Reconsiderations on the Systematic Coherence of Kt7
by Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)
A. Hints in Part One
Although we have seen that Kant never expounds anything like a clear progression of elements for systemj, he does give occasional hints, especially in Part One of Kt7, as to what some of these elements might be.[1] These hints often come in the form of comparisons between terms used in Kt7 and terms used elsewhere to elaborate the elements in systemt and/or systemp. There would be far too much guesswork in interpreting such hints to make a reconstruction of such elements valuable as an accurate interpretation of Kt7. Nevertheless, it may be helpful to gather some of these hints just to see what such a reconstruction might look like. In order for any parallelism to be appropriate, the four stages in systemj would have to be roughly equivalent in function to the corresponding stages in systemt and systemp: stage one should provide some kind of material given; stage two should provide a form through which that material can be understood; stage three should realize the basic goal of the system by synthesizing the first two stages; and stage four should carry the system to a higher purpose through the application of ideas.
In order to construct the first stage in systemj, we could begin by noting Kant's claim that in both systemt and systemp, 'the representation is referred to the Object, but in [systemj] it is referred solely to the Subject and is not available for any cognition' [Kt7:206; s.a. Kt7i:208]. If 'object' here is taken to mean 'transcendental object', then Kant seems to be hinting that step one of systemj replaces the former with a 'transcendental subject', as follows:
Likewise, when Kant says 'imagination must ... be regarded in its freedom ... as originator of arbitrary forms of possible intuitions' [240], he seems to be suggesting that in systemj the material is determined not by sensible intuition, as in systemt, nor by practical freedom, as in systemp, but by imagination. Thus step two might look something like this:
The third step would then be to convert these possible intuitions into feelings, since feeling is the 'mental faculty' which governs systemj, and thus constitutes its transcendental perspective (if any). For 'apart from any reference to the feeling of the Subject, [beauty is] nothing' [218]; thus 'an aesthetic judgment ... is a judgment conveying the determination of the subject and its feeling rather than of the object' [Kt7i:223], a determination which presumably occurs in stage one. Step three would then be as follows:
This 'feeling of pleasure and displeasure' is the 'one unique, so-called sensation which can never become the concept of an object'; so by appealing to such feeling, a judgment first becomes aesthetic [Kt7i:224e.a.].
Allison lends support to the foregoing conjectures when he claims that the 'connection between intuition and an "object in general" ... is Kant's way of distinguishing between intuitions, which become objective, i.e., represented objects, ... and purely subjective or aesthetic representations (feelings)' [A11:21]. As we have seen, the main difference between intuitions which produce feelings and those which produce empirical knowledge is that the former are taken up by the imagination without being conceptualized, whereas the latter are taken up by sensibility and then conceptualized.
In systemj 'understanding is at the service of imagination' [Kt7:242], so the formal work of understanding in the second stage must conform to the material given by feeling in the first stage, rather than vice versa (as in the other two systems). Despite the noncognitive character of aesthetic judgments, then, 'the understanding has ... its role in the judgement of taste ... [Its role is] not that of a faculty for cognizing an object, but of a faculty for determining that judgement and its representation (without a concept) according to its relation to the subject and its internal feeling' [Kt7:228-9]. This passage backs up the above interpretation of step one; but unfortunately, Kant provides few (if any) hints as to how this rather vague, nonconceptual 'determination' or 'power of presentation' [Kt7i:224] actually works, so the elements in stage two remain a mystery.
