Chapter 3

Kant’s Concept of the Beautiful

On Finitude and Happiness

It is with Kant that we who explore the vicissitudes of the concept of the beautiful return home, or at least to one of our homes—to the spirit of the old European narrative. But Kant still is and remains a man of the Enlightenment as he reinvigorates an ancient idea in light of a new framework. What he termed his Copernican revolution, that is, the turn away from the metaphysical center towards the faculties of the human mind, had already been accomplished in matters of beauty—the faculties of judgment, taste, understanding, and sense replaced the notion of the One during the finest hours of the British Enlightenment. The turn to the subject or transcendental subject was first accomplished by understanding beauty, and this change was radical, even for Kant. Of the three a priori faculties, only reflective judgment had no territory of its own as judgment legislates only for itself. Compared to the concepts of the true and the good, the concept of the beautiful was the most radically anti-metaphysical.

If this idea is true, then defending the notion that Kant returned to the spirit of the old narrative initiated by Plato is difficult. Additionally, in many noteworthy details, Kant was as remote from the tradition as his Scottish and French predecessors and contemporaries. Obviously, there is no hierarchy in Kant, so ascension on the rungs of the metaphorical ladder does not actually occur in his framework. Moreover, love does not play a pivotal role in aesthetic judgment, be it the judgment of taste (of the beautiful) or the sublime. erôs, desire, is absent as the judgment of taste is, in its origin, unrelated to the faculty of desire. The British Enlightenment eliminated the will, which Kant identified as the “upper” faculty of desire, from the list of faculties which were said to be related to beauty and taste. However, the thinkers of the time maintained that the lower faculties of desire, such as love, played a role in matters of taste. In Kant, according to whom both the will and desire are excluded from the experience of the beautiful, beauty is not something that man covets, desires to possess, or misses in its absence. Instead, humans desire happiness and they achieve happiness only if they receive what they desire. Nevertheless, since men are overwhelmed by insatiable drives, Süchte, they are most likely unable to attain happiness in their pragmatic pursuits. The faculty of reflective judgment is, however, detached from all practical pursuits. Men and women assume the perspective of the spectator in their judgments of taste. As an observer, one must let something be for itself, and not for himself. Here, joy and pleasure are present, but not as a result of an achievement. Therefore, it is no wonder that love in the Platonic sense is expelled from the paradise of beauty.

Still, many elementary aspects of the Platonic arch-narrative of the beautiful may be traced in Kant’s work. The moment at which one experiences the beautiful is autarchia. The delight in beauty is satisfaction beyond want and the judgment of taste is pure and neither determined nor disturbed by charm, interest, or emotions. As far as happiness is concerned, one cannot make the distinction between pure and impure because happiness is always impure. Morality does not promise happiness, even though the moral person deserves happiness. Instead, the promise of happiness resides in the capacity to exercise a pure judgment of taste, which depends on the observer. The symbiosis between purity and the promise of happiness returns without revenge since it can be traced back to an a priori or pure faculty. This relationship provides the basis on which the intimate contact between beauty and morality may be reinstated, despite a lack of causal relation between them. The only thing missing from the traditional picture, and perhaps for the better, is love.1 Love is the great loser in Kant—it loses its position as erôs, agape, and philia, even though The Metaphysics of Morals provides an excellent analysis of friendship.

It has frequently been pointed out that in Plato the concept of the beautiful, like the concept of love, is politically charged. The construct of a metaphysical hierarchy was a mirror image of a real, or at least preferred, political hierarchy. The modern world has slowly abandoned the ideal of hierarchy not only in politics but in the world of philosophy too. The discussion previously addressed how Hume reconciled two political creeds in his essay on taste. On one hand, every man is born free and equal, which means that their judgments of taste are of equal worth. On the other hand, cultivation provides for the situation in which their judgments will not hold the same value, or weight. This is why refinement of taste became a central issue for the cultural elite whose judgment becomes the real standard of taste. Something similar happens in Kant and at the beginning of his critical period all of his philosophical works had political implications. This trend was particularly obvious in the Critique of Judgment, which was written right before the French Revolution. Many of this work’s paragraphs, and in particular the fortieth, are now regarded as masterpieces of Kant’s political philosophy, especially because of Hannah Arendt’s analysis.2

I do not wish to center on the direct political message of the fortieth chapter of Critique of Judgment. Instead, in this section I will decipher the indirect political message primarily from the aspects of the pure judgment of taste, the analytic of the sublime, and the quasi-transcendental deduction of the pure judgment of taste. I speak of this deduction as Kant’s transcendental anthropology. It is here that Kant assigns the three main political ideas of the revolution, namely liberty, equality, and fraternity, to the whole human person and not just to man’s intelligible nature.3

The most dramatic move and greatest novelty in Kant’s concept of the beautiful is contained in the programmatic sentence in which he speaks about the experience of the beautiful as one of human privilege.4 He writes, “Pleasantness concerns irrational animals also, but beauty only concerns men, i.e. animal, but still rational, beings—and the good concerns every rational being in general.”5 Pure, rational beings, such as angels or Gods, could not possibly say, “this rose is beautiful,” for they have no sensual sight or faculty of pleasure and displeasure.6 The novelty of this dramatic statement can be disputed. After all, thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment took it as self-evident that the judgment of taste is just a human faculty. For Kant, however, this idea was not one of common sense, but rather a representative philosophical statement essential for making the distinction between faculties of reason and reflective judgment.

