: the one proceeds from sensations up to indeterminate ideas, whereas the other sets out from determinate ideas and moves toward sensations. An impression of the lasting sort belongs to the latter, whereas the former leave only a transitory one. The imagination can recall the latter and pleasantly entertain itself with them; the former, however, either fade away entirely, or, when they are involuntarily repeated by the imagination, are irksome to us rather than pleasant. Music, moreover, is dogged by a certain want of urbanity, in that—owing chiefly to the make of its instruments—it spreads its influence wider than is asked of it (into the neighborhood) and so, as it were, obtrudes itself, and thereby curtails the freedom of others who stand outside the musical gathering; the arts that address themselves to the eyes commit no such trespass, for one has merely to look away whenever one would rather not let their impression in. The case here is much like that of the pleasure one takes in a scent that diffuses itself far and wide. The person who draws his perfumed handkerchief from his pocket treats everyone around and beside him against their will and compels them, if they want to breathe, to partake at the same time; which is also why it has gone out of fashion.²⁰ — Of the formative arts my own preference would go to painting: in part because, being the art of drawing, it lies at the foundation of all the rest of them; in part because it can press far deeper into the region of ideas and, conformably to these, can widen the field of intuition to a greater extent than the others are allowed.

§ 54. Remark

There is, as we have repeatedly demonstrated, an essential difference between that which pleases merely in the judging of it and that which gratifies (pleases in sensation). This latter kind cannot be expected of everyone as the former kind can. Gratification (its cause may well lie even in ideas) appears in every instance to rest in a feeling that the whole of the human being's life is being promoted, and therewith his physical welfare too, that is, his health; and thus Epicurus, who declared all gratification to be fundamentally a bodily sensation, was to this degree perhaps not mistaken, erring only about himself when he counted intellectual and indeed practical satisfaction as gratifications. Once one keeps the latter distinction before one's eyes, one can explain how a gratification can itself displease the person who feels it (like the joy of a needy but right-minded person over the inheritance from his loving but stingy father), or how a deep pain can nonetheless please the person who suffers it (the sorrow of a widow over the death of her deserving husband), or how a gratification can please us over and above (like our gratification in the sciences we pursue), or a pain (e.g., hatred, envy, and vindictiveness) can moreover displease us. Here the satisfaction or dissatisfaction rests on reason and is one and the same as approval or disapproval; but gratification and pain can rest only on feeling, or on the prospect of a possible well-being or ill-being (on whatever ground it may be).

Because it promotes the feeling of health, every shifting free play of sensations (which has no purpose at its basis) gratifies: whether or not, in judging by reason, its object and even this very gratification meet with our satisfaction; and such gratification may climb as high as an affect, although the object as such holds no interest for us — at any rate none commensurate with the degree of that affect. We can divide it into the game of chance, the game of tone, and the game of thought. The first calls for an interest — of vanity or of self-interest — which is nevertheless nowhere near so great as our interest in the way we set about procuring it for ourselves; the second calls merely for the changing of the sensations, every one of which bears a relation to affect, though without reaching the degree of an affect, and rouses aesthetic ideas; the third arises solely from the changing of representations within the power of judgment, whereby no thought bearing any interest is produced, and yet the mind is thereby quickened.

How gratifying the games must be, without any need to lay an interested aim as their basis, is shown by all our evening companies; for without a game hardly any of them can keep itself going. Yet the affects of hope, fear, joy, anger, and scorn come into play here, since at every moment they exchange their roles, and are so vivid that through them, as an inner motion, the body's whole business of life seems to be furthered — as the resulting cheerfulness of mind attests — although nothing at all has been either gained or learned. But since the game of chance is not a beautiful game, we shall set it aside here. Music and matter for laughter, on the other hand, are two sorts of play with aesthetic ideas — or with representations of the understanding as well — by means of which nothing is ultimately thought, and which can nonetheless afford a lively gratification through their variation alone; and by this they make it tolerably clear that in both cases the enlivening is purely bodily, however much it be stirred up by ideas of the mind, and that it is the feeling of health, brought about by a movement of the viscera answering to that play, which makes up the entire gratification — so esteemed as refined and full of spirit — of a merry gathering. What makes up the gratification one takes in the fact that the body can be reached through the soul as well, so that the soul may serve as the body's physician, is not the judging of harmonies in tones or in flashes of wit — which, with its beauty, serves merely as an indispensable vehicle — but rather the promoted business of life in the body, the affect that sets the viscera and the diaphragm in motion, in short the feeling of health (which apart from some such prompting cannot otherwise be felt).

In music, this play proceeds from the body's sensation to aesthetic ideas (of the objects for affects), and from these it then returns once more, though with concentrated force upon the body. In jesting (which, no less than the former, deserves to be counted among the agreeable arts rather than the fine ones) the play begins from thoughts that, one and all, in so far as they wish to give themselves sensible expression, engage the body too; and inasmuch as the understanding suddenly slackens in this presentation, wherein it fails to find what it had expected, one feels the effect of that slackening in the body through the vibrating of the organs, which promotes the recovery of their equilibrium and exerts a salutary influence upon health.

There must be something absurd in anything meant to provoke a hearty, convulsive laughter (something, therefore, in which the understanding by itself can take no satisfaction). Laughter is an affect that springs from the abrupt conversion of a tensed expectation into nothing. This very conversion, which is certainly not delightful for the understanding, does nonetheless indirectly delight very vividly for a moment. The cause, then, must reside in the effect that the representation has upon the body, together with the body's reciprocal action upon the mind; and this not because the representation, objectively taken, is an object of gratification (for how could a deceived expectation gratify?), but purely because, being a mere play of representations, it produces within the body an equilibrium of the vital forces.

