The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1991) Volume XXX, Supplement

UNITY OF ORGANISM, UNITY OF

THOUGHT, AND THE UNITY OF
THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT
Richard E. Aquila
The University of Tennessee - Knoxville
I.

I am going to focus on Kant's claim, in 76-7 of the

Critique of Judgment, that reflection on an essential feature
of human mentality, its intellectually discursive character,
provides the ground for insight into the possibility of representing portions of nature, perhaps even nature as a whole,
as systems of the sort that Kant calls "organic," that is, as
"natural purposes." I propose a perspective on Kant's resolution of this problem that may also help to clarify the overall unity of the Critique. l
In general terms, Kant's resolution of the problem seems
to have two parts. One of them concerns what we must do,
on account of the discursive character of our understanding;
the other concerns what we can do on account of that character. First, the discursive character of our understanding requires us to regard the objects in question as products-or
as things whose inner workings are products (I won't repeat
the qualification throughout)-of a mental causality, that is,
of a certain sort of Vorstellung. Second, this same character
of our understanding enables us to represent those objects
as the product of a particular sort of mental causality, namely, of one that moves, as it were, from the holistic form of
a thing to the particular manner of interaction of its parts.
This second point, in turn, involves a representation by contrast: What we are representing is a kind of movement, with
regard to wholes and parts, that would be the opposite of the
kind essential to acts of discursive mentality. It is precisely
because the movement in question can be characterized purely relatively, in terms of this contrast, that we are enabled,
by the very character of our own mentality, to represent objects as natural purposes (77.407-8).2
But it is not clear just how the specific character of
discursive mentality is supposed to be relevant to a
resolution of the problem. In these sections of the Critique,
at least three distinct problematics seem to be in question:

139

those of contingency and necessity, of the whole-part relation, and of the relation between universality and particularity, or between concepts and objects. The relationship
between these problematics is frequently not wholly appreciated, because of a failure to appreciate the relationship between the points that I first mentioned-the one concerning
how we must, the other how we are enabled to, represent
natural purposes. In particular, there is a tendency to fail
to appreciate that the only reason we must represent certain
objects as the effects of a certain sort of Vorstellung is that,
in representing those objects as wholes that stand to their
parts in the way that natural purposes must, we need to
represent them as if they are themselves a certain sort of
Vorstellung: in particular, as if they are themselves thoughts
of a non-discursive, or a purely intuitive, sort.
Most recently, Werner Pluhar has defended this conclusion. In representing nature as a natural purpose:
[N]ature in itself would simply be the intellectual (supersensible) intuition
of this intuitive understanding, just as our world of experience simply is
the experience that consists of our empirical intuition as structured in
harmony with our categories .... [T]he purposive form that would be necessitated by this intellectual intuition would simply be that intuition .... the
world in itself would be the completely determinate form which that intellectual intuition is. 3

As Kant himself puts it: When we judge of a natural purpose,

we adduce a teleological basis when we attribute to the concept of an
object-just as if that concept were in nature (not in us)-a causality
concerning [the production of] an object ... (61.360 [my emphasis])

But there is a point of importance that remains hidden in

all this. If reflection on the specific character of discursive
representation is to be relevant to our ability to represent unified wholes of the special kind that natural purposes are supposed to be, then discursive representations themselves must
be unified wholes of a special kind, namely, wholes whose
unitary structure is determined precisely by the contrary of
the movement supposed to be in question in the case of
natural purposes. In other words, it cannot just be that the
objects to which we apply discursive representations are unified wholes determined by such a movement. The representations themselves must be such wholes. If they were not,
then it would not be relevant to the problem of representing
natural purposes that we represent them as if their inner
workings were the products of an operation moving in the
contrary direction from that of discursive mentality. That we
may, or even must, so represent natural purposes would be