Although true knowledge is always temporal, the stars of goodness and truth are related to the idea of the Eternal, that is, beyond knowledge. To speak only of morality, the categorical imperative is eternal and supersensible because it does not undergo change. The human person should approximate the eternal, but this approximation cannot be finite, as such an approximation would only be true of earthly things. Therefore, according to Kant, humans postulate the immortality of the soul, yet in beholding beauty, there is nothing but finitude. When one verbalizes one’s experiences and says, “This wild tulip is beautiful,” for example, there is nothing left to approximate—there is only the absolute. Consequently, the human being does not need an afterlife, immortality, or eternity to take pleasure in beauty or enjoy the moment of an absolute experience. The experience of beauty is the privilege of humans, mortal, transient beings.7 It is not just that a transient being who is aware of his or her transience can enjoy beauty, but rather beauty itself is transient and not eternal. There is no ladder and the metaphor of climbing one does not stand for hierarchy alone, but also for approximation. One must exercise strenuously to come closer to knowing the absolute, divine source of beauty, even though one will never reach that goal. In Kant, the source of beauty is fully revealed and the subsequent delight is beyond effort.

Kant replaces the metaphor of the ladder with the metaphor of the bridge to characterize the pure judgment of taste. Because the metaphor of the ladder suggests that one must overcome the limitations of his senses to arrive at sheer spiritual beauty, one must first know how to climb the ladder. In other words, the climber must know his or her desires or at least have an inkling of the intended goal. However, one does not need to know that one is standing on a bridge if he or she merely takes one step onto the bridge. After all, humans continue to utter pure judgments of taste and enjoy beautiful tulips without understanding the Kantian system. Kant simply points out that, like it or not, humans stand on the bridge, which connects the realms of nature and transcendental freedom. In nature, understanding legislates while in transcendental freedom, reason legislates. The bridge is suspended above the abyss in which there are no realms, just the void of a no-man’s land. On the bridge of freedom of play and imagination, no one rules.

In the old Christian-Platonic tradition, man is a mixture of a brute and an angel. The transcendental anthropology of man splits between homo-phenomenon and homo-noumenon. While this divide echoes the old story, there is now a bridge in sight. If one stands on the bridge, one is neither a brute nor an angel, but simply a human, and a free one at that. The bridge leaves no room for dualism and it is the privilege of mortality and transience that connects the realm of knowing with the realm of morality. The bridge that is floating above the abyss provides for the suspension of both knowledge and morality in reflective judgment. On this bridge, no one pursues his or her interest, competes, or covets, yet everyone still achieves happiness.

In his analytic judgment of taste, Kant participates in a theoretical exercise that Derrida, employing an analogy from the language of a butcher, chides as the “pure cut.”8 Indeed, Kant cuts, or rather slices away everything from the pure judgment of taste that might endanger its purity or a priori character. He eliminates interest, the concept—everything that could give account of the reflective judgment in terms of determinant judgments, whether of knowledge, morality, or pragmatic in nature, all of which make us rational beings. Kant also slices away charm and emotion, that is, almost everything that belongs to us as natural beings. What remains, however, is the bridge suspended over nothing between two somethings. Yet, to describe the “pure cut” in terms of indifference or absence of involvement, as many interpreters of Kant do, and to associate it with l’art pour l’art or impassibilité is wrong, even if one disregards the categories of relation and modality in the analytic of the pure judgment of taste. Heidegger correctly blames Schopenhauer as the source of this gross misunderstanding.9 Heidegger argues that aesthetic judgment in Kant is sheer delight or the joy felt at the very “being-such” of a thing without the desire to possess it, whether the thing is natural or artistic.10 The feeling of delight may be very intense. In addition, one does not simply make a statement about the beauty of a thing, but also affirms this beauty. To use Hegel’s language, it is not the being-for-us of the thing, but the being-for-itself of the thing that we affirm. Although the kind of enthusiasm that is always vested in the idea of freedom has little to do with the pure judgment of taste,11 there still exists a similarity between a spectator of the historical theater and the contemplator of the beauty of a wild tulip. In both cases, one does not take delight in something without personal interest, either individual or collective. There are beautiful flowers just as there are people who value freedom more than their life.

Every philosophical pharmacist recommends beauty as the cure for barbarism. Even Plato trembled when he cast a glance into the underworld of our soul and realized that reason does not prevent the spread of evil; beauty might be a more forceful medicine. A few representatives of the Enlightenment and classicalism, such as Rousseau and Schiller, reevaluated this idea. In Schiller, Kant served as both the mentor and object of criticism in discussions on aesthetical education as the panacea for barbarism. Kant’s understanding of barbarism was rationalistic, just like Hume’s and Rousseau’s, and he remained untouched by the darker visions of Diderot and Sade, both of whom were unknown to Kant. Thinkers of the post-Enlightenment age, such as Freud, Nietzsche, and Adorno, were closer to Plato’s notion of barbarism than Kant’s, however. Kant was an anthropological skeptic, yet he still trivialized the underworld of the human soul. He believed that man’s actions are motivated primarily by self-love, an idea resembling some of those found in Aristotle’s Rhetoric.12

Kant was convinced that if anything could conquer self-love, which is constantly enhanced by man’s tendency to compare himself to others, it is moral law itself. The kind of barbarism that emerges from civilization, however, is something different, or at least it triggers specific mechanisms in our love of the self. Technology, or the culture of skills, menaces the development of ethical culture, the culture of the mind and legality that arises along with civilization itself.13 Morality never develops since it is eternal, but this issue is not at stake here. Nature may have a propensity for freedom, but it may also develop otherwise. Kant was interested in the circumstances which best develop nature. The ease and aptitude of forming aesthetic judgments, or at least recognizing beauty when one sees it, contributes not just to the refinement of taste in general, but also to the refinement of the human person as a whole. Refinement of taste does not make men good, but men of good reflective judgment of taste can develop, by analogy, good ethical taste. In other words, these men can behave as if they are good.

The political implications of good aesthetic judgment are closely related to this issue. In both paragraphs 41 and 42 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant addresses, among other things, those implications.