If someone recounts that an Indian who, at the table of an Englishman in Surat, saw a bottle of ale being opened and all this beer, changed into foam, rushing out, expressed his great astonishment with many exclamations, and, upon the Englishman's question: what is there here to be so astonished at? answered: I am not astonished either that it comes out, but rather at how you managed to get it in, then we laugh, and it gives us a hearty delight: not because we perhaps find ourselves cleverer than this ignorant person, or on account of anything else pleasing that the understanding lets us notice in it; but rather our expectation was strained and suddenly vanishes into nothing. Or take the heir of a wealthy kinsman who means to give him a thoroughly solemn burial, but laments that he simply cannot succeed at it; for, as he puts it, the more I pay my hired mourners to wear a grieving face, the more cheerful they come to look — at which we laugh aloud, and the reason lies in this: that an expectation is all at once turned into nothing. One must indeed observe: that it must convert itself not into the positive opposite of an expected object — for that is always something and can often grieve us, — but rather into nothing. For if someone stirs up great expectation in us with the telling of a tale, and at the close we at once see through its untruth, then it gives us displeasure; as, e.g., the tale of people who are supposed to have gotten gray hair in a single night from great grief. If, by contrast, another wag replies to a tale of that kind by relating in great detail the sorrow of a merchant who, on his way home from India to Europe with his entire fortune in goods, found himself forced during a violent storm to cast the whole cargo overboard, and who grieved to such a degree that his wig went gray in that very night: then we burst out laughing, and it affords us gratification, because for a time we go on knocking our own misstep — over an object that is anyway a matter of indifference to us, or rather the idea we keep chasing — to and fro like a ball, though all we intend is to catch hold of it and keep it. It is not here the dismissal of a liar or a blockhead that awakens the gratification: for even on its own the latter tale, told with assumed seriousness, would throw a company into bright laughter; and the former would ordinarily not even be worth the attention.

It is remarkable that, in every case of this sort, the jest must harbor within itself something capable of deceiving us for an instant; and so, once the semblance dissolves into nothing, the mind turns back to it to make the attempt yet again, and in this way, through a tensing and slackening that follow one another in quick succession, is flung back and forth and thrown into vacillation: which — since the recoil from what had, so to speak, drawn the string tight came about suddenly (and not by a gradual easing) — must generate a motion of the mind together with an inward bodily motion harmonizing with it, a motion that continues involuntarily and produces weariness, yet therewith also a cheering-up (the effects of an agitation that redounds to health).

For suppose that, along with all our thoughts, some movement or other in the organs of the body stands harmoniously conjoined: one will then more or less comprehend how that abrupt shifting of the mind — now to one standpoint, now to another, so as to regard its object — can be matched by an alternating tautening and slackening of the elastic portions of our viscera, which imparts itself to the diaphragm (just like what ticklish people feel): whereupon the lungs drive the air out in bursts following rapidly one on another, and thus produce a movement conducive to health — a movement that by itself, and not what goes on in the mind, is itself the real ground of the gratification afforded by a thought that at bottom represents nothing. — Voltaire remarked that, as a counterweight against the many toils of life, heaven has bestowed on us two things: hope and sleep. He could have added laughter to these; if only the means of arousing it in rational beings were as readily at hand, and the wit or the originality of temper required for it were not just as rare as the talent is frequent for composing in a head-breaking way like mystical brooders, in a neck-breaking way like geniuses, or in a heart-breaking way like sentimental novelists (and probably moralists of the same stripe).

One may therefore, as it appears to me, readily concede to Epicurus the following: that all gratification, even when brought on by concepts that awaken aesthetic ideas, is animal — that is, bodily — sensation; without on that account doing the least injury to the spiritual feeling of reverence toward moral ideas — a feeling that is no gratification but rather an esteem for oneself (for the humanity within us), one that lifts us above any need of it — nor even to the less noble feeling of taste.

A thing compounded of the two shows itself in naïveté, which is the breaking-forth of that sincerity, originally natural to humankind, against the art of dissimulation that has turned into a second nature. One laughs at the simplicity that does not yet understand how to dissemble; and yet one also delights in the simplicity of nature, which here draws a line through that art. One expected the everyday convention of the affected utterance carefully laid out for beautiful semblance; and behold! it is uncorrupted, guiltless nature that one was not at all prepared to meet with, and which the one who let it show through had no intention of laying bare. That the beautiful but false semblance, which ordinarily counts for a great deal in our judgment, is here suddenly converted into nothing, that the rogue in ourselves is, as it were, exposed, brings forth the movement of the mind in two opposed directions one after the other, which at the same time gives the body a wholesome shaking. But the fact that something infinitely better than all assumed convention — the purity of one's cast of thought (or at any rate the predisposition to it) — has, for all that, not been wholly extinguished in human nature, mingles into this play of the power of judgment a strain of seriousness and high esteem. Yet since it is only an appearance that shows itself for a brief while, and the veil of the art of dissimulation is soon drawn across once more, there mingles into it at the same time a certain regret — a stir of tenderness which, treated as play, blends very readily with such good-natured laughter, and in fact is commonly so blended with it, while it also serves to make good, to the person who supplies the occasion for it, his embarrassment at not yet having been made worldly-wise in the human manner. — An art of being naïve is for that reason a contradiction; to portray naïveté in a fictitious character, however, is indeed possible, and is a fine art, albeit likewise a rare one. Naïveté ought not to be confounded with that frank simplicity which refrains from artificializing nature merely because it fails to grasp what the art of social intercourse consists in.

To that which is heartening, closely akin to the gratification from laughter, and belonging to the originality of spirit but precisely not to the talent of fine art, one may also count the humorous manner . Humor in the good sense, that is, means the talent of being able to put oneself voluntarily into a certain disposition of mind in which all things are judged quite otherwise than usual (indeed inverted) and yet in conformity with certain principles of reason within such a frame of mind. Anyone who is subject to such alterations against his will is moody; but the one who can assume them at will and to a purpose (with a view to a vivid presentation by way of a contrast that provokes laughter), he together with his manner of delivery is termed humorous. This manner, though, has its place among the agreeable arts rather than the fine ones, since the object of the latter must invariably exhibit a certain dignity in itself, and for that reason calls for a measure of seriousness in the presentation, just as taste calls for it in the judging.

