Empirical Systematicity and Its Relation To Aesthetic Judgement

Edinburgh University Press
Chapter Title: Empirical Systematicity and its Relation to Aesthetic Judgement
Book Title: Kant's Aesthetic Epistemology

Book Subtitle: Form and World
Book Author(s): Fiona Hughes
Published by: Edinburgh University Press. (2007)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r204c.12
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Empirical Systematicity and its Relation to

Aesthetic Judgement
We have found that the ‘Deduction’ of aesthetic judgement reveals

that the latter is based on the subjective conditions of cognition.1 In
Chapter 5 I argued that the principle of taste or common sense is aes-
thetic in status, insofar as it counts as the principle of the faculty of
judgement as such. Kant makes no mention of any other principle of
judgement other than taste, so I disagreed with Allison’s suggestion
that taste is grounded on a further principle, namely, the principle of
judgement in its subjective employment. In my view, the principle of
taste is the only principle that expresses the autonomous use of judge-
ment. My solution appears to give rise to a worrying result, namely,
that cognition is grounded on an aesthetic principle. There are strong
reasons, both independent and internal to Kant’s philosophy, for
resisting such a conclusion.
A related problem arises for my interpretation in the two
Introductions to the Critique of Judgement insofar as Kant introduces
a principle of judgement that does not at first sight count as aesthetic.
This is the principle of the purposiveness of nature and is the basis for
our presupposition of systematicity across the range of empirical
laws, thus making possible empirical judgements. Kant suggests that
the ‘Analytic of Aesthetic Judgement’ will serve as an exposition
and deduction of this principle, thus it would appear that taste is
grounded in the principle for empirical systematicity.2 We are thereby
faced with the reverse of the problem in the ‘Deduction’. That Kant
should have courted two contrary positions, both leading to conclu-
sions that would eliminate the distinctiveness of the principles
grounding the first and third Critiques, should make us pause for
thought. I will show how both problems can be resolved, once the
exemplary status of taste is established.
In the first section of this chapter, I examine the role played by the
principle of the purposiveness of nature. Although reflective judge-
ment has often been viewed as an optional supplement to Kant’s
248
Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement
account of determining judgement, I argue that it is necessary for the

completion of the latter’s task of establishing the possibility of empir-
ical knowledge.
Kant often characterises the principle of the purposiveness of
nature as identical to the presupposition that there is systematicity
across the range of empirical laws. In the second section, I suggest that
we can distinguish between the general question of a fit between mind
and empirical nature and the more specific claim for systematicity. I
argue that the general level of purposiveness makes possible the com-
pletion of the Copernican turn at the empirical level. In contrast, the
concept of empirical systematicity is an instrumental application of
this general principle.
In the third section, I discuss the dual direction of both the purpo-
siveness of nature and the purposiveness of judgement, insofar as they
are directed to subject and object. I further suggest that they are
expressions of one and the same principle of the purposiveness of
nature for our judgement. Judgement is the faculty that allows sensi-
bility to be taken up by the understanding. It is thus that judgement
makes possible a relation between subjectivity and objects in the
world.
Finally, in the fourth section, I turn to Kant’s problematic claim
that the ‘Analytic of Aesthetic Judgement’ will provide an exposition,
and even a deduction, of the purposiveness of nature. I draw on the
distinctions established in the earlier sections in arguing that aesthetic
judgements are exemplary of the possibility of empirical synthesis.
I Understanding goes out into the empirical world

In this section I will argue that formal reflective judgement of nature
is the necessary supplement to the ‘Analytic’ of the first Critique
insofar as it makes possible the application of the categorical system
within the empirical world.3
Retrospectively, in the two Introductions to the third Critique,
Kant reveals that the first Critique established only the transcenden-
tal structure of experience. He suggests that empirical experience
might have been so varied that we would have been incapable of
grasping [fassen] it through the categorial system alone.4 There could
have been a wholly consistent mental order that did not tally with the
world out there.
Having raised this problem at the beginning of the Critique of
Judgement, Kant answers it by saying that the categorical system of
249
Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology
the first Critique is supplemented by a further system founded on the

