No More Learning

[Part VL
tion alone ; he shows that the cosmological proof involves a petitio prindpii when it seeks the " first cause " of all that is "contingent " in an " absolutely necessary " being ; he proves that the teleological or physico-tAeological argument at the best — granted the beauty, harmony, and purposiveness or adaptation of the universe —leads to the ancient conception of a wise and good '* Architect of the world. " But he emphasises that the denial of God's existence is a
claim which steps beyond the bounds of our experiential knowledge, and is as incapable of proof as the opposite, and that rather the belief in a living, Real unity of all reality constitutes the only powerful motive for empirical investigation of individual groups of phenomena.
Most characteristic by far, however, is Kant's treatment of the Idea of the world in the Antinomies of Pure Reason. These antinomies express the fundamental thought of the transcendental dialectic in the sharpest manner, by showing that when the universe is treated as the object of knowledge, propositions which are mutually contradictory can be maintained with equal right, in so far as we follow, on the one hand, the demand of the understanding for a completion of the series of phenomena, and on the other, the demand of the sensuous perception for an endless continuance of the same. Kant proves hence, in the "thesis," that the world must have a beginning and end in space and time, that as regards its substance it presents a limit to its divisibility, that events in it must have free, i. e. no longer causally conditioned, beginnings, and that to it must belong an absolutely necessary being, God ; and in the antithesis he proves the contradictory opposite for all four cases. At the same time the complication is increased by the fact that the proofs (with one exception) are indirect, so that the thesis is proved by a refutation of the antithesis, the antithesis by refutation of the thesis ; each assertion is therefore both proved and refuted. The solution of the antinomies in the case of the first two, the " mathe matical," takes the form of showing that the principle of excluded third loses its validity where something is made the object of knowl edge, which can never become such, as is the case with the universe. In the case of the third and fourth antinomies, the " dynamical," which concern freedom and God, Kant seeks to show (what, to be sure, is impossible in a purely theoretical way), that it is perhaps thinkable that the antitheses hold true for phenomena, and the theses, on the other hand, for the unknowable world of things-in- themselves. For this latter world, it is at least not a contradiction to think freedom and God, whereas neither is to be met with, it is certain, in our knowledge of phenomena.
(Jhap. 1, $ 38. ] The Categorical Imperative.
551
$ 39. The Categorical Imperative.
H. Cohen, Kant's Begriindung der Ethik. Berlin, 1877.
E. Arnoldt, Kant's Idee vom hochtten Gut. Konigsberg, 1874. B. PUnjer, Die Keligionsphilosophie Kant's. Jena, 1874.
[N. Porter, Kant's Ethics. Chicago, 1886. ]
[J. G. Schurmann, Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution.
Lond. 1882. ]
The synthetic function in the theoretical reason is the combina tion of mental presentations into perceptions, judgments, and Ideas. The practical synthesis is the relating of the will to aj>resented con tent, by which this latter becomes an end. This relating Form Kant carefully excluded from the primary" conceptions of the knowing understanding ; it is instead the fundamental category of the practical
use of the reason. It gives no objects of knowledge, but instead, objects of will.
1. For the critique of the reason there rises from this the prob lem, whether there is a practical synthesis a priori, that whether there are necessary and_jtniv£zsally valid objects of Killing or whether anything to be found which the reason makes its end or demands a priori, without any regard to empirical motives. This universal and necessary object of the practical reason we call thejnoxaLZaKL.
For clear forTCalTtrfirrm theOTtset, that the activity of pure reason in proposing ends to itself, there any such activity, must appear as command, in the form of the imperative, as over against the empirical motives of will and action. The will directed toward the particular objects and relations of experience determined by these and dependent upon them the pure rational will, on the con trary, can be determined only through itself. It hence necessarily directed toward something else than the natural impulses, and this something else, which the moral law requires as over against our inclinations, called duty.
Hence the predicates of ethical judgment concern only this kind of determination of the will; they refer to the disposition, not to the act or to its external consequences. Nothing in the world, says Kant,' can be called good without qualification except Good Will and this remains good even though its execution completely restrained by external causes. Morality as a quality of man a disposition conformable to duty.
2. But becomes all the more necessary to investigate as to OrundUouna «nr MttaphysUe der Sitten, (W. , IV. 10 fl. ) Abbott, p.