According to the thinkers of the Enlightenment, qualitative equality exists. All humans are born free and endowed with reason and conscience. This kind of equality is not opposite of inequality, however.14 As a matter of fact, there is no comparison because there is no yardstick with which to compare things that are qualitatively different. If one is born with certain faculties, then he possesses those faculties without even having to practice them. Qualitative equality, politically speaking, is a normative fiction, albeit a good one. Rousseau expressed the fictitious character of qualitative equality in the gambit of the Social Contract. All humans are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains. Hume’s anthropology was grounded in the same fiction in that everyone’s judgment is equally valid, yet each is subjective and, therefore, not based on a standard of taste. To become a member of the cultural elite and represent the standard of taste, one must refine his taste and become unequal with those whose tastes remain uncultivated.

Kant’s pure judgment of taste is not fictitious, at least at first glance. The newborn infant does not point to a tulip and deem it beautiful to express his delight and pleasure, as do adults. Their experience of beauty does not presuppose education or cultivation. However, through the systematic elimination of interests, charm, and emotion, what Derrida named the “pure cut,” Kant sidestepped Hume’s dilemma.15 According to Hume, some men have good taste and others have bad taste, but in terms of the Kantian pure judgment of taste, one cannot distinguish these tastes. As a matter of fact, this distinction makes no sense at all. If someone says, “I find this painting beautiful,” another person could accuse the speaker of having bad taste. On the other hand, if someone exclaims, “How beautiful this tulip is!” no one would decry that individual’s taste. The only difference here is the manner in which the second person discussed beauty, namely that he does not use “I.” Man’s qualitative equality manifests itself in the latter utterance and all humans are authorized to make such statements. Even the uncultivated individuals are authorized to affirm the beauty of natural things. Finally, one need not justify one’s pure judgment of taste, as Kant warns that the pure judgment of taste cannot be justified.

Still, Kant, as a philosopher, had to provide reasons as to why the freedom of a judgment of taste is respected. The theory of sensus communis provides those reasons and Kant’s version of this theory was far more sophisticated than that of his predecessors. Contrary to prior ideas, such as that of Hutcheson, Kant did not presuppose the existence of a special innate sense of beauty or an equally special innate aesthetic sense. Had he done so, he could not have avoided the Humean pitfall because he would have had to conclude that although everyone is equally born with an aesthetic sense, good taste depends solely on culture, or the refinement of the senses. Kant circumvents this dilemma by basing his concept of equality on the notion that all humans are born with the faculties of understanding and imagination. This does not need to be proven. These faculties are what, at least in part, comprise humanity for without them, individuals would be unable to comprehend objects. As far as the cognitive world-orientation is concerned, reproductive imagination is subject to understanding. Still, since humans possess both of these faculties and practice them continuously, it is also possible to attune the two faculties to one another so that neither is subjected to the other. This is the well-known “free play of understanding and imagination.”

The event of free play is the state of harmony among equals. This harmony is the Kantian sensus communis and may be attributed to all humans.16 Sensus communis provides the condition for the judgment of taste and Kant sometimes emphasizes that in the case of judgment of taste, imagination acts first to provoke the understanding’s entrance into the play of attunement and harmony. Kant also argued that the third faculty of knowing, namely reason, also plays a role in this free musical composition. In fact, reason plays a major role in the analytic of the sublime.

Kant’s concept of the sensus communis brings the discussion back to the old narrative, and beauty and harmony are, once again, related. His theory demonstrates two elegant features that concern the present inquiry directly. First, although all faculties are attuned to one another and are innate, the free play of the faculties—the judgment of taste itself—is not innate and simply appears. One feels the judgment of taste every time one judges something as beautiful for the first time. It is always an originary event, a surprise, an unexpected and unrepeatable occurrence. Every concrete judgment of taste is independent of every other and, thus, entirely original. Sensus communis is not a capacity that either develops or fails to develop in time, but rather a constantly present potentiality that can always be mobilized and activated in an unexpected encounter with a purposive form.

At this point in the Kantian framework, Derrida raises some serious doubts concerning the radicalism of the “pure cut.”17 One need not exercise his imagination to a great extent to regard Kant in the context of the Leibnizian theory of pre-established harmony. One can think of the free play of understanding and imagination, and particularly reason’s attunement to this play, as the musical composition that had been written down and conducted by God. Kant needed only to cut the string between God and the faculties and make one believe that those faculties perform motions on their own, yet in a way that seemingly renders them subject to the divine will. Kant himself furnished some arguments for such understanding. For example, in a letter he wrote during the time in which he wrote Critique of Judgment, he voiced the conviction that Leibniz, in his theory of pre-established harmony, must have had in mind nothing other than the harmony among the mental faculties.18 For this reason, Derrida, among others, recommended reading the Critique of Judgment backwards since the key to aesthetic judgment is found in teleological judgment. This matter will not be addressed here, but it is important to note that for Kant it suffices to prove the possibility of such harmony while the source of possibility can be bracketed out. Kant moreover warns against the elimination of these brackets.

The second elegant feature concerning human inquiry is the presupposition of qualitative equality among all men who freely pass pure judgments of taste. As the free play between understanding and imagination manifests itself during judgment, reflective judgment displays the unity of equality and freedom “in suspense.” While standing on the bridge above the abyss, there is no conceptual thought or will, and the distinction between the determiner and the determined is muddled. The happiness of the moment is the mere experience of suspension in which the two firmly grounded worlds are linked and, thus, comprise the whole person.