principle of the purposiveness of nature for our judgement. This prin-
ciple establishes that empirical nature is organised as if it were a
system oriented towards a purpose. However, there is no purpose or
final cause and, thus, the principle counts as subjective or reflective.
Within the broad range of reflective purposiveness that is the topic
of the Critique of Judgement, Kant distinguishes between formal pur-
posiveness and real or objective purposiveness. Formal purposiveness
is the systematicity reflection finds in empirical nature viewed as a
whole and is subjective in status.5 Objective purposiveness is teleolog-
ical and is to be found either in the internal organisation of an object
viewed as organic, or insofar as an object is viewed as standing in rela-
tion to the final purpose of nature.6 Teleological judgement is subjec-
tive in the broad sense that it rests on judgement’s principle of
purposiveness and is not determinative of objects. However, while
formal purposiveness arises in relation to intuition, the real purpo-
siveness of nature is judged in respect of concepts.7 Teleological judge-
ment is objective in the weak sense that it applies a subjective principle
in conjunction with a concept in order to make sense of objects. While
formal purposiveness is necessary for any empirical cognition what-
soever, objective purposiveness is necessary only for objects insofar as
we view them as natural purposes. Kant suggests that the teleological
order in nature offers a ‘logical presentation of the purposiveness of
nature’, allowing us to get a grasp on the more indeterminate formal
purposiveness.8 Teleological presentation counts as logical because it
requires a concept of understanding or an idea of reason.
The problem formal purposiveness addresses is what Allison refers
to as the possibility of ‘empirical chaos’, which would arise were the
principles of the first Critique incapable of getting a foothold in the
empirical world.9 Kant solves the problem thus:
Now this principle can only be the following: since universal natural laws
have their basis in understanding, which prescribes them to nature
(though only according to the universal concept of it as a nature), the par-
ticular empirical laws must, as regards what the universal laws have left
undetermined in them, be viewed in terms of such a unity as [they would
have] if they too had been given by an understanding (even though not
ours) so as to assist our cognitive powers by making possible a system of
experience in terms of particular natural laws.10
The principles of the understanding establish the most general order of

nature, but this underdetermines the order that arises over the range of
250
empirical laws. Purely intelligible order arising principally – though, as

I have argued, not exclusively – from the understanding is not sufficient
for establishing order at the empirical level. The strictly mechanical
order of the first Critique must be supplemented by a purposive order
that treats empirical nature as a system for our judgement.
I remarked in the previous chapter that in the ‘Transcendental
Deduction’, Kant sets a limit on the reach of the categories. Special
laws are laws that specify the law-like relations between empirical
objects. Thus Kant makes clear that although empirical laws fall
under the categories, which supply the general structure of experi-
ence, the detail of empirical experience is not derived from its formal
structure.11 Whereas in the first Critique Kant conceded a distinction
between transcendental order and empirical laws, he now introduces
a further transcendental principle for those empirical laws.
While we might momentarily be tempted to think that the intro-
duction of the reflective principle of systematicity finally supplies the
empirical correlate to the universal formal order of the categories, we
cannot sustain such an opinion. The new principle of systematicity
operates formally insofar as it expresses the general organisation of
empirical nature and not the particular contents of the latter.
Nevertheless, the reflective principle is more attuned to the specificity
of empirical nature than were the categories in their initial transcen-
dental form. Kant has added a further layer to his hierarchical recon-
struction of the conditions for the possibility of experience. In so doing
he has narrowed the gap between formal structure and empirical given.
The formal structure now finally supplies an order at the level of the
diversity of forms in which the material given arises. The new princi-
ple of order is transcendental insofar as it only establishes the applica-
bility of the categories and not their actual application.12 The latter
requirement would annul the gap between form and content that
Buchdahl rightly establishes as characteristic of transcendental status.13
The system of the laws of the understanding requires the system of
reflective judgement in order to complete its epistemic task at the
empirical level. Correspondingly, the second system takes the first as
its model and ultimately depends on the system of understanding as
its ground: ‘Now it is clear that reflective judgement, by its nature,
cannot undertake to classify all of nature in terms of its empirical
variety unless it presupposes that nature itself makes its transcenden-
tal laws specific in terms of some principle.’14 This mutual depend-
ency of the two systems can be simply explained by saying that the
second is the specification at the empirical level of the first:
251
The principle by which we reflect on given objects of nature is this: that