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552 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VJ.
whether there is such an a priori command of duty, and in what consists a law, to which obedience is required by the reason quite independently of all empirical ends. To answer this question Kant proceeds from the teleological connections of the actual volitional life. Experience of natural causal connections brings with it the consequence, that we are forced to will according to the synthetic relation of end and means, one thing for the sake of another. From practical reflection on such relations arise (technical) rules of dex terity and ("practical") counsels of prudence. They all assert, " If you will this or that, then you must proceed thus or so. " They are on this account hypothetical imperatives. They presuppose, a volition as actually present already, and demand on the ground of
j
this the further act of will which is required to satisfy the first.
But the moral law cannot be dependent upon any object of will already existing in experience, and moral action must not appear as means in service of other ends. The requirement of the moral command must be propounded and fulfilled solely for its own sake. It does not appeal to what the man already wishes on other grounds, but demands an act of will which has its worth in itself only, and the only truly moral action is one in which such a command is fulfilled without regard to any other consequences. The moral law is a command absolute, a categorical imperative. Tt holds uncondition ally and absolutely, while the hypothetical imperatives are only
relative.
If now it is asked, what is the content of the categorical impera
tive, it is clear that it can contain no empirical element : the demand of the moral law does not stand in relation to the " matter of the act of will. " For this reason happiness is not adapted to be the principle of morals, for the striving after happiness is already present empirically, it is not a demand of reason. Eudsemonistic morals leads, therefore, to merely hypothetical imperatives ; for the ethical laws are only " counsels of prudence or sagacity " advis ing the best method of going to work to satisfy the natural will. But the demand of the moral law just for will other than the natural will the moral law exists for higher purpose than to make us happy. If Nature had wished to place our destiny and vocation in happiness, would have done better to equip us with infallible instincts than with the practical reason of conscience, which " continually in conflict with our impulses. 1 The "happiness morals even, for Kant, the type of false morals, for in this the law always that should do something because desire something
Grundlegung »ur Metaphysik der Sitten, IV. 12 Abbott, p. 11.
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Chai'. l. j -S! ». j Categorical Imperative : Autonomy. 553
else. Every such system of morals is heteronymous ; it makes the practical reason dependent upon some thing given outside of itself, and this reproach applies to all attempts to seek the principle of morality in metaphysical conceptions, such as that of perfection. The theological morals is completely rejected by Kant with the greatest energy, for it combines all kinds of heteronomy when it sees the sanction in the divine will, the criterion in utility, and the motive in the expectation of reward and punishment.
3. The categorical imperative must be the expression of the autonomy of the practical reason, i. e. of the pure self-determination — of the rational will. It concerns, therefore, solely the Form of willing, and requires that this should be a universally valid law.
The will is heteronomous if it follows an empirically given impulse ;
it is autonomous only where it carries out a law given it by itself.
The categorical imperative demands, therefore, that instead of act
ing according to impulses we should rather act according to maxima, and according to such as are adapted for a universal legislation for
all beings who will rationally. " Act a* if the maxim from which J you act were to become through your will a universal law of nature. "
This purely formal principle of conformity to law gains a mate rial import by reflection upon the various kinds of worths. In the kingdom of ends that which is serviceable for some end, and can therefore be replaced by something else, has a price, but that only has worth or dignity, which is absolutely valuable in itself, and is the condition for the sake of which other things, may become valu able. This worth belongs in the highest degree to the moral law itself, and, therefore, the motive which stimulates man to obey this law must be nothing but reverence for the law itself. It would be dishonoured if it were fulfilled for the sake of any external advan tage. The worth or dignity of the moral law, moreover, passes over to the man who is determined by this alone in the whole extent of his experience, and is able to determine himself by the law itself, to be its agent, and to identify himself with it. Hence reverence for the worth of man is for Kant the material principle of moral science. Man should do his duty not for the sake of advantage, but out of reverence for himself, and in his intercourse with his fellow-man he should make it his supreme maxim, never to treat him as a mere means for the attainment of his own ends, but always to honour in him the worth ofpersonality.
From this Kant deduces a proud and strict system of morals ' in < Mtlaphytueh* AnfangtgrutuU der TugtndUhrt, W. , V. 831 ff.
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554 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VI.
which, as set forth in his old age, we cannot fail to discern the features of rigourism and of a certain pedantic stiffness. But the fundamental characteristic of the contrast between duty and inclina tion lies deeply rooted in his system. The principle of autonomy recognises as moral, only acts of will done in conformity to duty, and wholly out of regard for maxims ; it sees in all motivation of moral action by natural impulses a falsification of pure morality. Only that which is done solely from duty is moral. The empirical impulses of human nature are, therefore, in themselves, ethically indifferent ; but they become bad as soon as they oppose the demand
V of the moral law, and the moral life of man consists in realising the command of duty in the warfare against his inclinations.