140

relevant only if the represented "movements" in question were

represented precisely as movements within wholes of a certain
sort.
Apart from the direct bearing of this on Kant's attempt to
explain our ability to comprehend natural purposes, this point
will be useful in clarifying the overall unity of the third
Critique. On a certain level of generality, there may seem to
be no problem of unity. In both parts of the Critique Kant
focuses on principles that bear on what may reasonably be
called a "reflecting" rather than a "determining" power of
judgment. That is, he focuses on principles that bear on our
capacity for reflecting on intuitions, with respeCt to the possibility, suitable for the contexts in question, of subsumption
under universals. By contrast, determining judgment may be
regarded as the capacity for employing whatever universals
may be employed in various contexts, without concern for
which is most suitable. In the two parts of the Critique, then,
Kant may be regarded as dealing with questions that bear on
the problem of cognitive "suitability." In the first he deals
with questions posed by the existence of an especially high
level of suitability, namely, one so high that it is reflected in
a pleasure that, in the apprehension of certain objects, seems
to function as a subsuming universal in its own right. In the
second part, Kant then deals with an apparent limitation,
offered by certain objects, to our attempts at subsumption
under suitable universals: an apparent limitation whose
recognition presupposes some reference to powers of comprehension exceeding our own. But problems arise when we
examine the details of the specific "powers of judgment"
supposed to ground the very possibility of such judgments in
the first place.
In the case of judgments of taste, but not at all clearly for
those of natural purpose, Kant's analysis focuses on functions
regarded as directly active within particular representations,
with respect to the possibility of subsumption under
universals. In that case, the interplay between an element of
"particularity," given in intuition as a task for the understanding, on the one hand, and the cognitive functions
required for "movement" to the universal, on the other hand,
contributes to an explanation of the judgments in question
only because it is an interplay internal to single instances of
intuitional-cum-conceptual representation. In the "First Introduction," this orientation toward structure within single acts
of actual or possible subsumption is especially pronounced.
Kant says, for example, that aesthetic judgment involves

141

[a] relation between [imagination and understanding] ... insofar as one of

these powers furthers or hinders the other in one and the same presentation.
("FI" VIII.223 [my gloss and emphasis]).4

I shall indicate briefly at the end why I think the same point
is crucial to the published work itself.
At least on the surface, the problem that provides the framework for Kant's treatment of natural purposes seems to be a
different sort of problem. With respect to the natural objects
of our cognitive activities, it is a problem whose solution
requires attention to unified structures within single "intuitions," that is, within particular natural objects. But it is at
least on the surface unclear what its relevance could be to the
need for structure internal to the very acts of discursive
mentality as such. 5 Again, apart from the fact that attention
to the latter seems needed to support Kant's claim that a
single "power" of judgment is at work in both cases, I shall
try to show how such an approach can deal with the fact that
judgments of natural purpose concern a special kind of whole,
namely, one in which the behavior of the parts is determined
by the whole itself (and yet also by a mental act).

II.
Why exactly should it be necessary, or even helpful, with
respect to our ability to represent objects as natural purposes,
to represent their inner workings as the product of a specifically non-discursive sort of mentality? To precisely what
about such objects would this particular way of representing
them be relevant? We should begin by being clear that such
a mode of reflection would not be relevant if our task were
simply that of representing certain natural objects as satisfying the following conditions: first, that their internal
organization, and the functioning of their parts, is somehow
constantly regulated in such a way as to maintain the whole
in its state of natural integrity and flourishing; second, that
the functioning of the parts in question would, say on a microlevel of description (and given knowledge of antecedent
conditions), nonetheless be governed by purely mechanical
laws valid-apart from their inclusion in systems of that
sort-anywhere in the universe.
Such objects would of course bevery special. They would
be wholly natural objects, hence objects within which every
happening is necessitated in conformity with causal laws,
valid throughout nature, regardless of the kind of object
within which such happenings are located. On the other
hand, the internal functioning of those objects would be such

142

that it inevitably adjusts itself to whatever is needed in order

to maintain the integrity of those object as wholes, even
though the laws say nothing, as it were, about the needs of
such objects. Perhaps it would be necessary to represent, or
at least for us to represent, the behavior of such objects as
dependent upon some sort of mental activity in their regard.
It would still be unclear why we should suppose that the activity in question needs to be an instance of non-discursive
activity in particular. Given the complexity of the systems
in question, any relevant mental activity must be activity on
the part of a being far more intelligent than ourselves. In
addition, it would have to be activity on the part of a being
who, unlike ourselves, has control over the behavior of such
systems, as well as over the behavior of natural objects
generally. That would require a fantastic level of intelligence
and power. But the question remains why we should need
to suppose that it requires an instance of non-discursive
intellect.
The situation is very different, once we remember that
what is in question is not simply an object satisfying the two
conditions so far stated, but rather an object in which the
holistic form of that very object itself-and not a distinct
instance of mental activity of any sort-is the element
responsible for that object's internal functioning. Thus a
natural purpose must be represented as "relat[ing] to itself
in such a way that it is both cause and effect of itself"
(65.372; my emphasis). Similarly:
[I]n judging things whose concept as natural purposes does undoubtedly
have a basis (i.e., in judging organized beings), we must always presuppose
some original organization that itself uses mechanism, either to produce
other organized forms or to develop the thing's own organized form into
new shapes (though these shapes too always result from the purpose and
conform to it). (80.418 [my emphasis])