for all natural things concepts can be found that are determined empir-
ically. This means that we can always presuppose nature’s products to
have a form that is possible in terms of universal laws which we can
cognize.15
But this is to say specification is not automatic and requires a princi-
ple in addition to those analysed in the ‘Analytic’ of the first Critique.
As Buchdahl argues, the first system gives only the form of the second,
but not the latter’s validating grounds.16 If the categorical system is to
be applied at the empirical level, we must additionally presuppose
that concepts are possible for all empirical objects.
Kant expresses this development in his position in a variety of
ways. Without the principle of reflective judgement, understanding
would find it impossible ‘to discover in nature an order it could
grasp’.17 Only by means of this supplementary principle ‘can we make
progress in using our understanding in experience and arrive at cog-
nition’.18 Finally, without it ‘understanding could not find its way
about in nature’.19
Thus, there are two systematicities and both count as transcen-
dental insofar as they supply the framework conditions of experi-
ence.20 However, whereas one is categorial and arises out of the
unifying power of understanding, the other is reflective and arises
from the power of judgement, which, as we have already seen, can be
characterised as mediating. In this case, reflective judgement mediates
between the transcendental system of the categories and empirical
nature.
I have argued elsewhere that despite the variety of descriptions
Kant uses to capture the status of the principle of the purposiveness
of nature – including heuristic, assumption etc. – it is most helpful to
understand the latter as a presupposition in the hermeneutic sense of
the term. 21 We cannot make sense of empirical nature unless we pre-
suppose that it displays an order accessible to our minds. This pre-
supposition is a condition for the possibility of experiencing empirical
nature, thus it is in no sense optional or psychological as the terms
‘assumption’ and ‘heuristic’ might suggest.
The presupposition of the purposiveness of nature is formal insofar
as it is the structure within which we take in the empirical world in
our intuition of it, but it does not guarantee that on every occasion the
world will make sense in terms of our mental structures.22 It simply
secures the possibility of that success. In this way, the principle of the
systematicity of nature is not simply a projection – as Vaihinger,
252
Buchdahl and Pippin suggest – but rather is an anticipation that makes

possible an exploration of the world or an orientation within it.23 We
presuppose that it is possible to make sense of the complex data of the
world, but we do not yet know how we can do so in any particular
case. The cognitive encouragement given us by judgement does not
encourage the epistemically lazy attitude that the order of nature is
already established by our minds, but rather encourages us to take up
the task of exploring the world with at least the hope that we can make
sense of it. As we will see later, aesthetic experiences are particularly
important in fostering this hope. The reflective task of making sense
of the world is one that permeates the great majority of our cognitive
tasks. It is as relevant to everyday low-level puzzles as it is to the most
abstruse theoretical scientific problems. At both extremes, while the
answer is not supplied a priori, what is transcendentally assured is that
there is some sense in seeking one.
The sceptic may still find that too much assurance is assumed by
this account. However, we should remember that this is a transcen-
dental argument that starts from our everyday practice in the world.
We do in fact operate as if we can make sense of the world. Kant’s
transcendental analysis of the principle of the purposiveness of nature
seeks to make sense of that practice and to show how it can be legit-
imated. The deduction of a principle of systematicity aims to legiti-
mate our practice of judgement by revealing a necessary condition for
the possibility of our experience. Kant aims to achieve this by dis-
playing how this principle is grounded in the subjective conditions of
our cognition.24 In effect, Kant intends to show that the cognitive
hope we display in everyday experience can be legitimated, not to dis-
prove the radical doubts of the sceptic in his or her own terms.
Kant makes a number of different claims for the principle of reflec-
tive judgement. As Allison summarises:
In fact, in various places in the Introductions, Kant suggests that the prin-
ciple of the purposiveness of nature is necessary for the formation of
empirical concepts, the classification of ‘natural forms’ into genera and
species, the unification of empirical laws into a system (theory construc-
tion), the formulation of empirical laws in the first place, and the attribu-
tion of necessity to such laws.25
Allison resolves the diversity of functions by saying that, in all cases,

reflective judgement is concerned to find universals for given particu-
lars. He goes on to argue that as the search for empirical concepts is
inseparable from the search for empirical laws, and the latter entails
253
a hierarchical organisation of such laws, then the attempts to estab-

lish the possibility of empirical concepts and the systematic organisa-
tion of empirical laws ‘are best seen as two poles of a quest for the
conditions of the empirical knowledge of nature qua empirical’.26
This is a very helpful synthesis of Kant’s position.
Allison’s account leaves open the question raised in the previous
chapter in the discussion of Kant’s proviso about special laws in the
B Deduction. Is Kant’s position that the singular empirical object can
be determined at the categorical level, while only special laws cannot?
Now that Kant has introduced a finer tuned account of the formal
structure of experience, he could merely be saying that our consider-
ation of the empirical laws of nature requires an additional reflective
principle, while the principles are sufficient conditions for the deter-
mination of an individual empirical object.
In my view, Kant should have said that the principle of the purpo-
siveness of nature is necessary for the possibility of any empirical
judgement. The form of empirical judgements is their organisation in
a system. For Kant, the necessity characteristic of laws entails unifi-
cation within a system, should that be at the level of the transcen-
dental unity of apperception or with respect to empirical order. Laws
operate within a framework of other laws and empirical concepts
must be understood within that framework.27 Thus empirical laws
and concepts, the classification of natural forms into species and
genera and the establishment of a system of empirical laws all depend
on the principle that nature is specifiable as a system that harmonises
with the categorial system of the understanding. Were we not capable
of presupposing this principle, none of these would be possible. In
short, order at the empirical level requires the principle of the purpo-
siveness of nature. And if we were not able to presuppose order in
empirical nature, we could not even conceive of making a judgement
about singular empirical objects.
Many interpreters, including Buchdahl, have interpreted Kant’s
account of reflective judgement as referring only to the heuristic
system of natural laws, the condition of scientific investigation of
nature.28 However, Kant’s claim that the transcendental system can
only be applied at the empirical level through the mediation of reflec-
tive judgement shows that Kant’s account of empirical systematicity
bears a further significance. If knowledge of a given empirical phe-
nomenon is to be possible, the categories of the understanding must
be applied at the empirical level. If understanding – the faculty giving
rise to the categories – is to find its way about in empirical nature, a
254
presupposition of empirical systematicity is required. Kant’s empha-

