: the Greek expressions signify ‘according to the truth’ (intrinsically) and ‘according to the human perspective’.References to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason are given in standard form, indicating the original pagination of the first (A) and/or second (B) edition of the text (which is also reproduced in the Academy and subsequent editions and translations of the work).
Preface to the First Edition: the second edition of 1793 reprinted the text of the 1790 edition of the third Critique with generally minor changes of an orthographic and stylistic kind. Significant differences between the two editions will be indicated at the relevant points.
the metaphysics of nature and of morals: Kant is referring to his project of a new kind of metaphysics (an immanent ‘metaphysics of experience’ rather than a transcendent ‘dogmatic’ metaphysics), namely a rigorous transcendental analysis of the first principles underlying natural science and morality. He had already published his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals in 1785, and made a contribution to a transcendental metaphysics of nature in his Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science in 1786. The Metaphysics of Morals followed in 1797.
O mihi praeteritos, etc.: A citation from Virgil’s Aeneid (viii. 560): ‘O mihi prateritos referat si Iuppiter annos’ (‘If only Jupiter could give me back those vanished years’).
the judgement which subsumes the particular … is determining: Meredith’s older term ‘determinant’ for Kant’s use of reflektierend has been replaced throughout with the term ‘determining’. Both these forms will be found in the Anglophone secondary literature on Kant’s work.
then the judgement is simply reflective: Meredith’s term for Kant’s use of reflektierend has been retained throughout. The term has also been rendered in English as ‘reflecting’ and again both forms can be found in the secondary discussions of the third Critique.
the purposiveness of its form: as indicated in the Note on the Text, Translation, and Revision Meredith’s older term ‘finality’ and the corresponding adjectival form ‘final’ have been replaced throughout by the now more standard rendering of ‘purposiveness’ and ‘purposive’ for Kant’s Zweckmäßigkeit and zweckmäßig respectively.
quodlibet ens est aut A aut non A: traditional Latin formulation of the logical law of non-contradiction: ‘any being whatsoever is either A or non-A’.
In my search for the moments: Kant is using the term ‘moment’ (das Moment) in a technical sense. It has nothing to do with temporal succession and signifies a fundamental aspect or dimension that can be analysed in relation to a complex phenomenon. The term is related to the Latin momentum and originally derives from physics and mechanics. It is frequently used in a philosophical context by Hegel and thinkers in the dialectical tradition, such as Adorno.
with an accompanying sensation of delight: Meredith’s rendering of Kant’s term das Wohlgefallen as ‘delight’ and of the corresponding verbal form gefallen as ‘to please’ have been retained throughout. Other translators have employed ‘satisfaction’ and ‘to please’ or variations on ‘like’ or ‘liking’.
that Iroquois sachem: Kant alludes to an anecdote related by a French Jesuit traveller François-Xavier Charlevoix in his History and General Description of New France of 1744.
inveigh with the vigour of a Rousseau: Kant is thinking of the general attitudes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), and his criticism of artificial civilization and luxury in his Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality amongst Men of 1755.
Assuming with Euler: Leonard Euler (1707–83), a renowned Swiss mathematician and physicist, who defended a wave theory of light and presented his scientific views in popular epistolary form.
designs à la grecque: ‘in the Greek manner’.
the famous Doryphorus of Polycletus … and Myron’s Cow: celebrated Greek sculptures from the fifth century BC. The Doryphoros, the spear-bearer by Polycletus of Argos, and the bronze cow of Myron of Eleutherae were regarded as perfect classical models of proportion and were widely reproduced and discussed by artists and writers, including Goethe.
General Remark on the First Section of the Analytic: the remark strictly speaking refers to the first ‘book’ (the Analytic of the Beautiful).
Marsden in his description of Sumatra: William Marsden (1754–1836), English philologist and orientalist whose History of Sumatra (1783) was translated into German in 1785.
Savary’s observations in his account of Egypt: Nicolas Savary (1750–88), French orientalist and Egyptologist, published his Lettres sur l’Égypte in 1787.
as Herr von Sassure relates: Horace Bénédict de Saussure (1740–99) was a Swiss geographer, botanist, and traveller, who described his experiences in his voluminous Voyages dans les Alpes of 1779–86.