Granted, freedom and equality also coincide in the realm of morality, but this unity has nothing to do with the ensemble of harmony and attunement. If one’s freedom is simultaneously his nature and if the moral law determines the laws of one’s nature, then there would be something more than just attunement and harmony. The result is relevant as hope but not in action, and, as far as action is concerned, individuals differ from each other insofar as they are natural, and not insofar as they are free. Freedom is humankind itself and humans do not tune themselves into humankind in themselves. As in Rousseau, where humans are equally nothing before the tyrant, in Kant, humans are nothing before the law, yet they carry the law in themselves. Humanity’s own greatness and dignity humiliates its pride and haughtiness. Still, freedom is nominal and universal while nature is singular and, in the face of the law, equal.

The scenario of the pure judgment of taste is entirely different. Individuals are involved in the experience as whole persons as nature and freedom are attuned to each other in a momentary balance. Every single event is a free play and contains the claim to universality. True, one should mind the warning against voyeurism. One passes a pure judgment of taste as a voyeur and it is as a voyeur that one experiences free delight, which is entirely without responsibility. Here, it appears that the Kant of the critical period rescinded almost everything he said about the beautiful female character as a young man.

In matters of pure judgment of taste, one can say about free delight, “We may say that . . . that of the taste in the beautiful is alone a disinterested and free satisfaction. . . . Hence we may say of satisfaction that it is related in the three aforesaid cases to inclination, to favor, or to respect.”19 The German word Gunst means something like “giving preference to” or “to favor someone or something.” Thus, when a person says that a rose is beautiful, she favors, or prefers the rose without even comparing it to another one. The act of free equality is an act that stands above all rules and regulations. Only a person of royalty who stands above everyone else can favor whomever or whatever she wants. In passing aesthetic judgments, every person is a king as can favor whatever he likes. The king takes delight in what he likes and can favor it simply for that reason. Gunst will later play another role in Kant’s aesthetics and pragmatic anthropology in terms of making the claim that nature favors the artistic genius, the Günstling der Natur.20 It is not an unfounded suspicion that the favor of nature is actually a favor granted by the supersensible realm that appears as if it were a gift of nature. Still, the pure judgment of taste, contrary to the artistic genius who creates something original, does not produce anything else but the judgment itself.

The human privilege to pass aesthetic judgments is not trivial, as it cannot be trivial that only humans have the capacity to say something like, “This flower is beautiful,” for this gesture is one of royal privilege. The judgment of taste is the promesse du bonheur, the promise of happiness. Young Kant’s beautiful character is replaced by the gesture of favoring, or the experience of beholding beauty. Furthermore, the metaphorical bridge between the realms of nature and freedom fundamentally represents the gesture of favoring since the promise of happiness is really the promise of royal favoring. Given this analysis, it now seems as if Kant did not resign his youthful fancy about the promise of happiness contained in the “female” unity of beauty and freedom. Instead, the fancy became a strongly founded conviction as it shifted from the description of the character structure to the grand scenario, the architectural structure of the bridge.

The event of happiness in the judgment of taste is dissimilar to the kind of happiness that one enjoys when achieving an intended goal or satisfying other lower faculties of desire. This happiness is not related to the faculty of desire at all, but only to the faculty of pleasure/displeasure. In addition, the exercise of the faculty of judgment neither requires nor allows comparisons. Therefore, this type of happiness bears no relation to the morally bad—neither to evil maxims, wicked inclinations, or self-love. The morally decent person deserves to be happy, but she is usually unhappy, even though she exercises the royal gesture of favoring a beautiful thing as she pleases. This royal favoring yields happiness, but it is only momentary and this momentary beholding of beauty is the true promise of happiness.

In Kant’s pre-critical scenario, the melancholic man does not achieve happiness, but in Kant’s critical era, the melancholic man can achieve happiness, at least for the moment at which he encounters beauty.21

Whenever Kant discusses judgments of taste that are not entirely pure, he, just like Hume, will distinguish between the refined and raw taste. In this respect, it is unimportant whether heteronomy is attributable to the presence of a concept, self-interest, charm, or emotion. In the discussion on adherent beauty, this idea first appears in the explanation of the normal idea in nature and that of the ideal. In these cases, one must compare things by their own standard of perfection so that he should pay attention to the cultivation of taste. The type and level of taste is certainly different, for example, if one must learn to distinguish between a beautiful Arabian horse and a deformed one or between a brilliant painting and a dull one. While there are no rigid standards of perfection, there are approximate standards that serve as yardsticks in each case.

Still, Kant is not Hume. Although no learning is required to pass pure judgments of taste, the “pure cut” itself places one under certain obligations. The description of the purity of the judgment of taste is normative and one must abstract from personal psychology, prejudices, preconceptions, etc., in order to pass a pure judgment of taste. During the reader’s walk among Kant’s garden of tulips and roses, Kant slowly introduces the world of fraternity. Freedom, equality, and fraternity are indiscernible, yet humans can still practice the royal gesture of favoring and take responsibility for that favor.

The notion of fraternity is unnecessary as long as humans are endowed with the same kind of capacities, such as reason, imagination, and desire. Still, the idea of fraternity is always present because the experience of delight is a judgment, and a judgment is an utterance, which is only useful in the presence of others. When one makes an utterance, he does something for his peers and expects something in return. The kind of fraternity that characterizes each and every instance of pure judgment of taste, as well as other kinds of aesthetic judgments, cannot be termed philia, at least in the strict Greek sense. One may wonder whether the three kinds of love—erôs, philia, and agape—which are so conspicuously missing from Kant’s oeuvre, are not placed there in the reflective aesthetic judgment of taste, hidden like a picture in a puzzle. Agape is Gunst, erôs is hidden in delight (Wohlgefallen) and philia makes its appearance in the universal form of judgment.