sis on law-likeness may seem to suggest that the cognition of partic-
ular empirical objects is not under consideration, but, for Kant,
cognition is only possible within a systematic framework. The cate-
gories of the understanding operate conjointly and give rise to a
system of principles. The principles operate as a system in establish-
ing the possibility of an object in general. Correspondingly, an empir-
ical object is only determinable within the context of a system of
empirical laws. Knowledge of a particular empirical object arises
within a context of lawful relations in which it stands to other objects.
The principle establishing the latter is thus a necessary condition of
the application of the categories to a given empirical object. The very
possibility of empirical synthesis requires that there be an order in
empirical nature that can only be secured by the principle of empir-
ical systematicity.
Kant says that universal natural laws are sufficient for the coher-
ence of objects in terms of their genus ‘as natural things as such’.29 This
encourages the view that transcendental systematicity suffices, at least
for particular natural beings. However, he goes on to say that the prin-
ciples ‘fail to provide them with specific coherence in terms of the par-
ticular natural beings they are’.30 What Kant must mean is that while
transcendental systematicity establishes the determination of an object
in general, it does not yet establish the complete grounds for the deter-
mination of a specific empirical object. Kant concludes that an a priori
principle of judgement is required in order to find a unity in accor-
dance with law within empirical contingency.31 His point clearly is
that were we not able to do so, empirical cognition could not arise.
II A distinction between general purposiveness and

systematicity
In the previous section, I have argued that the empirical application
of the categories is only possible on presupposition of the purposive-
ness of nature for our judgement. The principle of purposiveness
establishes, although strictly reflectively, that we can treat nature as a
system at the empirical level. This presupposition is necessary if we
are to establish knowledge not only of the lawful connections of
empirical nature, but even of the empirical objects that can only be
experienced as part of a wider system.
Towards the end of his discussion of the two ‘Introductions’,
Allison mentions a suggestion by Klaus Düsing, namely, that we
255
should distinguish between a more general and a more specific level

of the purposiveness of nature.32 Only purposiveness at a general level
would be the basis for aesthetic judgement. Allison remarks that
Düsing gives no sense of how even a more general sense of purpo-
siveness could ‘license’ particular claims of taste.33
I now intend to suggest a way in which we can identify a general
sense of the purposiveness of nature in contrast to a more specific
sense of the systematicity of nature’s empirical laws.34 This distinction
is one within the formal purposiveness of nature, which Kant has
argued is strictly reflective or subjective in status. The significance of
this description is not, however, that purposiveness has no role to play
in our knowledge of objects. As I have argued, it is necessary for
knowledge of objects at the empirical level. The point is that this
reflective principle does not determine objects and rather throws us
back on the relation in which the subject stands to an appearing thing.
The general sense of purposiveness concerns the accessibility of the
empirical object to our subjective faculties that cooperate when we
make a judgement.
The more specific expression of the principle of purposiveness, that
there is systematicity across the empirical laws of nature, counts as an
instrument or device that facilitates the general project of establish-
ing a fit between mind and empirical nature. Both levels are necessary
for the completion of the objective Deduction, which requires that the
categories are capable of determining empirical objects. There must
be a fit between mind and empirical nature if cognition is to be pos-
sible and establishing a hierarchical order of laws is the means to
securing this.
There are occasions on which Kant’s presentation of the order in
empirical nature appears to imply just such a distinction between a
more general question of the fit between mind and world and a more
specific device for bringing it about. For instance, early in the ‘First
Introduction’ we are told that if judgement is to be distinguished from
the other faculties by its own concept or rule then this will be one of
‘things of nature insofar as nature conforms to our power of judge-
ment’.35 Kant then goes on to say ‘the only concept we could form of
this character is that [nature’s] arrangement conforms to the ability
we have to subsume the particular laws, which are given, under more
universal laws, even though these are not given’.36 We might say that
the principle of nature, insofar as it conforms to our power of judge-
ment, regards nature understood at the level of general purposiveness
– that is, in terms of the possibility of empirical cognition as such –
256
while our way of grasping this fit requires that we devise a concept of
the systematicity of nature in its empirical laws. Meanwhile, in the
second Introduction Kant says that the principle of reflective judge-
ment is ‘the basis for the unity of all empirical principles under higher
though still empirical principles’.37 This, too, could suggest a distinc-
tion between levels at which purposiveness operates, insofar as the
power of judgement is the basis for the hierarchy of laws.
The purposiveness of nature at its general level takes up the task
of the Copernican revolution. If knowledge claims are to be legiti-
mated, it must be established that concepts are capable of applying
not only to intuitions in general, but, in particular, to empirical intu-
itions. This development of Kant’s argument was established in the
Principles.38 It now transpires that understanding cannot go out into
nature, that is, the concepts are not applicable at the empirical level,
unless there is a further reflective principle of judgement. The final
legitimation of the validity of the categories, first attempted in the
‘Transcendental Deduction’, is only brought to fruition in the
Introductions to the third Critique.
Kant most frequently presents the purposiveness of nature for our
judgement in its more specific sense as the systematicity of nature in
its empirical laws. As Allison says, if there is a distinction between
two levels of purposiveness, there is also a continual slippage bet-
ween them.39 Allison says this makes the task of establishing a link
between the purposiveness of nature and aesthetic judgements
extremely difficult. However, I have suggested that it is possible to dis-
tinguish the general question of purposiveness from its specification,
even if the former cannot be fully stated in isolation from the latter.
The distinction between the two levels of purposiveness is crucial
for making sense of the link Kant draws between the purposiveness of
nature and judgements of taste. But a further clarification is necessary
if I am to establish this.
III Purposiveness of Judgement and the Dual Direction of