Burke, who deserves to be called the foremost author: Edmund Burke (1729–97) published his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful in 1757. For the original passage quoted from the German translation, see part IV, section vii.
The deduction of aesthetic judgements: here as elsewhere Kant uses the term ‘deduction’, derived from legal terminology, in his specifically critical sense of exhibiting the right to make a certain type of universal claim. See Critique of Pure Reason A 84–92.
then let him adduce Batteux or Lessing: Charles Batteux (1713–80), prominent French theorist of the arts, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), influential German writer, critic, and controversialist whose most important contribution to aesthetics was his treatise Laokoon of 1766 comparing the limits and possibilities of different arts and their respective media.
Thus although critics, as Hume says: Kant is referring to Hume’s essay ‘The Sceptic’ in his Essays, Moral and Political of 1741–2: ‘There is something approaching to principles in mental taste, and critics can reason and dispute more plausibly than cooks or perfumers.’
a posse ad esse non valet consequentia: ‘there is no valid inference from the possible to the actual.’
it is only production through freedom … that should be termed art: Kant is using ‘art’ (Kunst) here in the broad sense as a specifically human skill for shaping or fabricating a ‘work’ (corresponding to the Latin ‘ars’ and the Greek ‘technē).
Camper describes very exactly: Kant is alluding to Peter Camper (1722–89), a Dutch anatomist and naturalist who also wrote a treatise on The Best Form for Shoes.
only beautiful art: the German expression for the ‘fine arts’, as they had come to be distinguished from handicraft and the artisanal domain in general, like the equivalent contemporary terms in the romance languages, is the ‘beautiful arts’. The repudiation of the idea of a comparable beautiful form of ‘science’ is directed primarily against the aesthetician Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62).
So all that Newton has set forth in his immortal work: Kant is alluding to Newton’s great treatise on The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy of 1687.
Wieland: Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813), influential and prolific German poet, translator, and critic whose History of Agathon is regarded as the earliest example of the Bildungsroman (novel relating the personal and cultural development of its protagonist).
things that in nature would be ugly or displeasing: a thought that is already clearly expressed by Aristotle in a famous passage of his Poetics (chapter IV: 1448b).
When the great king expresses himself in one of his poems: Kant is referring to King Frederick II of Prussia (1712–86), ‘Frederick the Great’, whose poem he cites in a slightly free and vaguely poetical prose German translation (possibly his own). The French original runs as follows:
Oui, finissons sans trouble, et mourons sans regrets,
En laissant l’Univers comblé de nos bienfaits.
Ainsi l’Astre du jour, au bout de sa carrière,
Répand sur l’horizon une douce lumière,
Et les derniers rayons qu’il darde dans les airs
Sont les derniers soupirs qu’il donne à l’Univers
So, for example, a certain poet says: Kant quotes from P. L. Withof (1725–89) and his Academic Poems, which appeared in 1782. The original has ‘goodness’ where Kant writes ‘virtue’.
Segner made use of this idea: Kant is referring to Johann Andreas von Segner (1704–77), German mathematician and natural philosopher, and the frontispiece to his Introduction to the Theory of Nature of 1754.
Hume, in his history, informs the English: Kant is referring to David Hume’s History of England (1754–62).
formative arts: the common German expression ‘die bildende Kunst’ has no precise equivalent in English and reflects a traditional interest in defining the fine arts in terms of their relevant medium, and therefore the kind of specific content and expression open to them. ‘Formative’ art fundamentally involves the deliberate artistic shaping or treatment of a medium in the context of spatial perception and thus includes architecture, sculpture, landscape gardening, and painting, as Kant’s following remarks make clear.
the vir bonus dicendi peritus: ‘an excellent man and skilled speaker’.
And so, perhaps, Epicurus was not wide of the mark: Epicurus was famous for identifying ‘happiness’ with ‘pleasure’ and arguing that all human beings inevitably pursue the latter under one form or another as their ultimate goal.
Voltaire said that heaven has given us two things: Kant alludes to a line in the long poem Henriade by Voltaire (1694–1778).