To delight in the beautiful is not a private feeling. Moreover, the claim to universality presented in the form of judgment shows the social, shared, communal character of reflective judgment and its associated delight. A pure judgment of taste is not accepted just because of an empirical fact of language use,22 such as “This rose is beautiful,” but because one has an a priori right to make a judgment.23 Nonetheless, the feeling of delight remains a feeling and as with all feelings, except for moral feeling, which is not really a feeling, this feeling is also empirical, entirely individual, and incommunicable. Despite its incommunicability, however, the feeling that overcomes someone when she beholds the beautiful is communicable since the associated utterance is shared with others. The delight taken in things of beauty is the sole, entirely communicable feeling that humans can experience. Furthermore, the communicable feeling is and remains personal, surprises the perceiver, and is, thus, contingent. Whenever one takes sudden notice of a flower, painting, or other beautiful thing, he is “hit” unexpectedly by the feeling of Wohlgefallen, which may only last but for a brief moment. Still, the flower pleases one and connects him to every other human. The delight one experiences by viewing a flower is verily the daughter of Elysium, for in this joy, “alle Menschen warden Brüder.” Only humans, and not Gods and angels, become brothers and sisters, for only humans enjoy beauty. Again, this feeling is privileged to humans and bound to finitude and transience. This happy moment of transience is the very feeling that causes one to lose his soul to Mephistopheles.

The communicability of one’s feeling is not founded entirely on a claim for general acceptance since in this case, the feeling itself would be universal, as is the reverence for the moral law of which one is aware through feelings alone. Instead, it is accompanied by the faith or conviction that the beautiful object may delight other souls as well. This claim is for universal and free consensus. Whoever says, “This is beautiful”:

judges not for himself but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things. Hence he says “the thing is beautiful”; and he does not count on the agreement of others with this his judgment of satisfaction, because he has found this agreement several times before, but he demands it of them.24

At the same time, a judgment of taste does not postulate everyone’s consent—it cannot postulate such consent because it is not based on rules. One cannot argue against it or for it and one does not aim at the establishment of truth. “The judgment of taste itself does not postulate the agreement of everyone . . . ; it only imputes this agreement to everyone. . . . The universal voice is, therefore, only an idea. . . .”25

While paying close attention to the German text, one notices phrases such as “allgemeine Zustimmung,” “Einstimmung,” “Bestimmung,” and “Mitbestimmung,” be the issue agreement, consensus, consent, or the like. Kant varies just one word, namely “voice,” Stimme. The “universal voice,” that is, the general agreement, is in the case of judgment of taste only an idea. One cannot reach it, yet it is still relevant to judgment because one strives toward it when judging. In other words, when one judges a flower or work of art as beautiful, he says that it is beautiful. The feeling of delight, Wohgefallen, inherent in the judgment is itself a voice or sound, Stimme. This “silent sound” must be accounted for, even though it is indescribable, because it is just the momentary harmony of the free play between the two human faculties of knowing, understanding and imagination. If this harmony occurs in everyone’s mind, then everyone feels joy and unanimously perceives the beauty of the thing. The feeling itself remains singular and personal because understanding and imagination remain in the state of play. Still, understanding and imagination must remain different as harmony presupposes difference here as much as in Plato’s one variant of the “cold” concept of beauty. If harmony emerges everywhere, then all humans are perfectly attuned to one another. If everyone were the friend of everyone else, as Aristotle discusses in Politics, there would be neither politeia nor justice. The Kantian utopian moment appears to be similar, yet still the infamous abyss divides the two worlds as man stands on the suspended bridge. Although humanity is composed of brothers and sisters, humans are voyeurs and it seems that they have not yet even tried to attain harmony and fraternity.

As has already been intimated, this view of humanity is not entirely correct. Under closer scrutiny, Kant suggests that man should practice and, thus, perfect his capacity for fraternization. Moreover, he also suggests that humans ought to work towards this goal constantly if they are not already doing so because the practice of the “pure cut” itself, the elimination of self-interest, charm, and emotion from one’s judgment of taste, is but the grand gesture of fraternization. Whoever forms an aesthetic judgment is like a king as he can favor whatever he pleases. However, if one wishes that others agree with his tastes, then he must understand that he lives in a world of royalty in that no one commands him and he commands no one. In addition, he cannot support his judgment with arguments, just as others cannot support theirs. Therefore, if one sincerely wishes that others are attuned to his feelings, he must play music that pleases others. For this reason, this king must perform the “pure cut.” Whether he is aware of what he is doing is irrelevant. What matters is that he disregards his self-interest and emotions and refrains from attempting to explain the beauty in beautiful things.

The “pure cut” is thus the sweet duty of the man who passes judgment of taste. It is a sweet duty not just because one does it willingly and freely, but because this duty is the only one that must be performed willingly. Here sounds the echo of the beautiful female character as she appears in young Kant’s work, a character whose tastes freely guide her beauty. In order to form pure judgments of taste, one does not need to be a beautiful character as equality is the important principle here. The judgment of taste is by virtue of its non-egoistic nature: “If, then, the judgment of taste is not to be valid merely egoistically but according to its inner nature—i.e. on account of itself, and not on account of the examples that others give of their taste—to be necessarily valid pluralistically, if we regard it as a judgment which may exact the adhesion of everyone. . . .”26

Kant uses the term beipflichten (here, “adhesion”), which originates from Pflicht, duty. At the same time, he discusses man’s commitment to his own nature and self-interest while contrasting pluralism and egoism. Pluralism has two distinct, yet associated meanings for Kant.27 First, it means the opposite of egoism, for a pluralist acts in harmony an cooperation with others for others’ sakes. Second, pluralism implies and acknowledgment of differences in views and judgments. In the spirit of the first interpretation, the judgment of taste is pluralistic because of its communicability and claim to universal acceptance in mutual attunement. In the spirit of the second interpretation, the judgment of taste is pluralistic, for although one may claim universality, everyone else can make the same claim and there is no way to persuade others that one is right. Individuals must accept that others judge differently about the same things and also raise an equal claim for the universal acceptance of their judgments. The dialectic of the judgment of taste provides an account of the dual meaning of the term “plurality.” Indeed, man stands on the bridge of suspense both under the promise of happiness and harmoniously with his peers in fraternity.