4. The self-determination of the rational will therefore, the supreme requirement and condition of all morality. But is impos sible in the realm of the experience which thought and known through the categories for this experience knows only the deter mination of each individual phenomenon by others self-determina tion, as the power to begin series of the conditioned, impossible according to the principles of cognition. This power with reference to the will we call freedom, as being an action which not conditioned by others according to the schema of causality, but which is deter mined only through itself, and on its part the cause of an endless series of natural processes. Hence the theoretical reason, whose knowledge limited to experience, had to decide as to the reality of freedom, would necessarily deny but would thereby *ject also the possibility of the moral life. But the Critique of Pure Reason has shown that the theoretical reason cannot assert any thing whatever as to things-in-themselves, and that, accordingly, there no contradiction in thinking the possibility of freedom for the supersensuous. But as evident that freedom must necessa- rily be real morality to be possible, the reality of things-in-them- selves and of the supersensuous, which for the theoretical reason must remain always merely problematical, herewith guaranteed.
This guarantee to be sure, not that of proof, but that of postulate. It rests upon the consciousness; thou canst, for thou oughtest. Just so truly as thou feelest the moral law within thee, so truly as thou believest in the possibility of following so truly must thou also believe in the conditions for this, viz. autonomy and freedom. Freedom not an object of knowledge, but an object of faith, — but of faith which holds as universally and necessarily in the realm of the supersensuous, as the principles of the understand- ing hold in the realm of experience, — an a priori faith.
^
Thus the practical reason becomes completely independent of the
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Chap. 1, § 39. ] Categorical Imperative : Freedom. 555
theoretical. In previous philosophy " the primacy " of the theoreti cal over the practical reason had prevailed ; knowledge had been assigned the work of determining whether and how there is freedom, and accordingly of deciding as to the reality of morality. Accord ing to Kant, the reality of morality is the fact of the practical reason, and, therefore, we must believe in freedom as the condition of its possibility. From this relation results, for Kant, the primacy of the practical over the theoreticul reason ; for the former is not only capa ble of guaranteeing that which the latter must decline to vouch for, but it appears also that the theoretical reason in those Ideas of the unconditioned in which it points beyond itself (§ 38, 9) is deter
mined by the needs of the practical reason.
Thus there appears with Kant, in a new and completely original
form, the Platonic doctrine of the two worlds of the sensuous and the supersensuous, of phenomena and things-in-themselves. Knowledge controls the former, faith the latter; the former is the realm of necessity, the latter the realm of freedom. The relation of antithesis and yet of mutual reference, which exists between these two worlds, shows itself best in the nature of man, who alone belongs in like measure to both. So far as man is a member of the order of Nature he appears as empirical character — i. e. in his abiding qualities as well as in his individual decisions — as a necessary product in the causal connection of phenomena; but as a member of the supersensuous world he is intelligible character, i. e. a being whose nature is decided by free self-determination within itself. The empirical character is only the manifestation, which for the theoretical consciousness is bound to the rule of causality, of the intelligible character, whose
freedom is the only explanation of the feeling of responsibility as it appears in the conscience.
5. But freedom is not the only postulate of a priori faith. The relations between the sensuous and the moral world demand yet a more general bond of connection, which Kant finds in the concep tion ofthe highest good. 1 The goal of the sensuous will is happiness; the goal of the ethical will is virtue ; these two cannot sustain to each other the relation of means to end. The striving after happi ness does not make an act virtuous ; and virtue is neither permitted to aim at making man happy, nor does it actually do so. Between- the two no causal relation exists empirically, and ethically no teleo- logical connection can be permitted to enter. But since man belongs as well to the sensuous as to the ethical world, the " highest good " must consist for him in the union of virtue and happiness. This
» Critique of Prat. Rtato*. Dialectic, W. , IX. 22* H. ; [Abbott, 202 «. ].
556 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VI.
last synthesis of practical conception, however, can be morally- thought only in the form that virtue alone is worthy of happiness.
The demand of the moral consciousness, here expressed, is never theless not satisfied by the causal necessity of experience. Natural law is ethically indifferent, and affords no guarantee that virtue will necessarily lead to happiness; on the contrary, experience teaches rather that virtue requires renunciation of empirical happi ness, and that want of virtue is capable of being united with tem poral happiness. If, therefore, the ethical consciousness requires the reality of the highest good, faith must reach beyond the empirical life of man, and beyond the order of Nature, on into the super- sensuous. It postulates a reality of personality which extends beyond the temporal existence — the immortal life — &aa\ a moral order of the universe, which is grounded in a Supreme Reason — in
, God.