It is the thing's own organization that constitutes the active

factor in question, not some distinct mental action. 6
Kant seems to make it clear that any appeal to the efficacy
of mental activity, in connection with our representation of
organic structures in nature, must go hand in hand with the
representation of certain natural beings as themselves,
through their own holistic forms, productive activities with
respect to their internal functioning. Two things are required
for the idea of such an object:
First, the possibility of its parts (as concerns both their existence and their
form) must depend on their relation to the whole. For since the thing itself

143

is a purpose, it is covered [befaBt] by a concept or idea that must determine

a priori everything that the thing is to contain [my emphasis].

But, Kant immediately adds, "if we think of a thing as

possible only in that way, then it is merely a work of art.
For it is then the product of a rational cause distinct from
the matter of the thing" (65.373). Accordingly:
A second requirement must be met if a thing that is a product of nature
is yet to have, within itself and its inner possibility, reference to purposes,
i.e., if it is to be possible only as a natural purpose, without the causality
of concepts, which rational beings outside it have. This second requirement
is that the parts of the thing combine into the unity of a whole because
they are reciprocally cause and effect of their form .. _ . Only if a product
meets that condition [as well], and only because of this, will it be both an
organized and a self-organizing being, which therefore can be called a
natural purpose. (65.373-4)

There are two points, and our question concerns the relation between them. One is that it is necessary to represent
the internal functioning of a natural purpose as determined
by the structure of the object itself. The other is that it is
necessary to represent the internal functioning of a natural
purpose as determined by a "concept or idea." To some commentators this indicates confusion:
[A]lthough Kant has clearly pointed out that organisms are peculiar
in that they produce themselves, he is nevertheless still in the grip
of the design-designer analogy to the extent that he believes that we
cannot understand organisms unless we regard them as if they were
products of a designing mind. 7

What we should be led to conclude instead is that, if the

representation of an object as a natural purpose requires
representing any sort of mental activity at all, as efficacious
with respect to its internal functioning, then this could only
be because the representation of an object as a natural
purpose requires representing it as if itself an instance of
mental activity of that sort. That is, natural purposes must
be represented as if they. are themselves thoughts on the part
of a being whose capacity for thought is constituted by a
movement in the opposite direction from the movement
constitutive of discursive mental activity.s
This implies that, just by virtue of their supposed
difference from acts of discursive intellect, and independently of the problem of natural purposes, acts of non-discursive
intellect must be represented as structured wholes in their
own right. Furthermore, since Kant's appeal to the possibility of non-discursive intellect in its turn depends upon a
contrast with that of discursive mental activity, it is equally

144

integral to Kant's analysis that acts of discursive intellect are

in their own right as well-and not simply, for example, in
the sense that their objects are-structured wholes of a certain
sort too (albeit of a radically different sort). In effect, in other
words, representing objects as natural purposes can only be,
at least for beings whose intellect is discursive, representing
them as like, but in a certain way also unlike, the very acts
of discursive intellect through which they are apprehended.
Something like this conclusion would seem to be suggested
by another point on which Kant insists with regard to natural
purposes, namely, that everything that is represented as part
of a natural purpose must be represented, at least by US, 9 as
somehow serving the "purpose" of that being as a whole: "In
such a product nothing is gratuitious, purposeless, or to be
attributed to a blind natural mechanism" (66.376); we must
represent "nothing in an organized being as unpurposive if it
is preserved in the being's propagation" (80.420).
Why should we suppose this? It would make sense in the
light of the suggestion that natural purposes must be
represented as if they are themselves a kind of thought, the
identity of which consists in their being wholes of a certain
sort in the first place. For it is not clear what sense it would
make to suppose-or at least to suppose on a Kantian view
of thought-that something is in some thought but does not
actually enter (either as "form" or "matter") as part of the
structural constitution of that thought. But suppose that we
represent a natural purpose not as a thought, but merely as
the product of a thought distinct from itself. Then what could
preclude our supposing that some things in that product might
have a purely mechanical significance, that is, might not
actually function as part of its structural constitution? For a
reason best known to itself, the productive agent in question
may have simply chosen to place a typewriter in the stomach
of every whale.
The following is the only argument that Kant offers on
behalf of the claim that no part of a natural purpose is without
purpose with respect to that being as a whole:
[T]he possibility of such a product is to be based on an idea [Idee]. But an
idea is an absolute unity of presentation ... once we take such an effect
as a whole beyond the blind mechanism of nature and refer it to a
supersensible basis as determining it, then we must also judge this effect
wholly in terms of that principle. (66.377)