Of the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment

Second Section. Dialectic of the aesthetic power of judgment

§ 55.

For a power of judgment to be dialectical, it must first of all be ratiocinating; that is to say, the judgments it delivers have to claim universality, and to do so a priori²¹, since the dialectic lies precisely in the mutual opposition of judgments of that kind. That is why the incompatibility of aesthetic judgments of sense (regarding the agreeable and the disagreeable) is not, for its part, dialectical. The conflict of judgments of taste, too, insofar as everyone appeals merely to his own taste, constitutes no dialectic of taste: because no one intends to turn his own judgment into a universal rule. There thus remains no concept of any dialectic that could bear on taste except one belonging to a dialectic of the critique of taste (and not to taste itself) in regard to its principles: for with respect to the ground on which judgments of taste are possible at all, mutually opposed concepts arise in a natural and unavoidable manner. Accordingly, a transcendental critique of taste will contain a portion entitled to be called a dialectic of the aesthetic power of judgment, but only in the event that an antinomy turns up among the principles of this faculty—one that throws its lawfulness, and thus its inner possibility too, into doubt.

§ 56. Representation of the antinomy of taste

The first of taste's commonplaces is contained in that saying by which anyone devoid of taste thinks to guard himself against reproach: everyone has his own taste. This is as much as to say: what determines this judgment is purely subjective (gratification or pain), and the judgment can claim no necessary assent from others.

The second commonplace on the same subject, drawn upon even by those who allow the judgment of taste the right of pronouncing itself valid for everyone, is this: about taste there can be no disputing. This is as much as to say: the ground determining a judgment of taste might well be objective too, yet it cannot be reduced to determinate concepts; and so, by means of proofs, nothing can be decided regarding the judgment itself, even though one may quite rightly and with good reason contend about it. For contending and disputing are indeed one and the same in this, that through the mutual resistance of judgments they seek to produce unanimity among them, but they diverge in this, that disputing hopes to effect it by determinate concepts taken as grounds of proof, and hence posits objective concepts as the grounds of the judgment. But where this is regarded as impracticable, disputing too is judged to be equally impracticable.

One readily sees that between these two commonplaces a proposition is missing, one that is not indeed in proverbial circulation but is nonetheless contained in everyone's mind, namely: about taste one can contend (though not dispute). This proposition, however, contains the contrary of the topmost proposition. For wherever contending is to be allowed, there must be some hope of reaching mutual agreement; and thus one has to be able to rely on grounds of the judgment which possess more than a merely private validity and are therefore not purely subjective, a demand to which that very principle, everyone has his own taste, runs directly counter.

Thus with regard to the principle of taste the following antinomy shows itself:

1) Thesis. The judgment of taste rests upon no concepts; for were that not so, one could dispute about it (settle it by means of proofs).

2) Antithesis. The judgment of taste does rest upon concepts; for were that not so, then, whatever its diversity, no contention over it would even be possible (to make claim to the necessary concurrence of others in this judgment).

§ 57. Resolution of the antinomy of taste

The conflict of those principles that underlie every judgment of taste (they are simply the two peculiarities of such judgments set out earlier in the Analytic) admits of no removal save by making the following clear: that the concept by which, in judgments of this kind, one relates to the object is not employed in a single sense across both maxims of the aesthetic power of judgment; that this doubled sense, or standpoint of judging, is required by our transcendental power of judgment; but that the semblance arising when the one is confounded with the other, being a natural illusion, cannot be avoided either.

Some concept or other the judgment of taste must indeed involve; for without one it could lay no claim whatever to a necessary validity holding for everyone. Yet just for that reason it must not be demonstrable from a concept, for a concept may be either determinable, or else in itself indeterminate and, along with that, indeterminable. The concept of the understanding belongs to the first sort, being determinable by way of predicates drawn from a sensible intuition able to answer to it; to the second belongs the transcendental concept that reason forms of the supersensible, which underlies all such intuition and hence permits no further theoretical determination.

Now, the judgment of taste does bear upon objects of sense, though not so as to fix for the understanding any concept of them; for it is no judgment of cognition. Being an intuitive, singular representation tied to the feeling of pleasure, it is on that account only a private judgment: and to that extent its validity would reach no further than the individual doing the judging: the object is for me one in which I take satisfaction, whereas with others it may stand quite differently; — each has a taste of his own.

And yet the judgment of taste unquestionably harbors a wider relation of the object's representation (and, along with it, of the subject's), on which we rest the claim that judgments of this kind extend as necessary to everyone: a claim that must accordingly rest on some concept or other as its ground; but on a concept that no intuition can ever determine , by which nothing gets cognized, and from which, consequently, no proof for the judgment of taste can be conducted. A concept of that description is nothing but the pure rational concept of the supersensible, which underlies the object (and the judging subject as well) taken as an object of sense, and thus as appearance. For were such a regard left out of account, the judgment of taste's pretension to universal validity could not be rescued; and if the concept it rests upon were merely some confused concept of the understanding, of perfection perhaps, to which the sensible intuition of the beautiful might be joined as its correlate, then it would at least be intrinsically possible to base the judgment of taste on proofs — which runs counter to the thesis.

But now every contradiction disappears once I put it thus: the judgment of taste rests on a concept (that of a ground, generally, for nature's subjective purposiveness with respect to the power of judgment), from which, however, nothing about the object can be cognized or proved, since it is in itself indeterminable and useless for cognition; yet by this very concept the judgment at the same time gains validity for everyone (in each case, admittedly, as a singular judgment attending the intuition directly): because what determines it may well lie in the concept of that which one can take to be the supersensible substrate of humanity .