Reflective Judgement
We need to establish the relation between the purposiveness of nature
and the purposiveness of judgement. Kant only rarely mentions the
purposiveness of judgement, preferring to talk of the purposiveness
of nature. While this sounds like a quite different notion, perhaps
even a contrary one, I will argue that the two phrases express the same
idea, i.e. that of ‘a formal purposiveness of nature for judgement’.40
257
Purposiveness is the relation in which empirical nature stands to our

faculties, insofar as they cooperate in judging a given thing. This is
the general sense of purposiveness that I established above.
Judgement, in both its determinant and reflective modes, is the
faculty that facilitates a relation between mind and nature, a task for
which it qualifies in that it operates as a mediator between different
faculties, primarily between intuition – for which in the third Critique
Kant often substitutes imagination – and understanding. It is, to a
great extent, the relation in which judgement stands to intuition and
its orientation towards the given in experience that qualifies the
former as fostering not merely the relation between subjective facul-
ties, but also between mind and world. In that judgement relies on
imagination, which is necessarily bound up with the synthesis of
apprehension, this, too, qualifies judgement as intentionally directed
towards an empirical object.41
Allison rightly insists that the principle of the purposiveness of
nature is heautonomous, that is, in exercising it, judgement legislates
only to itself and not to nature per se. This principle allows us to make
sense of the diversity of nature for our own purposes, while falling
short of claiming that nature is so structured in itself. However,
despite this stipulation, Allison still proceeds as if the purposiveness
of nature were principally to do with nature and not with judgement
itself, especially when he tries to prise what he calls ‘logical purpo-
siveness’ apart from judgements of taste. This is justifiable on the
grounds that Kant repeatedly refers to this principle as that of the sys-
tematicity of nature in its empirical laws. Even if the principle is heau-
tonomous, it still refers to our judgement of nature and does not
constitute a mode of self-reflection on the part of the subject, at least
not directly, rather making possible our orientation in the empirical
world. Nevertheless, there appears to be a tension in the status of the
principle of purposiveness insofar as it counts as a self-legislation and
yet makes possible our empirical judgement of nature,
This tension can be resolved insofar as we recognise the relational
status of the principle of the purposiveness of nature. By this, I mean
that the latter principle is concerned with the purposive relation
between mind and nature, a relation without which there would be
no possibility of experience. The principle points in two directions:
towards the subject and towards the object. While its intentional
direction towards objects is emphasised in the Introductions’ discus-
sions of the systematicity of nature, its subjective direction is entailed
by its reflective or subjective status. Reflective judgement in all its
258
forms counts as a mediation between the subjective and objective