Kant's moral proof for freedom, immortality, and God is, there
fore, not a proof of knowledge, but of faith. Its postulates are the conditions of the moral life, and their reality must be believed in as fully as the reality of the latter. But with all this they remain knowable theoretically, as little as before.
6. The dualism of Nature and morality appears with Kant in its baldest form in his Philosophy of Religion, the principles of which, agreeably to his theory of knowledge, he could seek only in the practical reason ; universality and necessity in relation to the super- sensuous are afforded only by the ethical consciousness. Only that can be a priori in religion, which is based upon morals. Kant's religion of reason is, therefore, not a natural religion, but " moral theology. " Religion rests upon conceiving moral laws as divine commands.
This religious form of morality Kant develops once more from the twofold nature of man. There are in him two systems of im pulses, the sensuous and the moral ; on account of the unity of the willing personality neither can be without relation to the other. Their relation should be, according to the moral demand, that of the subordination of the sensuous impulses to the moral ; but as a matter of fact, according to Kant, the reverse relation naturally obtains with man,1 and since the sensuous impulses are evil as soon as they even merely resist the moral, there is in man a natural bent
1 The pessimistic conception of man's natural essence doubtless has with Kant its occasion in his religious education ; but he guards himself expressly against the identification of his doctrine of the radical evil with the theological conception of hereditary sin; cf. Hel. innerh. d. Grewe d. r. V. , I. 4; W. , VI 201 ff. j [Abbott, p. 347].
Chat. 1, V Categorical Imperative : Religion, Law. 557
to evil. This " radical evil " is not necessary ; for otherwise there would be no responsibility for it It is inexplicable, but it is a fact ; 1 it is a deed of intelligible freedom. The task which follows from
this for man is the reversal of the moving springs, which is to be \ brought about by the warfare between the good and evil principle within him. But in the above-described perverted condition, the brazen majesty of the moral law works upon man with a terror that dashes him down, and he needs, therefore, to support his moral motives, faith in-a-diviae_potcer, which imposes upon him the. moral
law as its command, but also grants him the help of redeeming love to enable him to obey it.
From this standpoint Kant interprets the essential portions of Christian doctrine into a "pure moral religion," viz. the ideal of the moral perfection of man in the Logos, redemption through vicarious love, and the mystery of the new birth. He thus restores to their rightful place, from which they had been displaced by the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the truly religious motives which are rooted in the felt need of a redemption, — though he does this in a form which is free from the historical faith of orthodoxy. But the true Church, for him also, is only the invisible, the moral king dom of God, the ethical community of the redeemed. The historical manifestations of the moral community of men are the. Churches ; they need the means of revelation and of " statutory " faith. But they have the task of putting this means into the service of the moral life, and if instead of this they lay the main weight upon the statutory, they fall into service for a reward, and into hypocrisy.
7. It is connected with his restriction of ethical judgment by making it apply only to the disposition, that in his Philosophy of Right Kant pursued that direction which treats the same, so far as possible, independently of morals. Kant distinguished
(even with regard to ethical valuation) between morality of disposition and
legality of action, between voluntary obedience to the moral law and external conformity of action to what is demanded by posi tive law. Actions are subject to compulsion, dispositions never. While morals speaks of the duties of the disposition, law or right is employed with the external duties of action which can be en
forced, and does not ask as to the disposition with which they are fulfilled or broken.
And yet Kant makes freedom, which is the central conception of his whole practical philosophy, the basis also of his science of right.
For right or law is also a demand of the practical reason, and has in this its a priori, valid principle: it cannot therefore be deduced as a product of empirical interest, but must be understood from the
568 German PkiluMpky : Km$U'» Critique. '\ £Pa*x VL
general rational vocation or destiny of man. This latter is the vocation to freedom. The community of men conatts of those beings that are destined for ethical freedom, but an yet in the natural state of caprice or arbitrary will, in which riey
mntuallj disturb and check each other in their spheres of acti <fty. Law has
for its task to establish the conditions under whiclythe will of the one can be united with the will of another according to a imivprga[ law of freedom, and, by enforcing these conditions, to make sure the freedom of personality.
From this principle follows analytically, according to deduction, all private law, public law, and international law. At the same time, it is interesting to observe b«>w the principles of his theory of morals are everywhere authoritative in this construction. Thus, in private law it is a far-reaching principle — corresponding to the categorical imperative — that man must never be used as a thing. So, too, the penal law of the state is grounded not by the task of maintaining the state of right, but by the ethical necessity of retribution.