Resolving an antinomy hinges on nothing more than the possibility that two propositions, seemingly at odds, in truth fail to contradict each other and can stand together, even where explaining how their concept is possible outstrips our power of cognition. That this semblance is, moreover, natural and, for human reason, inescapable — and likewise why it is so and remains so, though after the apparent contradiction is dissolved it deceives no longer — can be rendered intelligible from the same considerations.

For in both of the conflicting judgments we take the concept, on which a judgment's universal validity has to rest, in one identical meaning, and nonetheless ascribe to it two contrary predicates. Hence the thesis ought properly to run: the judgment of taste has no basis in determinate concepts; and the antithesis: the judgment of taste does rest on a concept, albeit an indeterminate one (that, namely, of the supersensible substrate of appearances); whereupon no conflict remains between them.

Beyond settling this conflict among taste's claims and counterclaims, nothing further lies within our power. It is flatly impossible to furnish some determinate, objective principle of taste by which its judgments might be steered, examined, and proved; for the judgment would then cease to be one of taste. The subjective principle — that indeterminate idea of the supersensible within us — can be pointed to only as the one key for unriddling this power, whose sources stay concealed even from ourselves, and beyond that cannot be made intelligible at all.

What underlies the antinomy here erected and reconciled is the right concept of taste, that is, of taste as a merely reflecting aesthetic power of judgment; and on that basis the two ostensibly conflicting principles were brought together, since both can be true, which is enough. Were one instead to take, as what determines taste (on account of the singularity of the representation underlying the judgment of taste), either agreeableness, as some do, or, as others prefer (on account of its universal validity), the principle of perfection, and to shape the definition of taste to suit: then an antinomy springs up that admits of no reconciliation whatever, save by showing that both of the opposed (yet not merely contradictory) propositions are false: which then proves that the concept underpinning each is at odds with itself. One sees, then, that disposing of the antinomy belonging to the aesthetic power of judgment follows much the same route the Critique took when resolving the antinomies of pure theoretical reason; and that, here as likewise in the Critique of practical reason, the antinomies force us, despite ourselves, to look past the sensible and to search within the supersensible for the point where all our faculties come together a priori: since no other road is left for bringing reason into accord with itself.

Remark I.

Since in transcendental philosophy occasion arises so frequently to set ideas apart from the understanding's concepts, there may be some advantage in bringing in technical terms fitted to their distinction. I trust there will be no objection should I put a few forward. — Ideas, in the widest sense, are representations that relate to an object under a certain principle (subjective or objective), while nonetheless never coming to constitute a cognition of that object. Either they bear on an intuition under a principle that is merely subjective — the mutual accord of the cognitive powers (imagination and understanding) — and then bear the name aesthetic; or they bear on a concept under an objective principle while still never delivering any cognition of the object, and are named ideas of reason; and here the concept is a transcendent one, marked off from the concept of the understanding, beneath which an experience adequately answering to it may always be placed, and which is therefore styled immanent.

An aesthetic idea can never turn into a cognition, for it is an intuition (of the imagination) for which no adequate concept is ever to be had. An idea of reason can never turn into a cognition, for it holds a concept (of the supersensible) to which no commensurate intuition can ever be supplied.

I hold, accordingly, that one may term the aesthetic idea an inexponible representation of the imagination, and the idea of reason an indemonstrable concept of reason. Of each it is taken for granted that it is not simply baseless, but rather (following the account of an idea in general given above) produced in keeping with certain principles of the cognitive powers it answers to (for the one the subjective, for the other the objective principles).

Concepts of the understanding, precisely as such, have at every point to be demonstrable (taking demonstration, as in anatomy, to mean simply exhibiting); that is, whatever object answers to them has always to admit of presentation in intuition (pure or empirical): for it is by this route alone that they turn into cognitions. The concept of magnitude admits of being given a priori in the intuition of space — say, that of a straight line, and so on; the concept of cause in impenetrability, in the collision of bodies, and so on. Both, then, can be borne out by an empirical intuition — that is, the thought of them exhibited in an instance (demonstrated, displayed); and such exhibition must be able to occur: failing which one has no assurance that the thought is not vacant, that is, wanting any object whatever.

Logic ordinarily reserves the terms demonstrable and indemonstrable for propositions alone: though the first would be better named propositions certain only mediately, the second immediately certain ones; for pure philosophy likewise possesses propositions of each sort, understanding thereby true propositions that either do or do not admit of proof. From grounds a priori, however, philosophy as such can indeed prove but not demonstrate — unless one wholly abandons the word's sense, on which demonstrating (ostendere, exhibere) amounts to setting one's concept, in the very act (be it of proving or merely of defining), before intuition as well: an intuition that, where it is a priori, is termed the construction of the concept, but where it is empirical still counts as the display of the object, whereby objective reality is made secure for the concept. The anatomist, accordingly, is said to demonstrate the human eye when, by dissecting this organ, he makes intuitive the concept that he had previously presented in discursive form.

On this footing the rational concept of the supersensible substrate underlying all appearances whatever — or of that which has to be laid at the base of our power of choice in respect of moral laws, namely transcendental freedom — counts already by its very species as an indemonstrable concept and idea of reason, while virtue counts as such only by degree: for to the former nothing whatsoever answering to it in quality can be given in experience at all, whereas in the latter no experiential product of that causality reaches the degree that the idea of reason lays down as its rule.