dimensions of experience.
Allison believes that the legitimacy of aesthetic judgement can only
be shown by decoupling the principle of the purposiveness of nature
from the strictly subjective purposiveness characteristic of aesthetic
judgement.42 He concludes his initial discussion of the issue saying
that what he refers to as logical purposiveness, and I prefer to call the
formal purposiveness of empirical nature, is not the principle on
which taste is founded. Instead they are both founded on a further
principle, that is, the principle of judgement.43 I agree that both forms
of judgement are grounded in the activity of judgement, but, as I have
already argued in Chapter 5 (pp. 194–6), there is only one pure
expression of the latter, namely, in aesthetic judgements.
In order to show how the two species of formal reflective judgement
are related, I need to bring out the subjective side of the formal pur-
posiveness of empirical nature. The analysis of reflective judgement at
its most general level reveals the subjective conditions that are neces-
sary for knowledge of empirical objects. In other words, reflective
judgement rests on the subjective cooperation of the faculties neces-
sary for cognition.
In the First Introduction, in the section significantly entitled ‘On
the Technic of Judgment as the Basis of the Idea of a Technic of
Nature’, Kant first comments on how the purposiveness characteris-
tic of reflective judgement in general relates to an object. This arises
in one of two ways:
we perceive purposiveness in our power of judgement insofar as it merely
reflects on a given object, whether it reflects on the object’s empirical intu-
ition so as to bring it to some concept or other (which concept this is being
indeterminate), or on the empirical concept itself so as to bring the laws it
contains under common principles.44
The first alternative refers to the formal purposiveness of nature,

which reflects only on the intuition of an object and thus counts as
formal, as we saw above.45 In the second case, reflective judgement
reflects on an empirical concept in its systematic or instrumental use
in order to facilitate unification of empirical nature in a teleological
ordering. In both cases, the faculty of judgement reflects purposively
on a given object or on an empirical concept. This establishes
the intentional direction of reflective judgement towards an object
given in intuition, or at least towards a concept that orders objects
teleologically.
259
Only now does Kant go on to address the subjective side of the

exercise of the power of judgement in response to empirical nature:
But when we merely reflect on a perception we are not dealing with a

determinate concept, but are dealing only with the general rule for reflect-
ing on a perception for the sake of understanding, as a power of concepts.
Clearly, then, in a merely reflective judgment imagination and under-
standing are considered as they must relate in general in the power of judg-
ment, as compared with how they actually relate in the case of a given
perception.46
Kant’s point is that the technic or purposiveness of nature arises out

of a technic or purposiveness of judgement. A technic is a procedure
by which judgement orients itself with respect to natural objects,
which it views as if their possibility rested on art.47 Such a technique
is necessary due to the absence of direction from another faculty. In
establishing the relation between the two technics, Kant turns his
attention away from teleological judgement and addresses ‘merely
reflective judgement’, where the power of judgement is exercised in
its own right without reliance on understanding or reason.48 The
formal purposiveness of nature throws us back on the general condi-
tion of judgement, that is, the cooperation of the faculties of imag-
ination and understanding. This is the subjective direction of the
purposiveness of nature.
Without explanation, Kant moves from a consideration of the
general subjective conditions of judgement of the purposiveness of
nature directly to a discussion of the harmony of the faculties, charac-
teristic of aesthetic reflective judgements.49 It almost appears as if Kant
is suggesting that the immediately preceding discussion of the formal
purposiveness of nature referred to aesthetic judgement. But this surely
cannot be the case, as that discussion is directed to the purposiveness
of nature and not to aesthetic judgements. Moreover, if Kant simply
equated these, it would lead him to the implausible conclusion that one
of the general conditions of empirical cognition is a harmony of the fac-
ulties. We have seen this problem emerge on many occasions. In the
next section, I will finally establish the means for resolving it.
IV The link between the purposiveness of nature and

aesthetic judgement finally revealed
The evidence for Kant’s belief that there is a necessary relation
between purposiveness and aesthetic judgements is to be found in
260
both editions of the Introduction.50 Admittedly, the claims are less

apparent in the main body of the text, although they are not entirely
absent.51 The most strident example of his claims come in the First
Introduction where he says that the ‘Analytic of Beauty’ will provide
‘an exposition and then the deduction of the concept of a purposive-
ness of nature’.52 He also says that the proof that aesthetic judgements
refer intuitions to an idea of the lawfulness of nature will be in the
‘treatise itself’, that is, in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement.53 While
not quite so dramatically couched, Kant’s commitment to the link
between the two species of formal reflective judgement is also to be
found in the second Introduction, where he says that natural beauty
is ‘the exhibition of the concept of formal (merely subjective) purpo-
siveness’.54 I have argued that formal purposiveness is nothing other
than the purposiveness of nature for our judgement. The question I
now address is whether Kant’s claims should really be construed as
entailing that aesthetic judgements have, as their ground, the princi-
ple of the systematicity of nature.
Allison concedes there is a connection between the principle of
judgement, which is the ground for aesthetic judgement, and the prin-
ciple of the purposiveness of nature. But he insists that this relation is
merely analogical insofar as the deduction of a principle of system-
aticity is a propadeutic, or establishes the possibility that there is a
principle for aesthetic judgement. This analogical connection is based
on the heautonomous status of both principles, that is, their entailing
a self-legislation on the part of judgement.55 But Allison does not
further investigate their systematic connection. While conceding that
Kant tries to systematically connect the two principles, Allison con-
cludes that the attempt failed.56
In contrast to Allison, Makkreel is happy to connect aesthetic
judgements with the purposiveness of nature, but he insists that both
are merely post-cognitive.57 Aesthetic judgements encourage us to
think that we could have success in our enquiries into empirical
nature and in particular into the ordering of the latter according to
genera and species. The latter activity is post-cognitive, Makkreel
concludes, because he identifies cognition strictly with the ‘Analytic’
of the first Critique.58 I have argued that cognition fully elaborated
should be understood as empirical and, as such, requires the princi-
ple of reflective judgement.59 So although the latter is post-categorial,
it is not post-cognitive. Moreover, aesthetic judgements reveal both
the pre- and post-categorial conditions of cognition. The harmony of
the faculties refers us to the initial conditions of cognition and not
261
merely to its successful application at the empirical level, as Makreel