A person … is said to have humours: Meredith attempts to capture Kant’s play on the different senses of the words launisch (‘moody’) and the (now antiquated) launicht (‘humorous’).
the halo in the grotto of Antiparos: Antiparos is a small Greek island famous for an impressive stalactite cavern.
subiectio sub adspectum: submission to view.
education in what are called the humaniora: the humanities.
the befitting social character of mankind: Meredith, like most modern translators, follows the reading of the second edition of the text. The first edition has ‘happiness’ (Glückseligkeit) rather than ‘social character’ (Geselligkeit).
Plato, himself a master of this science: Kant alludes to the ‘enthusiasm’ with which Plato was inspired by the apparently innate and immutable character of mathematical truths to develop his metaphysical ‘theory of ideas’ and the pre-existence of the soul.
he could derive all that Anaxagoras inferred: Athenian philosopher (c.500–428 BC) who espoused a teleological view of the world as under the governance of mind or intelligence (nous).
vestigium hominis video: the Latin means ‘I see the trace of a human being’. It appears to be a reference to a story related by Vitruvius in his treatise On Architecture (Preface to book VI): ‘Aristippus, the Socratic philosopher, suffered shipwreck and was cast up on the shore at Rhodes where he glimpsed geometrical figures traced in the sand and is said to have cried out to his companions: There is hope for I see the traces of men.’
a complete transformation, recently undertaken, of a great people: it is unclear whether Kant is alluding here to the American Revolution of 1776–83 or revolutionary developments that had begun in France in 1789.
the New Hollanders or Fuegians: the indigenous inhabitants of Australia and Tierra del Fuego respectively.
The German word vermessen (presumptuous) is a good word: the German word suggests a hybristic loss or transgression of due ‘measure’.
The system … attributed to Epicurus or Democritus: the Greek thinkers Democritus of Abdera (c.460–c.370 BC) and Epicurus (341–271 BC) denied immortality and presented a broadly materialist explanation of all things in terms of matter, motion, and the void. Epicurus appears in Dante’s Inferno as he ‘who set down the world to chance’.
the system of fatality, of which Spinoza is the accredited author: like Fichte after him, Kant regards the metaphysical monism presented by Spinoza (1632–77) in his Ethics as ultimately indistinguishable from a ‘fatalistic’ determinism that submerges the finitely free rational subject in the anonymous mechanism of nature and replaces the practical autonomy of the will with a contemplative relation to the absolute.
This is called hylozoism: the theory of an original living matter or primal stuff that has been ascribed to the first Greek philosophers of nature and to modern pantheistic thinkers like Giordano Bruno.
An understanding into whose mode of cognition: see Critique of Pure Reason B 139 and the following note.
And there was a similar implication in the Critique of Pure Reason: for Kant’s discussion of the possible idea of an ‘archetypal intellect’ which, unlike ‘our’ human cognition, is not intrinsically finite and dependent upon sensuous intuition and could generate its objects simply through thinking them, see Critique of Pure Reason B 307–9.
Hume raises the objection: Kant may be alluding here to Hume’s discussion of religious questions in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (section 11) or possibly to the latter’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (part V).
Herr. Hofr. Blumenbach: important German naturalist and zoologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1848) who published an influential treatise On the Formative Impulse and the Process of Reproduction in 1781. ‘Epigenesis’ is the modern theory that an individual living being develops by means of the gradual differentiation and elaboration of a fertilized egg cell, as contrasted with the older biological theory of ‘preformation’ which sees the development of the individual as the unfolding and extension of an originally complete organic form.
We might also follow the chevalier Linné: Kant is referring to the celebrated Carl von Linné (1707–78), better known by the Latinized form of Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist chiefly remembered for his contributions to botanical classification and his metaphor of the ‘three kingdoms’ of mineral, vegetable, and animal nature. His most influential works were his System of Nature (1st ed. 1735) and The Genera of Plants (1737).
And even if man … seems, in Camper’s judgement: see note to p. 133.
developing to the highest pitch all talents that minister to culture: Kant also presents the ideas presented in the preceding paragraph in his late essays, particularly in his Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784) and his On Perpetual Peace of 1795.