Law in a state of nature is therefore valid only in a provisory way; it is completely, or, as Kant says, peremptorily, valid, only when it can be certainly enforced, that in the state. The supreme rule for justice in the state, Kaut finds in this, that nothing should be decreed and carried out which might not have been resolved upon the state had come into existence by contract. The con tract theory here not an explanation of the empirical origin of the state, but a norm ior its task. This norm can be fulfilled with any kind of constitution, provided only law really rules, and not arbitrary caprice. Its realisation surest the three public functions of legislation, administration and judicial procedure are independent of each other, and the legislative power is organised in the "republican" form of the representative system, — a pro vision which not excluded by monarchical executive. It only by. this means, Kant thinks, that the freedom of the individual will be secured, so far as this can exist without detriment to the freedom of others and not until all states have adopted this constitution can the state of Nature in which they now find themselves in their rela tions to each other, give place to state of law. Then, too, the law of nations, which now only provisory, will become " peremptory. "
Upon foundations of philosophy of religion and philosophy of law built up, finally, Kant's theory of history. 1 This took form
Cf. besides the treatises cited on pp. 417-422. the treatises, Idea of a Uni- verml History from Cosmopolitical Point of Vieio (1784) [tr. by Hastie in
Kant's
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<? hap. 1, § 40. ] Natural Purposivenets. 559
in dependence upon the theories of Rousseau and Herder, a depend ence which follows from the antithesis between those authors. Kant can see in history neither the aberration from an originally good condition of the human race, nor the necessary, self-intelligible development of man's original constitution. If there ever was a primitive paradisiacal state of humanity, it was the state of inno cence in which man, living entirely according to his natural impulses, was as yet entirely unconscious of his ethical task. The beginning of the work of civilisation, however, was possible only through a break with the state of Nature, since it was in connection with its trans gression that the moral law came to consciousness. This (theoret ically incomprehensible) "Fall" was the beginning of history.
Natural impulse, previously ethically indifferent, now became evil, and was to be opposed.
Since then the progress of history has consisted not in a growth of human happiness, but in approximation to ethical perfection, and in the extension of the rule of ethical freedom. With deep earnestness Kant takes up the thought that the development of civilisation suc ceeds only at the cost of individual happiness. He who takes this latter for his standard must speak only of a retrogression in history. The more complicated relations become, the more the vital energy of civilisation grows, by so much the more do individual wants increase, and the less is the prospect of satisfying them. But just this refutes the opinion of the Enlighteners, as if happiness were man's vocation. The ethical development of the whole, the control
of practical reason, grows in an inverse ratio to the empirical satis faction of the individual. And since history represents the outer social life of humanity, its goal is the completion of right and law, the establishing of the best political constitution among all peoples, perpetual peace — a goal whose attainment, as is the case with all ideals, lies at an infinite distance.
§ 40. Natural Purposiveneu.
A. Sudler, Kant's Teleologie. Berlin, 1874.
H. Cohen, Kant's BrgrUndung der jEsthetik. Berlin, 1880.
\i. H. Tufta, The Sources and Development of Kant's Teleology. Chicago, 1893. ]
By his sharp formulation of the antithesis of Nature and Free dom, of necessity and purposiveness (or adaptation to ends), thb
Principles of Politics] ; Recension von Herder's Ideen (1785) ; Muthmasslicher Anfang der' WeltgesckichU (1788) ; Da* Knde alter Dinge (17W).
560 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Paw VT.
theoretical and practical reason diTerge so widely in Kant's system, that the unity of the reason seems endangered. The critical phil osophy needs, therefore, in a manner that prefigures the methodical development of its system,1 a third principle that shall afford a defin itive mediation, and in which the synthesis of the above opposite* shall be effected.
1. Psychologically, the sphere in which this problem is to be solved can, in accordance with the triple division adopted by Kant (cf. 5 36, 8), be only the faculty offeeling or " approval. " This, in fact,
takes an intermediate position between ideation and desire. Feeling or approval presupposes a complete idea of the object, —complete in the theoretical sense, — and sustains a synthetic relation to this; and this synthesis as a feeling of pleasure or pain, or as approval or disapproval, always expresses in some way that the object in ques tion is felt by the subject to be either purposive, i. e. adapted to its end, or not to the purpose.
The standard of this valuation may have existed beforehand as a conscious design, forming thus a case of intentional volition, and in such cases the objects are termed useful or injurious ; but there are also feelings which, without being referred to any conscious purposes whatever, characterise their objects immediately as agreeable or dis agreeable, and in these also a determination with reference to an end must be somehow authoritative.