Whenever one passes judgment of taste and says something like, “This wild tulip is beautiful,” his judgment is legitimate, just like everyone else’s. Additionally, everyone has the right to say that that tulip is not beautiful, but no one has the right to say that the person who made the original statement is mistaken about beauty. One may believe that others ought to agree with him, but he cannot compel them to do so. This idea outlines the model of universal suffrage, yet the dialectic of the judgment of taste reaches beyond the model of universal suffrage because in the former everyone casts his or her voice as a representative. However, in matters of judgment and taste, there are no representatives. The only person who can express, understand, and voice what he feels is the person herself. This limitation is the social contract without a contract, the freedom of all without constraint, and the unity of the general will and the will of all individuals. Yet, there is no will and one should recall that Kant’s model described the attitude of the spectators and not the actors. The experience of beauty is nunc stans, the moment at which time and eternity cross. The bridge, of course, has no territory.28 Kant was a skeptic and the ideal of the Republic involves no metaphysics. Still, Kant was not prepared to abandon his theory even though beauty still held the torn flag of a lost need for redemption that would never be regained. This redemption was not in and for eternity, but rather it was at the metaphysical crossing point—the “touch” between time and eternity.29 The bridge has no extension.

What makes Kant such an important figure regarding the nunc stans is that he alone understood the dual character of transience in man’s experience of pure delight. Jetztzeit itself is transient in Kant, as the delight taken in a beautiful flower vanishes without a trace, along with the flower itself. The experience of beauty, as Kant said, is a human, mortal privilege and the immortal, or eternal, is far from being the privileged objects of one’s experience of beauty. According to the tradition, the object of the ultimate experience of beauty is always the eternal and the closer one gets to the eternal thing, the more beautiful the encounter becomes. This connection was not necessarily abandoned after the Copernican turn in the philosophy of the beautiful. If the judgment of taste is either entirely subjective or only of good, refined taste, then the hierarchy of beauties is restored. One should recall Adam Smith’s remark that humans can best confirm the judgment of taste if the object in question has been affirmed as tasteful in multiple historical contexts through which tastes changed. In the new scenario, it is longevity or immortality that accounts for the beauty of a thing one judges. One loves the beautiful and it is the beautiful that he loves. The immortality of a piece of art warrants its beauty and whoever loves the immortal is a man of good taste who can distinguish between the beautiful and the deformed. Kant disagreed with Smith in this regard and argued that the provocation of a judgment of taste could come from any place or thing, such as the most transient and insignificant bug. It is the finite, transient being that recognizes beauty in the other transient being since the beauty of others mirrors one’s own beauty. This reflection is the promise of happiness for mortals.

There is beautiful art, schöne Kunst, but there is no beautiful science, according to Kant.30 Furthermore, beautiful art must be distinguished. Here, Kant denies the pretenders who want to step on the suspended bridge. The magnanimity of the British authors is gone. There is not simply quantitative difference between a Latin poem and the furniture of a gentry’s mansion. The second kind of art is left behind in the territory that is governed by understanding, for it is declared to be a mere skill. Although an aesthetic judgment passed on a work of art cannot be entirely pure,31 for one cannot help but make comparisons and it is for that reason that works of art promote mental cultivation. Still, it remains as close to the pure judgment of taste as possible. The work of art must appear as though it were natural, although one is aware that it is not.32 Since the pure form of purpose provokes one’s experience of the beautiful, only the single entities of art or nature fill one with the delight of the transient moment.33 As one has no need to climb the ladder when holding a flower, he does not need to climb the ladder when viewing a beautiful piece of art.

It is important both that no pain accompanies one’s delight and the delight is absolutely free since delight depends on the free play of understanding and imagination. The well-tuned philosophical ear hears the remote murmur of the Platonic narratives. In Plato, the individual ascends while in Kant, he does not. Plato believed that experiences in which pain and pleasure mix cannot be associated with the experience of Beauty.34 Kant agreed, but also emphasized that the artist creates work in pain and that the artist himself, as a great genius, must also conform to certain technical rules since there is no absolute freedom in the creation of art. This idea is one of the main differences between genius and taste or creation and judgment. The creator could have created his work in great pain, but the person who makes the judgment of taste does not experience this pain. His delight is unmixed, almost as if he were a denizen of the Platonic world of Ideas. Happiness is unmixed and pure in Kant just as much as it is in Plato, but it has nothing to do with eternity or immortality.

Some may disagree with the notion that happiness and immortality are unrelated. In the paragraphs where Kant discusses art, the question of immortality has been raised. In his actual discussions on art and of the different genres of art, he does not refer to art in terms of eternity, but claims that artistic genius is mortal. The “artistic skill . . . is imparted to every artist immediately by the hand of nature; and so it dies with him, until nature endows another in the same way. . . .”35 Kant asks, “How can art be eternal if genius is only temporary?’ However, while the creator of the art may only occupy a temporary presence in the world, the capacity to make judgments of taste on his work is immortal to the extent that humanity continues to exist.