What could be the logic in this, unless we are to regard a

natural purpose as itself the very idea upon which its own
internal structure is "based"? In fact it is worth noting that,

145

in the context of this argument, the characterization of an

Idee seems to be rather different from that in the earlier
Critique's. In those works, an Idee would seem to be a
representation that at most represents some special sort of
whole, or at least the regulative possibility of some special
sort of whole. What is crucial here, by contrast, is precisely
the notion of an idea as a special sort of whole.

III.
It is in 76 and 77 that Kant finally informs us that it
is only reflection upon a particular feature of discursive
intellect, and upon the latter's difference with respect to nondiscursive intellect, "that makes the concept of a natural purpose possible for us" (77.405). In the first of these sections,
however-and by way of what Kant himself calls a kind of
"digression" (nur episodisch [76.401])-Kant devotes his
attention to what we must clearly understand as a second,
although obviously not unrelated, comparison between such
intellects. This earlier reflection concerns the distinction
between possibility and actuality in the world as represented
by discursive intellect. The entire distinction, Kant maintains, "has its basis in the subject"; it is merely a function
of a particular feature of discursive intellect, namely, of its
requirement of "two quite heterogeneous components, understanding to provide concepts, and sensible intuition to provide objects corresponding to these" (76.401). Not needing in
this way to "proceed from" universal to particular, the possibility / actuality distinction would have no place in the
world of non-discursive intellect.
Obviously, a certain overcoming of the distinction is
relevant to the problem of natural purposes. Certain a priori
structures of human understanding require us to take all
natural happenings as the upshot of laws that necessitate
them, as it were "mechanically," given the occurrence of
various other happenings preceding their occurrence. There
is nothing in this requirement to suggest that a particular
variety of object might possibly exist, such that the events
occurring within the various parts of that object are both
necessary according to laws that relate them to other events
in the whole of nature and yet also necessary with respect
to that object itself as a whole, that is, necessary at least
for the latter's integrity and flourishing. From our point of
view, then, it is simply a possibility, or a purely "contingent"
matter, relative to the requirements of mechanical causality,
that the laws of "mechanism" that in fact obtain should lead
146

to the production of such objects (74.396, 75.398). But if we had

a faculty of non-discursive intellect, it would be different. For
then "we would find no distinction between natural
mechanism and the technic of nature, i.e., connection in it in
terms of purposes" (76.404). So at least in this respect, we may
represent natural purposes by representing them as things of
a sort that would be represented by a non-discursive intellect.
It is important to see that this is not Kant's solution to the
problem at hand, or at least not the whole of it. It is at most
a "digression" illustrating the general method of solution. A
non-discursive intellect would be one for which things are
given as actual through merely representing them. Therefore,
the world as so represented would be one in which everything
in it is represented as necessary. But this does' nothing to
distinguish among particular grounds of explanation within
such worlds. Specifically, it does nothing to help describe a
world in which a sufficient ground lies in the holistic form of
certain objects. So the reflection in question cannot resolve our
whole problem.
It is in 77 that Kant turns more specifically to the problem
of parts and wholes. But the text leaves it unclear just what
in the distinction between discursive and non-discursive
mentality is supposed to be relevant to this problem. In any
case, the intended upshot is clear: While discursive intellect
"proceed[s] from the analytically universal to the particular
(i.e., from concepts to the empirical intuition that is given),"
a non-discursive intellect is "intuitive, and hence proceeds
from the synthetically universal (the intuition of a whole as
a whole) to the particular, i.e., from the whole to the parts"
(77.407). By contrast with the latter, discursive intellect must
proceed from parts to wholes.
Now since 77 had begun, like the "digressive" section
preceding it, with reference to the relationship between
concepts and their instances, or between acts of intellect and
their objects, one might suppose that Kant has simply
conflated two different relationships.1 For certainly, if no
more is now intended by the notion of an intuitive intellectwhich unlike ours "does not (by means of concepts) proceed
from the universal to the particular and thus to the individual" (77.406)-than the distinction already drawn by Kant in
76, then some sort of conflation seems indeed to be in
question. In particular, suppose that Kant simply has in mind,
as in the preceding section, a difference in the relationship
between certain sorts of thoughts and their objects. Then it
would remain unclear how what he has in mind could possibly
be relevant to the case at hand.
147