As, with an idea of reason, the imagination and its intuitions fall short of the concept that is given: so, with an aesthetic idea, the understanding by its concepts never reaches the entire inner intuition that the imagination binds up with a given representation. And since bringing a representation of the imagination under concepts is nothing else than to expound it: the aesthetic idea may fairly be called an inexponible representation of that faculty (at play freely). Further on I shall find room to say more concerning ideas of this sort; for the present I note only this: that both kinds of idea, the rational no less than the aesthetic, must have their principles, and both in reason at that — the one in the objective, the other in the subjective principles governing its use.

On this basis genius, too, may be explained by way of the faculty of aesthetic ideas: which at once discloses why, in what genius produces, it is nature (the subject's), and not any deliberate end of art (the bringing-forth of the beautiful), that furnishes the rule. For since the beautiful is not to be appraised by concepts, but by the purposive tuning of the imagination toward accord with the faculty of concepts as such: it follows that neither rule nor prescription, but solely what is sheer nature in the subject — yet cannot be caught under rules or concepts, namely the supersensible substrate of all its powers (which no concept of the understanding reaches), and hence that in relation to which the final end bestowed by the intelligible in our nature is to bring all our cognitive powers into concord — can serve as the subjective measure for that aesthetic yet unconditioned purposiveness in fine art which is meant to lay a rightful claim to having necessarily to please everyone. It is on this footing alone, moreover, that a subjective and yet universally valid principle a priori can underlie this power, to which no objective principle admits of being prescribed.

Remark II.

A weighty remark presents itself here unbidden: namely, that pure reason has three kinds of antinomy, all of which nevertheless concur in forcing it to quit the otherwise entirely natural assumption that takes objects of sense for things in themselves, letting them pass instead as mere appearances and setting beneath them an intelligible substrate — something supersensible whose concept is a mere idea and yields no cognition properly so called. Lacking such an antinomy, reason could never resolve upon adopting a principle that so severely contracts the field of its speculation, nor upon sacrifices in which so many otherwise glittering hopes are bound to fade away entirely; for even now, when in recompense for this forfeiture a far larger employment opens to it on the practical side, it seems it cannot , without pain, take leave of those hopes and loosen itself from the old attachment.

That there should be three kinds of antinomy has its ground in there being three cognitive powers — understanding, the power of judgment, and reason — every one of them being obliged, as a higher cognitive power, to have its principles a priori; for reason, in passing judgment upon these principles and their use, unrelentingly demands with regard to them all the unconditioned to match the conditioned that is given, an unconditioned that can nevertheless never be found so long as one regards the sensible as belonging to things in themselves, and does not instead place beneath it, as mere appearance, something supersensible (the intelligible substrate of nature outside us and within us) as a thing in itself. Here, then, we have: 1) an antinomy of reason concerning the theoretical use of the understanding, ascending as far as the unconditioned itself, for the faculty of cognition; 2) reason exhibits another such antinomy where the power of judgment is put to aesthetic use, for the feeling of pleasure and displeasure; 3) yet another antinomy, concerning the practical use of reason as legislating for itself, for the faculty of desire: for all of these powers possess their higher principles a priori, and, in obedience to an unavoidable demand of reason, must likewise be able to judge unconditionally in accordance with those principles and to determine their object.

With regard to two such antinomies — the one belonging to the theoretical and the one belonging to the practical use of those higher cognitive powers — we have shown already, in another place, both their unavoidability, in cases where judgments of this sort refuse to look back to a supersensible substrate of the given objects as appearances, and equally their resolvability, as soon as that looking-back does occur. Turning now to the antinomy in the employment of the power of judgment as reason's demand raises it, together with the resolution offered here: there is no way of sidestepping it other than either to deny that any principle a priori underlies the aesthetic judgment of taste — so that every pretension to a necessary universal agreement would be a hollow, baseless fancy, and a judgment of taste would rank as correct merely because it turns out that many concur about it, and even that not really on the score that one suspects a principle a priori behind such concurrence, but (just as with the palate's taste) because the subjects chance to be alike in their make-up; or one would have to grant that the judgment of taste is at bottom a disguised judgment of reason upon a perfection detected in a thing and upon the reference of the manifold within it to an end, and gets called aesthetic solely because of the confusion clinging to this reflection of ours, though in truth it is teleological: on which supposition one might pronounce the resolution of the antinomy through transcendental ideas needless and void, and so reconcile those laws of taste with objects of sense not as bare appearances but as things in themselves as well. But just how little either shift accomplishes has been demonstrated at various points in the exposition of judgments of taste.

Yet if our deduction be allowed at least this much, that it moves along the correct path, however far it may still fall short of full clarity in every particular, then three ideas come to light: first, the supersensible taken at large, with no closer determination, as nature's substrate; second, that same supersensible as the principle of nature's subjective purposiveness for our cognitive power; third, that same supersensible again as the principle of freedom's ends and of the concord of those ends with that purposiveness in the sphere of morals.

§ 58. On the idealism of the purposiveness of nature, as well as of art, as the sole principle of the aesthetic power of judgment

One may, first of all, locate the principle of taste either in the claim that it always judges according to empirical determining grounds, and hence according to grounds given only a posteriori through the senses, or one may grant that it judges from a ground a priori. The former would amount to the empiricism of the critique of taste, the latter to its rationalism. On the first view, the object of our satisfaction would not differ from the agreeable; on the second, were the judgment to rest upon determinate concepts, it would not differ from the good; and so all beauty would be argued away out of the world, with nothing surviving in its place but a special designation, given perhaps to some blend of the two kinds of satisfaction just named. Yet we have demonstrated that grounds of satisfaction a priori likewise exist, grounds that may accordingly stand together with the principle of rationalism, notwithstanding that they admit of no capture in determinate concepts.