According to Kant, spirit enlivens art and the spirit that prompts the aesthetic judgment arises from the exhibition of aesthetic ideas. Still, the same creative imagination that produces the spirit of the work brings about beauty that one cannot conceptualize, but only ponder. As a matter of fact, because the idea cannot be conceptualized, one can always think about it and it is this practically unlimited capacity to return to the spirit that implies a kind of immortality. Here, Kant has in mind the hermeneutic inexhaustibility of equating great art and genius, an interpretative infinitude of the imagination. In this sense, the beautiful flower’s transience differs essentially from that of the beautiful artwork. In the first case one communicates a judgment, while in the second case, this communicability of judgments becomes more of a communicability of meaning by thinking the idea. When discussing the empirical interest in the beautiful,36 Kant follows the logic of his more general transcendental anthropology,37 but the significance of this paragraph becomes clear when the reader considers aesthetic judgment of artistic beauty and its relationship to taste. Empirical interest is fundamentally an interest in conducting dialogue, exchanging impressions and thoughts conducive to the refinement of taste, and albeit indirectly, the refinement of Sitte, legality. During good dinner table conversation, diners discuss fine art and not just flowers.38

On the other hand, when it comes to the discussion of intellectual interest in the beautiful, Kant emphasizes that one’s interest in beautiful art has no relationship to the morally good, yet he insists that one’s interest in the beauty of nature “would detect for our faculty of judging a means of passing from sense enjoyment to moral feeling.”39 Here, the person affirms the very existence of the beautiful thing itself. Furthermore, if individual passing judgment is lonely, then he experiences the purest form of beauty and avoids all possible instances of instrumentalization. One may therefore step on the suspended bridge from either side. The judgment passed on art is closer to the kingdom of understanding while the judgment passed on a single flower nears the realm of transcendental freedom. By not forming concepts, one leaves the former world and by overcoming self-interest and constraints, he leaves the latter realm. Still, the bridge has no extension and in either case humans are in the world of transience as finite observers and creators. One can step on the bridge frequently, but he cannot stay there. The bridge enlivens him, but he cannot remain. Man lives in both realms and within himself finds the abyss.

Infinitude, immortality, and eternity were already reassigned from the field of the concept of the Beautiful to the field of the concept of the Sublime by British Enlightenment thinkers, such as Burke. During the Enlightenment,40 the Copernican turn away from the idea of beauty toward the judgment of taste had been accomplished and the statement from which every concept of the beautiful was born, “This is not beautiful,” became, surprisingly, the source and criterion of beauty. This change meant that the negative statement did not refute the everyday usage of the term beautiful in order to turn to the ideal image of beauty, but that the power to constitute beauty would be assigned to judgment itself. Therefore, judgment itself brought about beauty and made the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly.

Still, judgment is subjective and historically constrained. If the criterion of the concept of the Beautiful remained internal, it would cease to negate. This dilemma occurs in the modern world as well, where negation is built into the world itself as the constituent of its simple maintenance. If the everyday person, relying on his judgment alone, continuously says, “This is not beautiful, but something else is,” the distinction between the everyday and less frequent images of the beautiful will disappear, along with the concept of the beautiful. Among other things, the concept of the sublime was invented to overcome this dilemma. Where beauty as sublimation has no place in this world, one needs a separate concept of the sublime.

Kant discusses this concept with a sense of urgency. Human greatness cannot be comprehended by a skeptical concept of the beautiful as both the concepts of moral grandeur and God and their artistic representations are beyond the skeptical concept. Here, the hierarchical, topographically represented metaphors cannot be abandoned easily and judgments of taste do not allow for hierarchically ordered topographic metaphors, or any metaphors for that matter. One does not climb and there is no high or low, at least in the pure judgment of taste or the analogy of freedom, equality, and fraternity. However, one can take delight in the experience of greatness if there is a hierarchical topography. Grandeur is “high up,” for it is noble, and its opposite, the base, is “down low.” Kant agrees with the former, but not necessarily with the latter and believes that something that is not sublime can still be beautiful.

The experience of the sublime, according to Kant, requires culture and depends on human nature, namely that “in the tendency to the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e. to what is moral.”41 The fundamental experience here is unattainable insofar as one accepts the Platonic narrative. Nature’s sublimity in Kant is a subjective feeling, yet the feeling is the “Vorstellung des Gemuts sich die Unerreichbarkeit der Natur als Darstellung von Ideen zu denken” The task of approximation is seemingly impossible and the infinitely great and powerful indicate that transcendental freedom and moral law can only be approximated, not achieved. The entire concept of approximation comes, of course, from the metaphor of the ladder since approximation is the strenuous exercise of climbing the ladder. Therefore, the high-low dichotomy is reinstated to its proper place in the concept of the beautiful and temporarily becomes the separate concept of the sublime.

Kant chooses to emphasize his opposition to the tradition here. Contrary to the experience of the beautiful, the experience of the sublime does not offer unmitigated happiness. The sublime is not a pure feeling, but a complex one that at first feels painful, but becomes delightful. In other words, the feeling follows the path of the negative judgment and manifests itself in the statement: The mountain and storm are not great, but the moral law and transcendental freedom are. The feeling of the sublime catches one on the metaphorical bridge, but the secret of the feeling must be sought in the kingdom of Ends. The negative judgment itself is not free, for there is no free play between imagination and judgment here, but reason nevertheless enters directly into the experience. Reason, in its practical employment as the ally of the idea of the good, makes itself known in its full majesty.42

It is not the sublime, but the beautiful—the experience of which requires one to stand with both feet on the bridge—that Kant refers to as the symbol of morality in his third Critique.43 The beautiful pleases directly and unselfishly, for it manifests the freedom of imagination and its subjective principle is universality. Without being subjected to the law himself, Kant holds the beautiful in the same light as the beautiful would hold moral law. One may question how this reality is possible, but the transcendental deduction answers this inquiry. On the other hand, no transcendental deduction can identify the source of beauty in all things. In aesthetic judgment, the capacity of judgment:

. . . gives the law to itself in respect of the objects of so pure a satisfaction, just as the reason does in respect of the faculty of desire. Hence, both on account of this inner possibility in the subject and of the external possibility of a nature that agrees with it, it finds itself to be referred to something within the subject as well as without him, something which is neither nature nor freedom, but which yet is connected with the supersensible ground of the latter. In this supersensible ground, therefore, the theoretical faculty is bound together in unity with the practical in a way which, though common, is yet unknown.44

Humanity must do without the supersensible—the ultimate source of beauty, goodness, and all things. The harmony that sounds in and through the sight of beauty evokes the possibility of the eternal, but the transient evokes harmony and it is in transience that harmony is evoked.