The critique of the reason, accordingly, has to ask, Are there feelings a priori, or approvals that have universal and necessary valid ity f and it is clear that the decision upon this case is dependent
upon the nature of the ends which determine the feelings and approvals in question. With regard to the purposes of the will, this question has been already decided by the Critique of the Practical Reason; the only end of the conscious will which has a priori validity is the fulfilling of the categorical imperative, and on this side, therefore, only the feelings of approval or disapproval in which we employ the ethical predicates " good " and " bad," can be regarded as necessary and universally valid. For this reason the new prob lem restricts itself to the a priori character of those feelings in which no conscious purpose or design precedes. But these, as may be seen from the beginning, are the feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime.
2. But the problem widens upon another side, when we take into consideration the logical functions which are concerned in all feel
1 Cf. note at the close of the Introduction of the Critique Judgment, W. , VII. 38 i. of *
Chap. 1, { 40. ] Natural Purposiveness : the Judgment. ' 561
ings and approvals. The judgments in which these are expressed are evidently all synthetic. Predicates such as agreeable, useful, beautiful, and good, are not analytically contained in the subject, but express the worth of the object with reference to an end ; they are estimations of adaptation, and contain in all cases the subor dination of the object to its end. Now in the psychological scheme which lies at the basis of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant desig nates the faculty of subsuming the particular under the general by the name Judgment. And this, too, was regarded as playing among the theoretical functions, also, the mediating part between Reason and Understanding, in such a sort that the former gives principles, the latter objects, while the Judgment performs the task of applying the principles to the objects.
But in its theoretical use the Judgment is analytical, since it determines its objects by general conceptions according to rules of formal logic ; the attainment of a correct conclusion depends only on finding the appropriate minor for a given major, or vice versa.
In contrast with this determining Judgment, which thus needs no " Critique," Kant sets the reflecting Judgment, in the case of which the synthesis consists just in subordination to an end. And accord ingly the problem of the Critique of the Judgment takes this formu lation : Is it a priori possible to judge Nature to be adapted to an end t Kvident. lv this is the highest synthesis of the critical philosophy ; the application of the category of the practical reason to the object of
the theoretical. It is clear from the outset that this application itself can be neither theoretical nor practical, neither a knowing nor a witting : it is only a looking at Nature from the point of view of pur
posiveness or adaptation to ends.
If the reflecting Judgment gives to this contemplation the direc
tion of judging Nature with regard to her adaptation to the contem plating subject as such, it proceeds aesthetically, i. e. having regard to our mode of feeling or sensibility ; ' on the contrary, regards Nature as she were purposive in herself, then proceeds teleologi- eally in the narrower sense, and so the Critique of the Judgment
divided into the investigation of aesthetic and teleological prob lems.
3. In the first part Kant primarily concerned to separate the aesthetic judgment with exactness from the kinds of judgments of feeling or approval which border upon on both sides, and to this end he proceeds from the point of view of the feeling of the beaut
Smpindunaiuf ue tbiu Kant justifies his change In terminology, W. , VIL *8«. d. II. «andabove,p. 483
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562 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VL
The beautiful shares with the good the a priori character, but the good is that which agrees with the end presented as a norm in the moral law, while the beautiful, on the contrary, pleases without a conception. For this reason, also, it is impossible to set up a universal criterion which shall contain a content according to which beauty shall be judged with logical clearness. An aesthetic doctrine is impossible ; there is only a " Critique of the Taste" that is, an investigation as to the possibility of the a priori validity of aesthetic judgments.
On the other hand, the beautiful shares with the agreeable its conceptionless quality, the absence of a conscious standard of judgment, and, therefore, the immediacy of the impression. But the distinction here lies in the fact that the agreeable is something individually and contingently gratifying, whereas the beautiful forms the object of universal and necessary pleasure. 1 The princi ple that there is no disputing over tastes, is true only in the sense that in matters of taste nothing is to be effected by proofs with con ceptions, but this does not exclude the possibility of an appeal to universally valid feelings.
Finally, the beautiful distinguishes itself from both the good and the agreeable, in that it is the object of a completely disinterested pleasure. This appears in the circumstance that the empirical reality
of its object is a matter of complete indifference for the aesthetic judgment. The hedonic feelings all presuppose the material presence
of the phenomena which excite them ; ethical approval or disapproval concerns just the realisation of the moral end in willing and acting; the aesthetic feelings, on the contrary, require as their condition a pure delight in the mere represented image of the object, whether the same is objectively present for knowledge or not. The aesthetic life lacks the power of the feelings of personal weal and woe, just as it lacks the earnestness of a universally worthy work for ethical ends ; it is the mere play of ideas in the imagination.