By supposition, any act of non-discursive intellect, with

respect to some kind of object, ipso facto produces all possible
instances of that kind. By the same token, it determines
every detail as to the workings of their parts. Similarly for
a non-discursive thought with respect to a whole world. By
that very act the world itself, down to its last detail, is determined in existence. But what does this have to do with the
case of natural purposes? A natural purpose is supposed to
be a thing that does not, as a whole, merely consist in certain
relations among its parts. Instead, we must regard its own
holistic form as in some way dictating, as it were, with respect to those parts, and to that extent as being "prior" to
them. Nothing like this has so far been suggested. All that
has been suggested is that whatever "determines" the nondiscursive thought of a certain whole ipso facto determines
all the details of its internal functioning. This carries no suggestion as to the requisite priority of a whole itself with
respect to its parts.
We can avoid this problem by returning to the suggestion
that natural purposes be represented as if they are themselves acts of a certain kind of intellect. For suppose we do
regard them as thoughts on the part of a non-discursive
intellect. Then it would follow that we must regard them as
wholes that determine their own parts. For non-discursive
thoughts ipso facto determine everything about their object.
And now we are supposing that certain natural objects are
such thoughts. In that case, those very objects would determine all the details about themselves, which is how we are
supposed to represent a natural purpose.
But if this is the solution to the problem of our ability to
represent natural purposes, then it must be possible for us
to represent, at least problematically, the possibility not simply of an object whose constitution is determined by the very
thought of that sort of object, but also the possibility of a
thought that in some way determines its own constitution.
Until we are able to represent that possibility-and to represent it precisely by means of an at least problematic contrast
with our own powers of thought-then the proposed solution
is no solution at all. In short, we need to return to the suggestion that every thought is itself a whole of some sort in
the first place. In the case of discursive thought, this must
of course be a whole of a sort that is constituted by means
of a special kind of "proceeding" from intuitively given "material" for any such possible whole, to the actual whole in
question. Only if that is so, could non-discursive thoughts,
and from there by comparison natural purposes, then be

148

represented as wholes in which the movement in question is

just the reverse.

IV.
It is clear what structuring "form" Kant has in mind as
constitutive with respect to the structure of discursive
thought, namely, what he calls the "pure forms of understanding," or the "categories." But we are now required to
regard these forms in a special way, namely, as capable of
operating upon a manifold of material in order to produce
an actual instance of thought from that material. Thus we
are required to think of the forms in question in a way that
many readers of Kant are not inclined to do. More naturally,
we may think of the "forms of understanding" only with respect to structural features of the manifold of possible objects, or of possible appearances, in principle thinkable by
means of those forms. In a figurative sense, then, those objects or appearances might be said to constitute the "material" of our thoughts. But what we now need is a non-figurative sense.
I have elsewhere argued that already in the first Critiqueeven if only implicitly and with at least occasional confusion-precisely such a structure may be regarded as constitutive of predicative acts. Specifically, any instance of "subsumption" of an appearance under concepts may be regarded
as an actual forming of a thought out of a body of "material"
ingredient within an intuitional state, namely, out of a body
of imaginative material-that is, of imaginative anticipations and retentions-concerning the at least possible course
of appearances proceeding from and leading up to a given
one. Furthermore, by virtue of its ingredience within an actual intuition, the body of imaginative material in question
must be regarded as making a representational contribution
to that intuition. That is, it must be regarded as having a
representational correlate within the phenomenal field itself.
The best way to describe this correlate, in turn, is as an
imaginatively structured and pre-delineated field of possibilities within which the given appearance is apprehended.
It follows from this that any act of predication proper must
be regarded as exercising its formative function precisely upon such a pre-delineated, and pre-predicatively structured,
phenomenal field. In other words, any act of conceptualizing
a given appearance as a particular kind of object-and thereby embedding it, in terms of a whole conceptual scheme,
within a manifold of causal necessities to which it is