The rationalism of taste's principle, on the other hand, amounts either to the realism of purposiveness or to the idealism thereof. Since, now, a judgment of taste amounts to no cognitive judgment, and beauty , taken by itself, is no property of the object, the rationalism of taste's principle can never be located in supposing the purposiveness within this judgment to be conceived as objective—in other words, in supposing that the judgment refers theoretically, and hence logically as well (albeit only through a confused appraisal), to the perfection of the object, rather than referring merely aesthetically, within the subject, to the agreement of its representation in the imagination with those principles that are essential to the power of judgment as such. Consequently, even under the principle of rationalism, taste's judgment—together with the distinction between its realism and its idealism—can be located solely in this: that the subjective purposiveness in question is assumed, in the former case, to harmonize with our power of judgment as a genuine (deliberate) end of nature (or of art), or, in the latter case, merely as a purposive concordance that emerges spontaneously and fortuitously, devoid of any end, answering to the requirement of the power of judgment as regards nature and the forms it produces under particular laws.

The realism of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature—where, namely, one would like to assume that at the basis of the production of the beautiful there lay an idea of it in the producing cause, that is, an end in favor of our imagination—is very much advocated by the beautiful formations in the realm of organized nature. Flowers, blossoms, indeed the forms of entire plants; the gracefulness of animal formations of every sort of kind—superfluous for their own use, yet as though chosen for our taste; above all the variety, so agreeable and alluring to our eyes, and the harmonious arrangement of colors (on the pheasant, on shellfish, insects, down to the most common blossoms), which, inasmuch as they touch merely the surface—and not even, on that surface, the figure of the creatures, a figure that might still be requisite for their inner ends—seem to be directed wholly toward outward viewing: lend great weight to that mode of explanation which assumes actual ends of nature on behalf of our aesthetic power of judgment.

Opposed to this assumption, by contrast, stands not reason alone—with its maxims of forestalling everywhere, as far as may be, any needless multiplying of principles—but nature too displays throughout its free formations such an abundance of mechanical inclination toward producing forms that appear, so to speak, fashioned for the aesthetic use of our power of judgment, yet furnish not the least ground for conjecturing that anything beyond its mechanism, taken simply as nature, is needed for this, in keeping with which they can prove purposive for our judging even in the absence of any idea lying at their basis. By a free formation of nature, though, I mean that one whereby, once a portion of a fluid at rest has been driven off or separated out (at times merely the heat-matter), what remains takes on, in solidifying, a determinate shape or web (figure or texture)—one that varies with the specific diversity of the materials, yet within one and the same material proves precisely identical. For this, however, what one always understands by a true fluidity is presupposed—namely, that the matter in it is completely dissolved, that is, not to be regarded as a mere mixture of solid parts merely suspended within it.

The formation then comes about through shooting together, that is, through a sudden solidifying—not by a gradual passage out of the fluid into the solid condition, but as it were by a leap, a transition that also goes by the name of crystallization. The commonest example of this kind of formation is water in the act of freezing, wherein straight little ice-spikes are first generated, which conjoin at angles of 60 degrees while still others fasten on likewise at every point of them, until the whole has become ice: such that throughout this interval the water lying among the ice-spikes does not thicken by degrees, but stays as thoroughly fluid as it would be in far greater warmth, and nonetheless carries the utter coldness of ice. The matter that separates out, which slips away all at once in the instant of solidifying, is a sizable quantity of heat-stuff, whose departure—since it was required merely for being fluid—leaves this ice, now formed, no colder in the slightest than the water that had been fluid within it just before.

Numerous salts, and equally stones possessing a crystalline figure, arise in just the same manner out of an earthy substance dissolved in water through who knows what agency . In the same way the druse-like configurations of many minerals—of cubical galena, of ruby silver ore, and the like—are formed, in all likelihood also in water and through the shooting together of the parts: in that they are compelled by some cause to leave this vehicle and to unite with one another into determinate outer shapes.

But internally, too, all materials that were fluid merely through heat and have taken on solidity through cooling display a determinate texture in their fracture, and allow the inference that, had their own weight or contact with the air not hindered it, they would have displayed their specifically peculiar shape outwardly as well: something that has been observed in certain metals which, after melting, had hardened on the outside but were still fluid within, by drawing off the inner, still-fluid part and letting the remainder left behind inside shoot together quietly. Many of those mineral crystallizations, such as the spar-druses, hematite, and iron-flowers, often give exceedingly beautiful shapes such as art might ever devise; and the Glory in the grotto of Antiparos is merely the product of water seeping through layers of gypsum.

By all appearances the fluid is on the whole older than the solid, and plants no less than animal bodies are formed out of fluid nutritive matter insofar as it shapes itself at rest: in the latter, to be sure, primarily in accordance with a certain original predisposition oriented toward ends (which, as the second part will show, has to be appraised not aesthetically but teleologically, under the realist principle); yet, alongside this, perhaps also crystallizing in conformity with the universal law governing the affinity of materials, and giving itself form in freedom. Now, just as the aqueous fluids, dissolved within an atmosphere that constitutes a mixture of several kinds of air, generate—once the former part company with the latter through the departure of warmth—snow-figures whose form, varying with the momentary composition of the air, is frequently of an exceedingly beautiful and often quite artificial-looking shape: so it can well be thought, without withdrawing anything from the teleological principle of judging organization: that as regards the beauty of flowers, of bird-feathers, of shells—both in their shape and in their color—this could be ascribed to nature and to its capacity to form itself, in its freedom, without particular ends directed at this, according to chemical laws, through the deposition of the matter requisite for organization, also aesthetically-purposively.