suggests.60 Aesthetic judgements exhibit the initial conditions of cog-
nition, that is, the relation or synthesising activity of the faculties in
a particular empirical application of those conditions.
My solution for making sense of Kant’s claims about the link
between systematicity and aesthetic judgements is as follows: we can
distinguish between two levels of the purposiveness of nature: first, as
the fit in general between mind and nature; and second, as the more
particular systematicity of empirical nature. But it is only the more
general level of purposiveness of nature for judgement that is directly
exhibited in an aesthetic judgement. The exemplary role of the latter is
only possible because both the purposiveness of nature and the purpo-
siveness of judgement characteristic of aesthetic judgements hold a
relational status, mediating between subject and object. A singular aes-
thetic instance shows that objects in the world are, at least in principle,
capable of being taken up by our mental faculties, and that the forms
arising from those faculties are applicable at the empirical level. The
general fit between mind and world is thus established as possible.
With this in view, we can make sense of the passage from the first
Introduction considered at the end of the previous section in which
Kant puzzlingly seems to equate the formal purposiveness of nature
or technic of nature with aesthetic judgements.61 Aesthetic judge-
ments are the only judgements in which the power of judgement is
exercised without relying on the understanding or reason. Thus only
aesthetic judgements reveal the principle of judgement, which
expresses the general level of the purposiveness of nature for our
judgement. Teleological judgements rely explicitly on a concept of
what an object is, that is, its natural purpose. Even judgements aimed
at empirical cognition without any teleological implication, while
based on a strictly formal principle, make use of the more specific
notion of a hierarchy of laws. Their cognitive orientation masks the
activity of the power of judgement that is only revealed in aesthetic
judgements. While the philosopher can analyse reflective judgements
of nature so as to reveal the cooperation of the faculties on which they
are based, only aesthetic judgement gives insight into the synthesising
activity of the power of judgement as such at the experiential level.62
We can find the beginnings of a claim that aesthetic judge-
ment counts as exemplary for empirical cognition in the second
Introduction to the Critique of Judgement. Kant says that although
we once found pleasure in an ability to divide nature into genera and
species, we no longer experience such pleasure.63 We tend to conflate
262
this ordering capacity with ‘mere cognition’ for the reason that even
the most everyday experience would be impossible without such
ordering [der gemeinste Erfahrung ohne sie nicht möglich sein
würde].64 This must mean that we tend to conflate the empirical
ordering of nature, which at one stage in our development led to plea-
sure, with the transcendental structure of cognition, which does not.
Kant suggests that we need something that helps us focus on the pur-
posiveness of nature.65 In the absence of a characteristic pleasure in
purposiveness, we lack awareness of the latter’s distinctive status. The
title of the next section reinforces this insight, for Kant now turns to
what he calls ‘the aesthetic presentation of the purposiveness of
nature’.66 While he does not say in so many words that aesthetic pre-
sentation counts as exemplary of the reflective principle, it is clear
that this is the function it plays. Aesthetic judgements are singular
instances of something that is generally invisible to us. The beautiful
is, as Kant says in the fourth Moment of the ‘Analytic of Taste’, ‘an
example of a universal rule that we are unable to state’.67 In the
Introduction, this rule is identified as the principle of the purposive-
ness of nature for judgement at its formal level. At this level the prin-
ciple can only be exhibited in an exemplary fashion in a particular
case: it cannot be stated in a general proposition. My claim is that
taste is exemplary only of the general level of formal purposiveness.68
The possibility of cognition is encapsulated in one aesthetic
instance, insofar as this particular object, while not under our epis-
temic scrutiny, nevertheless reveals itself as open to the subjective cog-
nitive activity necessary for cognition. It thus displays the subjective
side of knowledge. But we cannot generalise from this case to con-
clude that all nature is like this, as would be necessary if beauty were
to exhibit systematicity. First, all objects are not beautiful and,
second, there are phenomena that defy our cognitive ambitions.69 At
best, aesthetic judgement can suggest but not prove that it is as if
nature were systematic for our judgement. Thus, aesthetic judgements
are not based on the systematicity of nature for our judgement, as the
latter is strictly heuristic for the furthering of our cognitive projects.
But now we need to look more closely at the stronger claims,
namely, that the ‘Analytic of Beauty’ counts as an exposition, a deduc-
tion and an exhibition of the purposiveness of nature and that this is
proved in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement.70 Aesthetic judge-
ments have as their ground the principle of judgement, which rests on
the subjective conditions of cognition. The harmony such judgements
display is a special case of the cooperation of the faculties necessary
263
for any cognition.71 Such cooperation is thus the necessary subjective