Kant does give a few hints about how stage three might look. For example, he indirectly compares the function of delight to that of schematism in systemt [Kt7:218-9]. Since the 'free play of imagination and understanding' [Kt7:218] is what gives rise to delight, step seven could be:
Step eight, as pointed out in IX.1, is perhaps the only element about which Kant is clear: for judgments of taste it would consist of the imposition of the four 'moments' of beauty (which we could call 'noncognitive categories'), as discussed in IX.2.A. These four moments can be summarized under the heading 'subjective finality', so that step eight would be:
Finally, step nine would be the actual judgment of taste, which produces what could be called an 'aesthetic experience':
Given that both stages two and four deal with concepts ('of understanding' in stage two, and 'of reason'-i.e., ideas-in stage four), Kant seems to be suggesting that both these stages are irrelevant to aesthetic judgments when he says 'to find beauty we require nothing but mere reflection [= stage three], devoid of concepts [= stages two and four], on a given representation [= stage one].'[2] Nevertheless, stage four is easier to reconstruct than stage two. Since Kant's view of beauty as the symbol of moral goodness is developed in the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment, it would seem natural to compare it to the schematism of reason in step ten of systemt. Also appearing in that Dialectic is the 'aesthetic idea' to which aesthetic judgments give rise [see note IX.12], which seems to be parallel to the regulative ideas in step eleven of systemt or to the postulates in systemp. I will not hazard to guess here just how Kant might have explained the ultimate symbolic purpose of aesthetic judgments (i.e., step twelve of systemj), but if a hint were to be found as to what this might be, then stage four could also be summarized in terms of three discrete steps. I hasten to add, however, that Kant's own hints would need to be supplemented by considerably more detailed arguments before such suggestions could be regarded as the proper elements of systemj.
B. A Single System?
So far I have assumed that the best way of interpreting Kt7 is to regard its two main divisions as two versions of systemj. The organization of Kt7 favors such an approach, for both parts contain a Dialectic as well as an Analytic, thus suggesting two discrete systems. The alternative would be to view aesthetic and teleological judgment as working together to form a single set of necessary conditions for any systemj, regarded, for example, as a system of art. (Deleuze hints at the possibility of such an interpretation when he says that for Kant 'teleological judgement ... is prepared by aesthetic judgement and would remain incomprehensible without this preparation', in the sense that 'aesthetic finality "prepares" us to form a concept of end' [D2:66].) In the remainder of this Appendix I will briefly suggest how such an approach to reconstructing systemj might run.
By eliminating the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgement [Kt7:337-54], which is both the shortest and the most artificial Dialectic in any of the Critiques, or by combining it with the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment, the division of Kt7 would correspond directly to that of Kt4. The three divisions of the Analytic ('of the Beautiful', 'of the Sublime', and 'of Teleological Judgment') together with the remaining Dialectic could then form the four stages of Kant's argument. This fourfold division could be mapped onto our model [i.e., Figure III.6] as an accurate account of the systematic relationship between the main topics Kant discusses. But unless beauty and sublimity could somehow be regarded as supplying, respectively, the matter and form of teleological judgments, such a model would not describe the stages of a single system, so there would be few parallels between it and the models used to summarize systemt and systemp.
Kant himself hints at the possibility of seeing all of Kt7 as expounding a single system when he says in Kt7i:249: 'The aesthetic of the reflective judgment ... form[s] a part of the critique of that faculty, just as the logic of the same faculty, under the name of teleology, constitutes the other part of it.' This suggests that aesthetic judgment could serve to constitute stage one while teleological judgment constitutes stage two. He then goes on to explain that beauty is based on a kind of 'inner' purposiveness (corresponding to the faculty of 'taste') and sublimity on a kind of 'outer' or 'relative' purposiveness (corresponding to the faculty of 'mental sentience') [249-50]-a distinction reminiscent of that between inner and outer sense in stage one of systemt. Unfortunately, such hints are not developed sufficiently to make a case from Kant's text that Kt7 constitutes such a coherent system.
[1] I will limit my attention here to Part One,mainly because Kant himself devotes far more attention to explicating the nature of aesthetic than teleological judgment. Moreover, since it comes first in the exposition of Kt7, it seems to hold some measure of priority. Cassirer discusses Kant's apparently ambiguous attitude towards the relative priority of the two Parts of Kt7, and concludes that, although criticizing teleological judgment is in a sense a more important task than criticizing aesthetic judgment [see e.g, Kt7i:241], the former is really secondary to the latter [C6:163-4].
[2]Kt7i:229.By contrast, 'teleological judgment presupposes a concept of the object' [234], so stages two and four are more dominant in Part Two of Kt7. Thus Kant says 'teleological judgment...relates its reflection entirely to reason (not feeling)' [Kt7i:250-1]-i.e., to stage four, not to stage one. This seems to support the suggestions made in the second part of this Appendix.
