Prof. Stephen Palmquist,
D.Phil. (Oxon)
Department of Religion and Philosophy
Hong Kong Baptist University
Book
Review of:
Douglas
Burnham: An Introduction to Kant’s Critique
of Judgement. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press Ltd, 2000. x + 198 pages.
As
is appropriate for an introductory text, Douglas Burnham’s book opens with a
chapter providing general background information on Kant, a systematic overview
of the whole Critical philosophy, a sketch of the
basic issues dealt with in the third Critique, and an explanation of the
overall structure of Kant’s book. Here and throughout Burnham’s book each
section ends with a helpful summary, with diagrams and other convenient “lists”
being supplied along the way for added clarity. For the most part, these
summaries are reliable. The author’s interpretations, however, occasionally
suffer from some rather unfortunate mistakes. For example, when contrasting the
categories with the principles (p.14), Burnham cites the principle of
non-contradiction as the primary example; yet Kant’s expressed reason for
mentioning this “principle” in A150-3/B189-93 is to contrast it with the
principles that function as applications of the categories. Likewise, while
Burnham’s catalogue of the four “parts of sensibility” (pp.13-14), composed by
grouping imagination (reproductive and productive) together with sensation and
pure intuition, makes for an intriguing interpretation, especially as applied
to the third Critique, he does not inform his (unknowing) student reader
that the position he presents is far from being expressed so unambiguously in
Kant’s text.
The
main content of Burnham’s book is divided into five chapters that follow a more
or less predictable – though sometimes rather idiosyncratic – order. Chapter 1
explains three of the four “moments” of beauty, but does so in a manner that
wholly neglects Kant’s own understanding of their architectonic unity. Burnham
discusses the second moment (universality) first, the first moment
(disinterestedness) second, and the fourth moment (necessity) third! Moreover,
he then devotes the entirety of Chapter 2 to a discussion of the third moment (purposiveness). Chapter 3 interprets Kant’s theory of the
sublime in a more straightforward way, dealing with the beautiful-sublime
distinction, the mathematical-dynamical distinction, and the roots of the
sublime in reason, before making a few concluding observations on the Analytic
section of Part I of Kant’s book. Chapter 4, by contrast, takes a thematic
approach, summarizing Kant’s treatment of art, genius, the supersensible, and
morality throughout the Critique. Burnham concludes his book in Chapter
5 with an account of teleological judgment, final purpose, and religious
belief, as covered in Part II of Kant’s Critique and its lengthy
Appendix.
Since the third Critique is probably
the least orderly of Kant’s main systematic works, this mixture of text-based
and topical organization, though potentially confusing in places (especially in
Chapter 2), probably benefits the student reader in the long run. However, it
illustrates what is probably the main weakness of Burnham’s book: that he gives
no attention to Kant’s own reasons for presenting his arguments and
theories in the order he does. Had Burnham explained the architectonic
connection between the four “moments” and the four categories presented in the
first Critique as the key to all architectonic unity, then the
justification (or according to some interpreters, the unjustifiability)
of ignoring Kant’s order in his own exposition would have been easier for the
novice reader to assess. As it stands, though, the book leaves such readers
without the tools to make such a judgment.
Among
the most appealing aspects of this Introduction is the presence of
numerous interesting insights. Though mostly undeveloped, these pearls keep the
more seasoned reader of Kant interested, providing hints for possible future
analysis and/or development. Here are a few examples: to say “beauty ‘chooses’
me” is a more accurate account of Kant’s position than “I am free to choose
what I find beautiful” (p.50); likewise, in the first “moment” of beauty
(p.55), “[i]t is the judgement
that is disinterested, not us.” In forming judgments of the sublime (p.96), “an
object is ‘fearful’ to be sure, but (because we remain disinterested) is not in
fact an object of fear.” Otherwise, it would lose its aesthetic character. And in discussing art, genius, and the sensus communis as
the medium for the universal communicability of aesthetic judgments, Burnham
rightly connects these themes to Kant’s views on culture and education,
pointing out (p.126) that the ability to ground our judgments in the common
sense “is a skill …, one that needs cultivation.” (Indeed,
“understanding communication” [p.121] is one of Kant’s primary tasks in
the third Critique.) This is where the moral component in Kant’s
aesthetic theory comes in (p.135): “Without this moral culture, reason would
never be able to redeem the pain felt in … the sublime experience.” Regarding
Kant’s infamous view of beauty as a symbol of moral goodness, Burnham observes
that “‘symbol’ … is more than just a kind of similarity between two different
things” (p.139); rather, the term refers to the fact that both things are
“grounded in the same supersensible self.”