149

subject-is in every case a formation that "moves," as it were

(although not necessarily temporally) from a pre-delineated
manifold of possibilities for such representation to the actual
representation of the object in question. In other words, it is
only precisely out of that pre-delineated structure-as a piece,
as we might call it, of pre-conceptually given "nature" or
"proto-nature" -that any actual piece of nature is in any
instance represented. Thus on this view, the conceptual representation of any piece of nature proper, hence of any natural
object, is formed out of a manifold of more primitive
representational material which functions in experience by
contributing to the pre-delineation of a field of possibilities for
any actual functioning within that piece of nature. As I have
suggested elsewhere, we may then regard the relationship
between this pre-delineated structure of proto-nature, and the
law-governed structure of nature proper, as what Kant calls
the "transcendental affinity" of appearances with respect to
the operations of our understanding.
In this sense then-and on a level of analysis more fundamental than that on which one is able to talk about our faculty
of judgment as "proceeding" from particular objects to
"universals" for subsumption-we might say that any act of
judgmental representation necessarily proceeds from the "particular" to the universal. At the same time, we can also see
how this sort of "proceeding" has something to do with the
relationship between an actual piece of nature and what is
contained within that piece as parts in a whole (or at least
as sub-functionings within some larger context of functioning). It is not simply a question of a purely logical movement
from a manifold of particulars, in principle subsumable under
concepts, to a concept itself as figuratively "containing" them.
That at least would be the structure of any act of judgmental
representation of the discursive sort. As Kant tells us, the idea
of an act of non-discursive intellect can then only be formed
in contrast with this, namely, as an act in which the
"movement" in question is in the opposite direction. We of
course are unable to conceive what such a mental action would
be like, hence what corresponding objects would be like for
such an intellect, except in the sense that we are able to
represent such things in those purely contrastive terms.
This puts me in a position, finally, to return to my suggestion regarding the overarching unity of the third Critique. My
suggestion is simply that Kant's solution to the problem of
representation in both cases-that is, his solution to a problem
regarding what may seem at first to be judgmental
"subsumptions" that fail to conform to his own theory of

150

judgment-rests on reflection on the very structure of the

subsumptive act itself, as a movement from pre-conceptually
available manifolds of particular content to the structure of
the conceptual act proper. As I have suggested, on its most
fundamental level, this reflection on the very structure of the
judgmental act involves reflection on a structure literally
internal to that act. And I have indicated how we might
elaborate this with respect to the problem of representing
natural purposes. I shall conclude by indicating what I take
to be the comparison with the case of judgments of taste.
In the case of judgments regarding objects as natural
purposes, we are concerned with a special kind of holistic
structure. The very possibility of representing such structures, to whatever extent we can do so, needed explaining.
A crucial role was then played in this explanation by the fact
that any act of discursive mentality is a structured whole in
its own right. Within this whole, intellectual form operates
upon a manifold of imaginative material. In addition, and
just for that reason, that manifold must be regarded as
making its contribution to that whole. In the case of the representation of natural purposes, I have tried to indicate what
that contribution involves. In the case of the representation
of (free) beauty, a parallel point can now be made.
The key to the parallel lies in Kant's repeated claims that,
in the representation of beauty in objects, it is not simply
that we are caused, by special features internal to the state
of apprehending those objects, to take a certain sort of plea
sure in that very apprehension. Rather, our own state of pleasure actually serves as a kind of "predicate" in it: "The
strange and different" fact is that in a judgment of taste
"what is to be connected with the presentation of the object
is not an empirical concept but a feeling of pleasure (hence
no concept at all), though, just as if it were a predicate [my
emphasis] connected with the cognition of the object ... is
nevertheless to be required of everyone" (VII.191). Indeed,
Kant says (36.288) that in a judgment of a taste a pleasurable feeling serves "in the place of a predicate (statt
Pradikats)," and that such judgments add an actual feeling
"as a predicate" (als Pradikat hinzutun) to intuitions. And
he speaks (37.289) of the "predicate of pleasure" (ihr
Pradikat des Wohlgefallens) in a judgment of taste. There
are also other places where Kant says that a feeling of
pleasure is at least as if a predicate in judgments of taste.!1
Connected with all this is of course also Kant's emphasis on
(free) beauty as, or at least as if, a characteristic ascribed
to objects (or to apprehended forms) in judgments of taste 12 151