But what directly proves the principle of the ideality of purposiveness in the beautiful of nature—as that which we always lay at the basis in the aesthetic judgment itself, and which permits us to make use of no realism of an end of nature for our power of representation as a ground of explanation—is this: that in judging beauty as such we look for the standard of it a priori within our own selves, and that the aesthetic power of judgment is, with respect to the judgment whether a thing be beautiful or not, itself the lawgiver—something that could not occur were the realism of nature's purposiveness assumed, since we should then have to learn from nature what we ought to find beautiful, and the judgment of taste would fall under empirical principles. For in such a judging it does not depend on what nature is, or even is for us as an end, but on how we receive it. It would always be an objective purposiveness of nature had it fashioned its forms for the sake of our satisfaction; and not a subjective purposiveness resting upon the free play of the imagination , a case in which the favor is one we extend to nature, not one that nature grants us. That characteristic of nature—namely, that it holds for us an opportunity to perceive the inner purposiveness in the relation of our mental powers when we appraise certain of its products, and to perceive it, moreover, as something that is to be pronounced necessary and universally valid on a supersensible ground—cannot be a natural end, or rather be judged by us to be one: for otherwise the judgment thereby determined would rest on heteronomy instead of being free and grounded in autonomy, as suits a judgment of taste.

In fine art the principle of the idealism of purposiveness stands out even more clearly. For the fact that no aesthetic realism of it by way of sensations may be assumed here (in which event it would amount, in place of fine art, to merely agreeable art): this is what it shares with beautiful nature. Yet the point that satisfaction through aesthetic ideas need not hinge upon the achievement of determinate ends (in the manner of mechanically deliberate art), so that within the rationalism of the principle itself it is the ideality of ends, not their reality, that lies at the basis: becomes plain already from this, that fine art as such has to be viewed not as a product of understanding and of science, but rather as one of genius, thereby acquiring its rule through aesthetic ideas, which differ essentially from ideas of reason concerned with determinate ends.

In just the way that the ideality of objects of sense, considered as appearances, alone makes it explicable that their forms should admit of being determined a priori: so, equally, the idealism of purposiveness in judging what is beautiful in nature and in art is the single presupposition under which alone the critique can render intelligible the possibility of a judgment of taste demanding a priori validity for everyone (without, however, resting on concepts the purposiveness that is represented in the object).

§ 59. On beauty as a symbol of morality

To establish the reality of our concepts, intuitions are always required. Should the concepts be empirical, these intuitions go by the name of examples. Where the concepts in question are pure concepts of the understanding, the intuitions in turn are termed schemata. Should someone even insist that the concepts of reason—the ideas, that is—have their objective reality set forth, and this for the sake of a theoretical cognition of them, then he demands an impossibility, since no intuition adequate to them can ever be furnished.

All hypotyposis (presentation, subiectio sub adspectum), as a rendering into the sensible, is of two kinds: it is either schematic, when a concept that the understanding grasps has its matching intuition furnished a priori; or symbolic, when beneath a concept—one that reason alone can think, and for which no sensible intuition could ever prove adequate—there is placed an intuition such that the procedure of the power of judgment is with respect to it merely analogous to what it does in schematizing, that is, agrees with it merely in the rule of that procedure and not in the intuition itself, hence merely as to the form of the reflection and not as to its content.

There is a use of the word symbolic—one that recent logicians have indeed adopted, yet that distorts its sense and is incorrect—according to which it is opposed to the intuitive mode of representation; for the symbolic is only one species of the intuitive. The latter (the intuitive), namely, can be divided into the schematic and the symbolic mode of representation. Both are hypotyposes, that is, presentations (exhibitiones): not mere characterizations, that is, designations of concepts by means of accompanying sensible signs that carry nothing pertaining to the object's own intuition but serve those concepts only, according to the law of the association of the imagination and hence with a subjective aim, as a means of reproduction; signs of this kind are either words or visible (algebraic, even mimetic) marks, as mere expressions for concepts²².

Accordingly, whatever intuitions we lay beneath concepts a priori are therefore either schemata or symbols: the first kind furnish direct presentations of the concept, the second kind indirect ones. A schema accomplishes this by demonstration, a symbol through an analogy (in the service of which empirical intuitions too are drawn upon), and in this analogy the power of judgment discharges a twofold task: first, to bring the concept to bear upon the object of some sensible intuition, and thereupon, secondly, to carry the mere rule of its reflection upon that intuition over to a wholly distinct object, of which the first serves only as the symbol. So it is that a monarchical state is represented through an ensouled body if it is governed according to internal laws of the people, but through a mere machine (such as a hand mill) if it is governed by a single absolute will—in either case, however, only symbolically. For although no likeness whatever holds between a despotic state and a hand mill, one assuredly does hold between the rules by which we reflect on the two and on their causality. This matter has so far been little worked out, however much it merits a more searching inquiry; but this is not the occasion to dwell upon it. Such indirect presentations following an analogy abound in our language, and through them the expression harbors, in place of the concept's genuine schema, nothing more than a symbol for reflection. Thus the words ground (support, base), to depend (to be held from above), whence to flow (instead of to follow), substance (in Locke's expression: the bearer of the accidents), and countless further ones are hypotyposes and expressions for concepts that are symbolic rather than schematic, resting not on any direct intuition but solely on an analogy with one—that is, on carrying the reflection upon an object of intuition over to a wholly other concept, one with which perhaps no intuition can ever stand in direct correspondence. If a mere mode of representation may already be styled cognition (which is doubtless allowable when it constitutes a principle not for theoretically determining what the object is in itself, but for practically determining what the idea of it is to come to for us and for the purposive employment of that idea): then whatever cognition of God we possess is nothing more than symbolic; and whoever takes it for schematic—along with those properties, understanding, will, and so forth, that attest their objective reality in worldly beings alone—falls into anthropomorphism, whereas, should he drop everything intuitive, he sinks into deism, by which nothing whatever is cognized, not even for a practical aim.