Physico-Theology is the attempt: for Kant’s first discussion of physico-theology in a fully ‘critical’ context see the Critique of Pure Reason A 620–30.
its solution seems an easy matter: Kant’s objections to the traditional argument from design in natural theology in this paragraph closely parallel those of Hume in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (section 11) and in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (though it is unknown whether Kant was familiar with the latter work, which had appeared in German translation in 1781).
Others who were physicists: by physicists here Kant probably means ‘natural philosophers’ of a monistic kind from the ancient Milesian cosmologists, like Thales and Anaximenes, who tried to explain the world from a single primal stuff or principle, to metaphysical thinkers like Spinoza, who identified God and Nature and interpreted everything as an expression of the one and only ultimate ‘substance’.
This note was added by Kant in the 2nd edn.
vis locomotiva: Latin term denoting a vital or ‘moving force’.
: the Greek expressions signify ‘according to the truth’ (intrinsically) and ‘according to the human perspective’.
The critique has abundantly shown: Kant is here referring back to his analysis in the Critique of Pure Reason A 631–42.
par ratio: Latin expression meaning ‘the same grounds’.
Things which can be known are of three kinds: Kant discusses these distinctions in the Critique of Pure Reason A 820–31. There is an intrinsic ambiguity about the German word Glauben which may mean ‘belief’ (whether it is true or not) in an everyday empirical sense or ‘faith’ in the moral or religious sense of believing ‘in’ someone or something.
certain phenomena that have been passed off for such: Kant may well be alluding here to the theosophical speculations of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), whose pretensions to theoretical knowledge he had treated highly ironically in his early work Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated through the Dreams of Metaphysics of 1766.
Faith as habitus, not as actus: faith as an ‘attitude’ rather than as an ‘act’, i.e. in terms of a general disposition seeking to promote the realization of the good, not in terms of ritual acts or a confessional creed.
a Reimarus won undying honour for himself: Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), Professor of Oriental Languages in Hamburg and a well-known deist thinker in his time. He defended the teleological argument for God as the intelligent author of the world in his Treatises concerning the Pre-eminent Truths of Natural Religion of 1754 and also discussed biological questions from a philosophical point of view in his General Reflections concerning the Instincts of Animals of 1760. Soon after his death Lessing created something of a scandal (the ‘controversy of the fragments’) by publishing extracts from his unpublished manuscripts that contained devastating criticism of ‘revealed’ religion and the authority of scripture. Kant knew the texts in question but was unaware of Reimarus’s authorship which was only clearly established in the early nineteenth century.
this means attributing omniscience to yourself: Kant may be implicitly alluding here to Hume’s arguments in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (section VII: ‘Of the Idea of necessary Connexion’).
the recognition of our duties as divine commands: Kant briefly presented this exclusively moral-practical conception of God’s ‘commandments’ in the first Critique (A 818–19) and the second Critique (Ak. 6: 153), but only developed it at length in Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone in 1793.
the science itself: Kant is referring to philosophy itself as the ‘science’ or systematic articulation of the fundamental principles governing experience and knowledge in general.
circinus et regola: compass and ruler.
the term ‘technic’: a term derived from the Greek word techne indicating a craft, art, or productive capacity.
an error which I committed: Kant is referring to his earlier discussion of different kinds of imperatives in the Groundwork (Ak. 4: 414ft)
the specification of the manifold: see Critique of Pure Reason A 652.
Linnaeus: see note to p. 255.
there can be a transcendental aesthetic: Kant is alluding to his earlier use of the term ‘aesthetic’ in his ‘transcendental aesthetic’ in the Critique of Pure Reason A 19–49. In that context aesthetic signifies ‘pertaining to the conditions of sensuous intuition’, i.e. to space and time as the forms of pure intuition that define human receptivity or sensibility.
through a vitium subreptionis: through a ‘fallacy of subreption’, i.e. the substitution of a concept of something sensuous for a concept of something intellectual in character. See Critique of Pure Reason A260–92.
the concept of perfection: Kant is alluding to the ideas of A. G. Baumgarten.
technica speciosa: technic in respect of appearance.
as Burke did in his treatise on the beautiful and the sublime: see note to p. 107 above.
domestica … pergrinis: ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ principles respectively.