Such a delight which relates not to the object, but only to the image ofthe object, cannot concern the objective material of the object, — for this always stands in relation to the interests of the subject, — but only the form in which the object is presented to the mind; and in this, therefore, if anywhere, is to be sought the ground of the a priori synthesis which belongs to the aesthetic judgments. The purposiveness of aasthetic objects cannot consist in their adaptation to some interest or other ; it can be only in their adaptation to the
1 Cf. F. Blencke, Kant's Unterseheidung des Schonen vom Angenehmen (Strassburg, 1889), where the analogy to the judgments of perception and of experience is emphasised.
ful.
Chak 1, $ 40. ] Natural Purporivenett : Beauty. 563
knowing Forms, by the aid of which they are imaged in the mind. But the faculties which are active in presenting every object are sensibility and understanding. The feeling of beauty arises, there fore, in connection with those objects in the apprehension of which in the imagination sensibility and understanding co-operate in harmonious manner. Such objects are purposive with regard to their working upon our ideational activity, and to this relates the disinterested delight which manifests itself in the feeling of their beauty. 1
But this relation to the formal principles of objective ideation has its ground, not in merely individual activities, but in the "consciousness in general," in the "supersensuous substrate of humanity. " On this account the feeling of a fitness or purposive- ness of objects with reference to this consciousness in general is universally communicable, though not capable of proof by concep tions, and from this is explained the a priori character of the aesthetic judgments.
4. While the "undesigned fitness" or appropriateness of the beautiful is thus set in relation with the working of the object upon the cognitive functions, Kant conceives the nature of the sublime from the point of view of an adaptation of the working of the object to the relation between the sensuous and supersensuous parts of human nature.
While the beautiful signifies a delightful rest in the play of the knowing faculties, the impression of the sublime is effected through the medium of a painful feeling of inadequacy. In the presence of the immeasurable greatness or overpowering might of objects, we feel the inability of our sensuous perception to master them, as an oppression and a casting down ; but the supersensuous power of our reason raises itself above this our sensuous insufficiency. If here the imagination has to do only with extensive magnitudes, — the mathematically sublime, — then the firmly shaping activity of the theoretical reason gains the victory ; but on the contrary, has to do with the relations of power, — the dynamically sublime, — then the superiority of our moral worth to all the jwwer of Nature conies to consciousness. In both cases the discomfort over our sen suous inferiority richly outweighed and overcome by the triumph of our higher rational character. And since this the appropriate
[A fragment published by Relcke in his Lot*. Blatter aui KanCi Sachlau (B II. 112) shows that Kant at one time connected this adaptation with the psychological and physiological conception of general furtherance of life, whether through the senses or through the play of intellectual faculties. Ct
J. H. Tufu, op. cit. , p. 36 f. ]
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564 German Philosophy : Kanfs Critique. [Past VL
relation of the two sides of our being, these objects have an exalting, " subliming" effect, and produce the feeling of a delight of the reason, and this feeling, again, because it is based only upon the relation of our ideational Forms, is universally communicable and of a priori operation.
5. "Kant's aesthetic theory, accordingly, in spite of its "subjec tive point of departure, takes essentially the course of an explana tion of the beautiful and the sublime in Nature; and determines the same through the relation of the ideational Form*. Hence the philosopher finds pure beauty only where the aesthetic judgment relates solely to forms that have no meaning. Where with the delight there is mingled a regard for the meaning of the forms for any norm whatever, however indefinite, there we hare dependent beauty. This appears everywhere where the aesthetic judgment is directed toward objects in which our thought puts a reference to an end. Such norms of dependent beauty rise necessarily as soon as we contemplate in the individual phenomenon the relation to the class which it represents. There is no norm of beauty for landscapes, arabesques, or flowers, but there may be such perhaps for the higher types of the organic world. Such norms are aesthetic ideals, and the true ideal of the aesthetic judgment is man.
The presentation of the ideal is art, the power of aesthetic produc tion. But while this is a function of man which is performed with reference to an end, its product will make the impression of the beau tiful only when it appears as undesigned, disinterested, and free from the attempt to represent a conception, as is the case with the beauty of Nature. Technical art produces structures corresponding to definite ends according to rules and designs, — structures which are adapted to satisfy definite interests. Fine art must work upon the feeling as does a purposeless product of Nature ; it must " be able to be regarded as Nature. "
This, therefore, is the secret of artistic creation, and the character istic element in viz. that the mind which builds with purpose works, nevertheless, in the same way as Nature, which builds with out designs and disinterestedly. The great artist does not create according to general rules; he creates the rules themselves in his involuntary work he original and prototypal. Genius an in telligence that works like Nature.