Now I make this claim: the morally good has its symbol in the beautiful—and only under this aspect (a relation natural to everyone, and one that each person likewise demands of others as a duty) does it please while asserting a title to the assent of everyone else; and in this the mind is at once conscious of a certain ennoblement and of an elevation above the mere receptivity to a pleasure through impressions of the senses, and it values another's worth as well by a similar maxim of their power of judgment. This is the intelligible toward which, as the previous section indicated, taste looks out—that with which our higher cognitive faculties themselves accord, and in whose absence sheer contradictions would spring up between their nature and the demands that taste raises. It is in this faculty that the power of judgment, unlike in its ordinary empirical appraisals, does not find itself subject to a heteronomy of the laws of experience: as concerns the objects of so pure a satisfaction it prescribes the law to its own self, in the very way reason does as concerns the faculty of desire; and, in view alike of this interior possibility residing in the subject and of the exterior possibility of a nature that harmonizes with it, it sees itself brought into relation with something present in the subject itself as well as outside it, something that is neither nature nor freedom, yet stands linked to the ground of freedom—the supersensible, namely—wherein the theoretical faculty is bound together with the practical into unity in a manner shared by both and unknown to us. Let me single out a few points of this analogy, taking care meanwhile not to pass over the respects in which it differs.

1) The beautiful gives pleasure immediately (yet solely within reflecting intuition, and not, as morality does, within the concept). 2) It gives pleasure without any interest (the morally good is indeed bound of necessity to an interest, yet not to one that precedes the judgment upon the satisfaction, but to one that this judgment first brings about). 3) The freedom of the imagination (that is, the sensible side of our faculty) is, in judging the beautiful, presented as consonant with the understanding's lawfulness (the moral judgment, by contrast, thinks the will's freedom as that will's agreement with itself according to universal laws of reason). 4) The subjective principle for judging the beautiful is represented as universal, that is, as valid for everyone, though not made recognizable by any universal concept whatever (morality's objective principle, for its part, is likewise declared universal, that is, valid for all subjects and at the same time for all actions of the same subject, and moreover as recognizable through a universal concept). Hence the moral judgment is not merely susceptible of determinate constitutive principles, but becomes possible only through founding the maxims upon these principles and upon their universality.

Regard for this analogy is likewise habitual to the common understanding; and beautiful objects of nature or of art we frequently label with names that appear to rest upon a moral appraisal. Buildings or trees we call majestic and magnificent, or meadows laughing and glad; colors themselves are termed innocent, modest, and tender, since they awaken feelings that hold within them something akin to the awareness of a state of mind brought about by moral judgings. Taste, as it were, renders the passage from sensory charm to a habitual moral interest possible without any too violent a leap, in that it exhibits the imagination, even in its freedom, as determinable so as to be purposive for the understanding, and it schools us to find a free satisfaction even in objects of sense that lack all sensory charm.

§ 60. Appendix. On the doctrine of method of taste

That separation of a critique into a doctrine of elements and a doctrine of method, a separation preceding the science itself, does not admit of application to the critique of taste : for no science of the beautiful is given or can be given, and the judgment of taste is incapable of determination through principles. For as concerns the scientific side of any art — the side directed toward truth in the presentation of its object — that side is admittedly the unavoidable condition (conditio sine qua non) of fine art, but is not itself that art. There is therefore for fine art only a manner (modus), not a mode of teaching (methodus). The master must demonstrate for the pupil what he is to produce and how; and those general rules beneath which he finally subsumes his own procedure are apt to serve less for prescribing that procedure to him than for occasionally calling its chief moments back to memory. Even so, regard must here be paid to a certain ideal that art must keep before its eyes, though it never fully reaches it in its practice. Only by rousing the pupil's imagination to adequacy with a given concept, by the noted insufficiency of the expression for the idea that the concept itself does not reach because that idea is aesthetic, and by keen critique, can one guard against the examples set before him being taken by him at once as archetypes and as patterns for imitation subject to no still higher norm and to no judging of his own, and thus against genius, and with it the very freedom of the imagination in its lawfulness, being stifled — that freedom without which no fine art, indeed not even a correct taste of one's own for judging it, is possible.

The propaedeutic to all fine art, so far as it aims at the utmost degree of its perfection, appears to consist not in prescriptions but in the culture of the mental powers by way of that preliminary knowledge which is called humaniora: presumably because humanity signifies, on the one hand, the universal feeling of fellow participation and, on the other, the capacity to communicate oneself most intimately and universally; which properties, joined together, constitute the sociability befitting humankind, whereby it sets itself apart from the confinement of the animal. Both the epoch and the peoples among whom the lively impulse toward lawful sociability — that by which a nation constitutes a lasting common being — struggled against the great difficulties that hem in the arduous task of joining freedom (and therefore equality as well) to a coercion (one grounded more in esteem and in submission out of duty than out of fear); such an epoch and such a people were the first who had to devise the art whereby the ideas of the most highly developed portion are reciprocally imparted to the ruder portion, the attunement of the widening and refinement of the former to the unaffected plainness and originality of the latter, and thereby that middle term between the loftier culture and an undemanding nature which yields the right measure — one specifiable by no general rules — for taste as well, taken as a universal human sense.

A later epoch will scarcely be able to do without those models: for it will draw ever further from nature, and in the end, possessing no abiding examples drawn from her, could hardly form for itself any concept of that happy marriage — within one selfsame people — between the lawful constraint belonging to the highest culture and the vigor and rectitude of a free nature that feels its own worth.

But since taste is at bottom a faculty for judging the making-sensible of moral ideas (by means of a certain analogy in the reflection upon both), from which faculty, and from the greater receptivity to be grounded thereon for the feeling arising out of those ideas (which is called the moral feeling), there is likewise derived that pleasure which taste pronounces valid for mankind at large, and not for the private feeling of each person alone : it becomes plain that the true propaedeutic for grounding taste is the development of moral ideas and the culture of moral feeling; for genuine taste can assume a determinate, unchanging form only where sensibility has been attuned to that feeling.

The Critique of the Power of Judgment

Second Part. Critique of the teleological power of judgment