an ascription which Kant himself equates with those judgments' demand for universality and necessity.13
These claims are often taken with less seriousness than
seems to me appropriate. In any case, what I want to suggest
is that Kant's solution to the problem of judgments of taste
is this: On account of a special harmony between imagination and understanding in an intuitional state-that is, on
account of some set of imaginative material in an intuitional
state being especially suitable for formation into an act of
conception in it-that material actually becomes a feeling of
pleasure. This is compatible-although I won't pursue the
details-with both of two somewhat different definitions that
Kant offers of pleasure in general. 14
The crucial point is then this: that as a body of
imaginative material literally in an intuition, as material
available for at least possible conceptual forming-and not
merely as a set of imaginative associations, say, externally
connected with some intuition-the imaginative material in
question must have a counterpart in the phenomenal field
itself. In this case, however, the imaginative material is also
a pleasure. Thus Kant's solution lies in his showing, on the
basis of reflection on the very structure of the act of discursive representation itself, how a pleasure can function in
representation, not simply as an external accompaniment to
the apprehension of an object, but precisely as a "determining" (or at least a quasi-determining) factor in that apprehension, hence precisely as (or as if) an element corresponding to a predicate ascribed to the object. The predicate (or
quasi-predicate) in question is then, according to Kant's solution, what we call "beauty" in an object.1 5
If this general approach is sound, then it is in a sense
wrong to see the third Critique as belatedly correcting the
first's neglect of an entire "power of judgment." Or at least,
one may be inclined to think that such neglect occurs in the
following sense: the first Critique seems only to deal with the
"determining" power of judgment, as the capacity for subsuming particulars under concepts; the third then belatedly
recognizes an autonomous power of judgment, which Kant
now calls "reflecting" judgment. This is true to a certain extent. But our approach puts us in a position to see that
Kant's analyses of the problems regarding the types of judgment in question may in fact turn on an additional reflection
on the very structure of determining judgment itself, namely,
on its structure as a kind of movement from imaginatively
represented "particulars" to intellectually structured predicative acts as special kinds of "wholes." What is in question

152

is then not so much an advance to a neglected faculty of

judgment, as recognition of the fact that the very structure
of the faculty of judgment grounds the possibility of judgments in which the predicate is no longer, in the sense apparently formerly required by Kant himself, a determinate
"concept. "
NOTES
1 That is, the unity of a work that, while supposedly devoted to a single
"power of judgment," has been described as a "baroque combination" of two
quite distinct problems of judgment: Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as
Will and Representation, 2nd ed., tr. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover
Publications, 1969), vol. I, "Appendix: Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy,"
p. 531 (Payne has 'queer' for Schopenhauer's 'barocke'). For some additional
references to commentators who see a difficulty in connecting aesthetic and
teleological judgment, see Klaus Dusing, Die Teleologie in Kants Weltbegriff, Kant-Studien Ergiinzungshefte 96 (Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1968), p. 52,
n. 3. Cf. also Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 60ff.
2 Throughout, references beginning with Roman or arabic numbers are
to sections of the (published) "Introduction" and body, respectively, of the
Critique of Judgment. Except where noted, translations are those of Werner
S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987). Numbers
following the section number refer to pages in either volume V or (for the
"First Introduction" ["FI"]) XX of the Akademie-Ausgabe; these pages are
indicated in the margins of the Pluhar translation. Except where the
contrary is indicated, bracketed English within quoted text is Pluhar's
insertion.
3 Werner S. Pluhar, "Introduction" to his translation of the Critique of
Judgment, pp. xcii, xcv.
4 Cf. "FI" VIII.224 (the two powers in question are in harmonious play
"when, in the given presentation, the imagination's ability to apprehend,
and the understanding's ability to exhibit, further each other") and IX.233
("all that judgment can do, as a separate cognitive power, is to consider
the relation, prior to any concept, in which two powers-imagination and
understanding-are in a presentation . .. "); emphases mine.
5 The problem that Kant emphasizes, at least in the published introduction, with respect to judgments of natural purpose, seems to be a problem
that arises in regard to a very different sort of "movement" to the
"universal." It seems to be a problem encountered primarily in the context
of the effort to "subsume" particular under more general natural laws (or
particular under more general natural kinds), rather than particulars under
universals in the first place (cf. IV. 179ft). It is a problem encountered, that
is, in the course of our attempt to achieve a maximal systematization within
sets of judgments in regard to perceivable objects. At least in the published
introduction, Kant in fact entitles the "general principle" of reflecting
judgment "the law of the specification of nature in terms of its empirical
laws" (V.186). Just for this reason, it is difficult to see how we might hope
to establish any substantive parallel between his analysis of judgments of
natural purpose and that, in terms of the faculties involved in subsumption
under concepts, central to his treatment of judgments of taste. But it is such
a parallel that we ought to expect, if it is indeed a single "faculty" at work
in both cases.
6 In this context, Kant is speaking specifically to the question of the