In the realm of man's rational activity the desired synthesis of freedom and nature, of purposiveness and necessity, of practical and theoretical function, then represented by genius, which with undesigning purposiveness or appropriateness creates the work of fine art.
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Chap. 1, § 40. ] Natural Purposivenett : Organisms. 565
6. In the Critique of the Teleological Judgment the most promi nent task is to establish the relations which, from the points of view of transcendental idealism, exist between the scientific explanation of Nature and the consideration of the adaptation that dwells within her. The theory of natural science can in all lines be only mechanical. "End" (Zweck) is not a category or a constitutive principle of objective knowledge : all explanation of Nature consists in pointing out the causal necessity with which one phenomenon produces another ; a phenomenon can never be made intelligible by emphasis
ing its adaptation or fitness. Such " lazy " teleology is the death of all philosophy of Nature. The apprehension of purposiveness can, therefore, never profess to be an act of knowledge.
But, on the other hand, the standpoint of the mechanical explana tion of Nature would give us the right to completely reject teleologi cal consideration of Nature, only in case we were in a position to make intelligible with the aid of scientific conceptions the whole system of experience, even to the last remnant, in principle at least. But should points be found where scientific theory is inadequate for the explanation of the given material, not indeed on account of the limited nature of the material hitherto available in human experi ence, but on account of the permanent form of the principle which determines this material, then in these points the possibility of supplementing our knowledge by a teleological consideration must be conceded, at the same time, appears that that which mechanically inexplicable makes upon us the inevitable impression of the purposive. Critical teleology can, therefore, concern only the limiting conceptions of the mechanical explanation of Nature.
The first of these Life. mechanical explanation of the organ ism has not only not yet succeeded, but is, according to Kant, impossible in principle. All life can be explained only through other life. We are to understand the individual functions of organ isms through the mechanical connection of their parts with each other and with the environment but we shall always be obliged to bring into our account the peculiar nature of organised matter and it* capacity of reaction, as factor incapable of further reduction. An archsologist of Nature may trace back the genealogy of life, the origination of one species from another according to mechanical prin
ciples as far as possible he will always be obliged to stop with an original organisation which he cannot explain through the mere mechanism of inorganic matter.
The piaugw, in which Kant anticipated the latter theory of deacent, an collected In Fr. Schultze, Kant and Darrein (Jena, 1874).
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666 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part TI
This explanation is impossible because the essential nature of an organism is, that the whole is determined by the parts just as the part is determined by the whole, — that every member is both cause and effect of the whole. This reciprocal causality is incomprehen sible mechanically: the organism is the miracle in the world of
It is just this inter-related play of forms and forces which in the organism makes the impression of the purposive, or of adaptation to an end. Therefore the teleological view of organisms is necessary and universally valid. But it must never profess to be anything else than a mode of consideration. Thought must never be satisfied with this in an individual case ; but the insight into this purposeful activity must rather serve as a heuristic principle for seeking out the mechanical connections by which this purposeful vitality realises itself in each particular case.
7. A second limit of the knowledge of Nature Kant designates by the name of the Specification of Nature. From pure reason arise the general Forms of the uniformity of Nature [». e. causality, etc], but only these. The particular laws of Nature do indeed range themselves beneath those general laws, but do not follow from them. Their particular content is only empirical, i. e. from the standpoint of pure reason it is contingent, and has only the force and validity of an actual matter of fact,* [not that of a priori necessity]. It is never to be understood why there is just this and not some other content. But at the same time, this particular aspect of Nature proves completely purposive; on the one hand, with reference to our knowledge, since the wealth of the matter of fact in our experi ence shows itself to be adapted to be ordered under the a priori Forms of experience, — and on the other hand, as purposive in itself, also, inasmuch as the whole varied multiplicity of the given fits together to form a concrete world of reality, which is objectively unitary.
In this lie the reasons a priori for regarding Nature as a whole from the point of view of purposiveness, and for seeing in the vast mechanism of her causal connections the realising of a supreme end of reason. But in accordance with the primacy of the practical reason, this end can be none other than the moral law, and thus the teleological consideration issues in the moral faith in the divine
world-order.
Finally, if we consider Nature as purposive, in the sense that in
1 Cf. above, p. 480.
* Here Kant joins on in an extremely interesting manner to the latest specu lations of the Leibnizian Monadology ; cf. above, p. 426 [cf. further on this point Utber eine Entdeckung.