The necessity of beauty: Aesthetics and cognition in Kant's 'Critique of Judgment'

I argue that Kant's Critique of Judgment makes an important contribution to his theory of cognition, addressing a skeptical problem (regarding the nature of empirical conceptualization and inductive concerns) left open by the doctrine of the Critique of Pure Reason. Paul Guyer has argued that Kant's discussion of empirical natural science in his Introduction serves only to distort his theory of beauty; by contrast, I take it that the full import of Kant's analysis of beauty cannot be understood in isolation from the issues raised for empirical science.;While the Critique of Pure Reason postulated that all objects of experience are necessarily structured a priori by the "pure forms" of space and of time and by twelve "pure concepts" (in order to show how we could make claims about possible objects of experience a priori, such as that they must conform to the laws of mathematics and geometry), in the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment Kant notes that objects of human experience are also "determined in all sorts of possible additional ways," which are left undetermined by the a priori constraints. Our judgment must search for these merely empirical laws; although these cannot be regarded as necessary a priori, he argues, they "must be regarded as necessary by virtue of some principle of the unity of what is diverse." Thus in empirical science, we look for suitable ways of unifying given data, which we are to formulate as new empirical concepts or natural laws; I argue that with this Kant faces the problem of induction, and I relate Kant's version of the problem to Goodman's new riddle of induction.;Kant asserts that a critique of aesthetic judgment is "the most important part" of a critique of judgment, and the investigation of judgments of beauty reveals "a property of our cognitive power which without this analysis would have remained unknown." Under Kant's theory of cognitive judgment, we do not directly experience the manifold of data arriving via the senses, but only as this has been "combined" or organized by the imagination, and "unified" under concepts by the understanding; Kant suggests that the judgment of beauty is a play of precisely these same mental powers. The pleasure in beauty is then that of an inner feeling of the play of one's own cognitive powers in the act of apprehending an object. But in the case of beauty, unlike a cognitive judgment, the play is "free", for it is not restricted to organizations that are suitable to any particular empirical concept or other; instead the imagination is "productive and spontaneous and the originator of possible forms" of organizations of the sensory manifold. In contemplating something beautiful the cognitive powers put themselves into a "facilitated free play," which is felt as pleasure. While this play is free, it is yet neither chaotic nor random, Kant holds, but expresses a certain "free lawfulness." That is, under his analysis of beauty that feeling reflects an indeterminate unity-in-diversity, a general sense of delight in an order that can only be felt, as he holds the quasi-unity or unities in beauty to be unstateable in terms of any particular determinate concept or other. This ability to feel a preconceptual unity-in-diversity turns out to be crucial for cognition. For under Kant's theory, in order to make a cognitive judgment, we must be able to see a specific, determinate unity-in-diversity. Yet, as Kant notes, on pain of a regress (for concepts are rules, for organizing a manifold), this ability cannot itself be determined by any rule. In other words we must be able to recognize unity in diversity prior to the application of a concept. Kant concludes, from considering the case of beauty, that we can recognize such unity-in-diversity via feeling. Kant also concludes, regarding determinate cognitive unities, that we must presume that we all take the same unities as appropriate for given diversities---otherwise we will be unable to communicate our cognitions.;This presumption is key to the Critique of Judgment , I hold. Kant argues that we may presume such an "inner sense" to be common to all, as a condition of the communicability of our cognitions. This "common sense" (as he terms it) fits the constraint imposed by the infinite regress threat: it is a "subjective principle" and an "ideal standard," which Kant says "judges by feeling rather than by concepts": the feeling of the state of one's cognitive powers in judging. Such a principle fits the bill; feeling requires no further act of judgment and avoids the regress. It is, I argue, intended to serve as the otherwise unavailable ideal standard or universal norm, in other words, as a principle of judgment. Kant identifies the principle of taste with the principle needed for the empirical investigation of nature, an identification which many commentators have rejected; I argue that this can be understood if both are regarded as belonging to a common principle of judgment, that needed to address the skeptical threat. It serves as the preconceptual (and presumptively universal) sense of an appropriate ("lawlike," "purposive," or "projectible") potential unity-in-diversity. In this way it serves as precondition of the universal validity claims of both judgments of beauty and empirical cognition under Kant's theory.