153

evolution of organic beings, but I don't think that this should effect the
point I am making. Cf. also "FI" IX. 236: "the whole should be the cause
that makes possible the causality of the parts."
7 J. D. McFarland, Kant's Concept of Teleology (Edinburgh: University
of Edinburgh Press, 1970), p. 111. McFarland does also have an independent
explanation as to why a reference to non-discursive intellect is relevant to
Kant's problem. However, it differs from my own. The relevance is simply
that a non-discursive intellect would, unlike ourselves, be able to understand
the possibility of such special structures as natural purposes, and indeed
to understand how they are possible precisely without having to represent
them as determined in their internal structure by something mental.
8 Cf. Klaus Diising, Die Teleologie in Kants Weltbegriff, Kant-Studien
Erganziingshefte, 96 (Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1968), p. 116: "This 'Idea' of the
whole, which we must think as the representation of a purpose, and as
ground of the particular combination of the parts, must lie within the
organism itself as 'natural purpose,' not outside of it as in all technically
produced works, e.g., a watch, where the Idea of the purpose lies in the
watchmaker."
9 Pluhar himself suggests that "Actually, the purposive form of nature's
particular might be only part of the form that the intellectual intuition is:
the intuitive understanding might through the same intuition legislate, in
addition, in terms of the mechanism familiar to us, or in terms of laws
pertaining to both the purposive and mechanistic forms in nature ... " (p.
xcv, fn. 98)
10 Cf. H. Driesch, "Kant und das Ganze," Kant-Studien, 29 (1924), 365-76.
11 Cf. 32.281; also 9.218. Cf. also "FI" VIII.224. There Kant defines
"an aesthetic judgment in general as one whose predicate can never be
cognition (i.e., concept of an object ... )." A few lines earlier, however, he
had suggested that the predicate of a judgment of taste could become a
concept, whereas in an aesthetic judgment of sense it "cannot be a concept
of an object at all." That a predicate could be other than a concept, yet also
become one, is a suggestion that I take seriously. In any case, what all of
this suggests is that the problem of "universal validity" simply is the
problem: How is it possible for a feeling to be a predicate?
31 puts the point in similar but reversed terms: How is it possible bloB
in der Beurteilung to take pleasure in something? Kant equates this with
the question: "How [is it] possible for everyone to be entitled to proclaim
his liking as a rule for everyone else, just as our judging of an object for
the sake of cognition always [iiberhaupt] has universal rules." The solution
(31.281) is that, while the "content" (In halt) peculiar to a judgment of taste
is a feeling, the form remains that of objective, cognitive judgment.
12 6.211, 7.212, 8.215, 9.219, "FI" XII.249-50.
13 The former, 6.211; the latter, 9.218.
14 "FI" VIII.230-l: "Pleasure is a mental state in which a presentation
is in harmony with itself [and] which is the basis either for merely
preserving this state itself ... or for producing the object of this
presentation." Another definition (10.220): Pleasure is "Consciousness of a
presentation's causality directed at the subject's state so as to keep him in
that state ... " On the first definition we could say that a harmonious
condition of one's cognitive faculties is a feeling of pleasure; on the second,
only that some pleasure is a consciousness of that condition. In the section
preceding the second definition-where Kant provides the "key" to his
solution-he speaks both of a condition of one's faculties as "ground" of
the pleasure and of the pleasure as identical with the state of "enlivenment"
(Belebung) of imagination and understanding.

154

What I want to propose is compatible with both definitions. The

suggestion that, on account of a special harmony between imagination and
understanding in an intuition, a certain body of imaginative material
actually becomes a feeling of pleasure is compatible with denying that the
pleasure is identical with the harmony itself of the faculties. But the
suggestion is also of course compatible with the pleasure in question being
a consciousness of the latter.
15 The suggestion, in other words, is that beauty is an "intentional correlate" of imaginative apprehension through a certain feeling. Equating
apprehensible beauty with an apprehensible "purposiveness" in things,
such correlation seems to be at stake in the following argument, for
example:
[T]hat subjective [feature] of a presentation which cannot at all
become an element of cognition is the pleasure or displeasure
connected with that presentation .... Now a thing's purposiveness,
insofar as it is presented in the perception of the thing, is also not
a characteristic of the object itself .... Therefore, the subject [feature]
of the presentation which cannot at all become an element of
cognition is the purposiveness that precedes the cognition of an object
.... Therefore, in this case we call the object purposive only because
its presentation is directly connected with the feeling of pleasure, and
this presentation itself is an aesthetic presentation of purposivness.
(VII.189; perhaps therefore is too strong a translation.)

155