The
book’s concluding (fifth) chapter attempts to be a tour de force,
explaining how judgment for Kant “solves the grand problem of the unity of
philosophy” (p.171). Although Burnham’s attempt is admirable and indeed,
insightful on a number of key points, his lack of serious attention to Kant’s
own architectonic patterns severely limits his ability to succeed in this goal.
Whereas Part I of the third Critique, on aesthetic judgment, examines
various aspects of purposiveness (i.e.,
viewing objects “as if” they were purposes, but without being grounded in any
real natural purpose), Part II, on teleological judgment, brings Kant’s Critical
enterprise full circle by focusing on organisms – i.e., on real physical ends
or natural purposes. In this sense, Kant’s order of exposition seems to
be the reverse of that in the first Critique, where sensibility (the
natural grounding) comes at the beginning and reason (the “as if” perspective)
at the end. Whereas the first Critique adopts the standpoint of
understanding (or logical thought) to assess the faculties of the human mind,
and the second Critique adopts the standpoint of reason (or volitional
action) to assess the same faculties, the third Critique adopts the
standpoint of judgment. This obvious, yet often-overlooked fact of Kant’s
architectonic could be used to sort Burnham’s useful interpretations into a
more meaningful whole. When judgment looks at the faculty of reason, it sees
beauty as a symbol of moral goodness; when it looks at understanding, it sees
the sublime as a free play of imagination in asserting an unprecedented control
over our logical thought; and when judgment looks at the root of all our
rational faculties, the “lower” faculty of sensibility, it sees the world as
the home of imagination itself, the interwoven wholeness of nature. Although
Burnham accurately acknowledges that the common thread uniting each of these
perspectives is their common grounding in the supersensible, his exposition of
their interrelationships with each other and with the other Critiques
does not quite secure for Kant the hoped-for ideal of “the necessary elegance
of statement” (Critique of Pure Reason, Bxliv).
A
number of minor annoyances mar the reader’s otherwise generally pleasurable
experience in reading this book. For example, Burnham often revises the
standard translations, but usually without indicating exactly where or how he
is doing so. Similarly, references are sometimes missing for quotations,
leaving the student unable to check the context in questionable circumstances
(see e.g, p.43, where we must simply trust Burnham
that Kant ever called pleasure “the feeling of an enhancement of life”). Also,
students may be confused by his occasional loose use of certain technical
terms, as when he refers to the “category of the sublime” (p.40,
emphasis added). Perhaps the most obvious inaccuracy comes in his use of the
example of honey (see pp.46-47): he repeatedly refers to the “objective fact”
that honey “contains sugar”, when in fact honey and sugar are
two entirely different substances, sharing only the accidental quality of
sweetness. Ironically, Burnham goes on to warn the reader “that not all aesthetic
judgements are well-formed – some are the result of
mistakes” (p.47), yet his own foregoing example contains a rather different,
but parallel mistake. Another annoyance is Burnham’s tendency to use objective
phrases such as “It is not clear” (e.g., pp.95-96) or “The relevant passages …
are … confused” (p.115) instead of less presumptuous constructions such as “I
do not understand” or “These passages confuse me.” Finally, the occurrence of
fairly regular typographical and/or proofreading errors (including incomplete
sentences in several places) plagues this book to an extent that is
all-too-typical in these days when even major publishers no longer take
responsibility for proofreading. When editing is done on a computer and then
not proofread by a professional, mistakes such as the misuse of “a” for “an”
(or vice versa) are almost inevitable – though not setting a good example of
meticulousness for student readers!
Despite being distracted by these
nit-picking annoyances, I found myself stimulated at several points while
reading this book to think for myself about new aspects or implications of
Kant’s theories. In discussing the sublime, for example, Burnham refers to “the
very failure of the imagination” as “a negative exhibition … of the
transcendence of reason” that is followed by “a hidden theft”, whereby we “feel
the result … of the sublime experience, but … [forget about the] revelation of
human transcendence” (p.100). This two-sided aspect of the sublime therefore
appears to be parallel in interesting ways to Kant’s distinction between the
negative noumenon (as a limiting concept) and the
positive noumenon (as an unknown – or forgotten? – hypostatization). Likewise, the attention Burnham gives to
the relationships between the different topics in Kant’s book and how they hang
together, admirably attempting to show us how to see Kant’s book “whole”,
provides much fertile food for thought, even though he is far from giving us
the last word on the subject. If a good book is one that inspires the
reader to think his or her own original thoughts, then Burnham’s book passes
the test, at least in this reviewer’s experience.
Stephen Palmquist,
Hong Kong
This etext is based on a prepublication draft of the published
version of this essay.
Send comments to: StevePq@hkbu.edu.hk
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