Notes

1. It is interesting to note that Heidegger interprets the Kantian Gunst, or favor, as love.

2. Hannah Arendt (ed. Ronald Beiner), Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

3. I have in mind here Kant’s notion of Humanität.

4. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J.H. Bernard (New York: Hafner Press, 1951), pp. 43–45. Para. 5

5. Ibid., p. 44. Para. 5.

6. This is not as evident as it seems. Given that the faculty of pleasure has an a priori faculty of knowing—that of reflective judgment—and that in the act of judging, the body is not involved, one could make a case for the divine sense of judgment of beauty. Kant, however, did not want this to be the case.

7. Kant’s commitment to finitude was pointed out by Heidegger in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. I add here that the object, or rather the trigger of the experience of the beautiful, is transient in contradistinction to the trigger of the experience of sublimity, which is the moral law. See Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

8. Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington & Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

9. Heidegger, “Will to Power as Art” in Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 1, trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992).

10. Heidegger’s interpretation is extreme, but beautiful.

11. See the “Analytic of the Sublime” in Critique of Judgment.

12. In my mind, there are two different versions of the notion of “evil” in man. According to Plato’s version, it is the underworld—our drives, and in particular our sex drives—that are responsible for all human evil. According to Aristotle, on the other hand, the Ego and our identification with self-interest are responsible for the evils we commit. Aristotle was the first philosopher to hold this view. I believe that we can trace both versions in all European anthropological histories. For example, Christian theology resembles the Platonic version, whereas Kant, Hobbes, and the other British rationalists and empiricists are closer to Aristotle. In modern psychology, Freud stands in the tradition of Plato while Adler adopts the Aristotelian tradition. True, there are narratives, such as those of Kierkegaard and other existentialists, that are not concerned with the source of evil or do not choose any of its fundamental motivational explanations. Nietzsche’s genealogy seems to fit this bill, but he actually adopts a more Platonic framework. Marx, however, if even interested in this discussion, would have followed Aristotle. Finally, the moralists can take both perspectives.

13. See the introduction in The Critique of Judgment.

14. This is the case in injustice, in which one distributes to equals equally and non-equals unequally. Still, there is not distributive justice or injustice in the case of judgment of taste.

15. Of course, the readiness to perform the “pure cut” is also acquired through cultivation. Therefore, Kant avoided Hume’s dilemma only philosophically, but not practically.

16. According to another interpretation, sensus communis is the effect of free play of understanding and imagination.

17. See Derrida, Truth in Painting, Part I.

18. It is not important whether or not we subscribe to Kant’s interpretation of Leibniz. For my interpretation of Leibniz, see Leibniz’s Existential Metaphysics (Budapest: Kossuth, 1995).

19. Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 44. Para. 5.

20. See note.

21. True, Kant returns to the typology of his early work in the Critique of Judgment, but he discusses it in an abbreviated and less poignant sense. Here, Kant says, in the spirit of his philosophy of morals, that the sublime, melancholic character renders his nature rigorously under the commandment of the moral law, whereas the beautiful character does not. Still, this does not prevent the sublime character from passing pure judgments of taste or enjoying the promise of happiness and the moment.

22. In the Anthropology, Kant begins his discussion of universal claim by describing language. See Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, ed. Robert Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

23. In the transcendental deduction of the pure judgment of taste.

24. Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 47. Para. 7.

25. Ibid., pp. 50–51. Para. 9.

26. Ibid., p. 119. Para. 29.

27. See Kant, Anthropology, ibid.

28. One cannot help to replace one metaphor with another. The indescribable cannot be described and the unconceptualizable cannot be conceptualized. In Hegel’s mind, this would simply indicate the inferiority of immediacy, with which I disagree.

29. Kierkegaard speaks of the “instant.” The Kantian delight in the judgment of the beautiful is such an instant. See Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, trans. Hong and Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

30. Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 147–149. Para. 44.

31. Certainly, the original distinction between pure and aggregate beauty does not fit the case of art. If it did, art would need to be discussed in terms of pure beauty, but it is difficult to understand how art, which is constituted by ideas, can be judged like a flower.

32. Ibid., pp. 149–150. Para. 45

33. “A natural beauty is a beautiful thing; artificial beauty is a beautiful representation of a thing.” Ibid., p. 154. Par. 48

34. Certainly, there is pain as much as there is pleasure, and there is no promise of happiness or unhappiness since displeasure is not pain.

35. Ibid., p. 152. Para. 47.

36. Ibid., pp. 138–140. Para. 41. This precedes the discussion on beautiful art.

37. This is how I described Kant’s analytic of the pure judgment of taste.

38. I have discussed Kant’s famous dinners and their bearing on Kant’s concept of culture in my book, A Philosophy of History in Fragments.

39. Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 140. Para. 42.

40. See the above discussion of Smith, Hume, and Burke.

41. Ibid., p. 42. Para. 29. As I have already mentioned, discussing modern art in terms of Kant’s analytics of the sublime requires a radical interpretation. Art relates to aesthetic ideas and not to practical ideas and in our experience of the sublime, we stand with only one foot on the bridge of suspense. Our other foot is firmly set on the territory governed by transcendental freedom, or morality.

42. See the “General Comment on the Exposition of Aesthetic Reflective Judgment” in Critique of Judgment (in the “Analytic of the Sublime”). Kant says that Judaism is sublime because of the interdiction of the creation of images.

43. Ibid., pp. 196–200. Para. 59.

44. Ibid., p. 199. Para. 59.