condition of a successful synthesis at the empirical level.72 Aesthetic
judgements thus serve as examples of the possibility of the synthesis
of an empirical intuition under a concept, although they do so
without a determinate concept being in view. Kant says that aesthetic
judgements display a schematism not so much of an intuition under
a concept, but of the power of imagination under that of under-
standing.73 The subsumption of one power under another is what
allows ‘the understanding to proceed in general from intuition to con-
cepts’.74 Kant shifts register from the schematism of an intuition
under a concept, to a schematism of one faculty under another
because he is now concerned with the general possibility of synthesis,
that is, of the cooperation of the faculties that counts as the subjec-
tive side of the Deduction.
But aesthetic judgements do not simply display the subjective side
of the Deduction. If they refer to the general possibility of synthesis,
then they also show how our subjective capacities are capable of
taking up a given empirical object. Kant says that in an aesthetic
judgement the pleasure arises from the object being commensurate
with the cognitive powers.75 This counts as a ‘purposiveness of the
object with regard to the subject’s cognitive powers’.76 It would
appear that the objective orientation of Sections 13 and 14 of the
‘Analytic of Beauty’ does not amount to a slippage from the subjec-
tive orientation of the previous concentration on the harmony of the
faculties.77 Aesthetic judgements reveal the relation between subject
and object necessary for cognition in general.
In the second Introduction Kant reiterates a distinction he made in
the first version, where, as we have already seen, he distinguishes
between the formal purposiveness of nature and teleological purpo-
siveness. I cite only his revised comment on the former:
When an object is given in experience, there are two ways in which we can
present purposiveness in it. We can present it on a merely subjective basis:
as the harmony of the form of the object (the form that is [manifested] in
the apprehension (apprehensio) of the object prior to any concept), with
the cognitive powers – i.e., the harmony required in general to unite an
intuition with concepts so as to produce a cognition.78
It is clear in this passage, as it was in the first Introduction, that formal

purposiveness rests on a relation between the faculties that is neces-
sary for cognition in general.79 As so often before, Kant fails to make
an adequate distinction between the latter relation and the specifically
264
harmonious subjective relation characteristic of aesthetic judgements.

However, unlike the first version, where Kant did not adequately
explain the transition to a discussion of aesthetic judgement, he now
gives a strong hint as to how the relation between the latter and
formal purposiveness should be construed: ‘Hence we may regard
natural beauty as the exhibition of the concept of formal (merely sub-
jective) purposiveness, and may regard natural purposes as the exhi-
bition of the concept of a real (objective) purposiveness . . .’80 In the
face of the indeterminacy of the purposiveness of nature for our
judgement he has already discussed, aesthetic judgements serve as a
presentation of the fit between our subjective faculties and a given
object.81 They thus reveal the hinge between the subjective and objec-
tive sides of the Deduction. Kant speaks of an exhibition, and my clar-
ification is that this must be identified as an exemplary exhibition.82
Aesthetic judgement’s presentation of a harmony between intuition
and concept is an exemplary exhibition of formal purposiveness.
On several occasions, Kant claims that aesthetic judgements reflect
on judgement’s capacity for synthesising intuitions under concepts:
‘For this apprehension of forms by the imagination could never occur
if reflective judgement did not compare them, even if unintentionally,
at least with its ability [in general] to refer intuitions to concepts.’83
Aesthetic appreciation of objects rests on an implicit awareness of our
ability for synthesis. And, crucially, we can see that in aesthetic judge-
ment the synthesising activity takes place at the empirical level
because it arises in response to a particular given object. Something
counts as beautiful insofar as we experience:
only a harmony in reflection, whose a priori conditions are valid univer-
sally, between the presentation of the object and the lawfulness in the
empirical use in general of the subject’s power of judgement (this lawful-
ness being the unity between imagination and understanding).84
Aesthetic judgements display not only the cooperation of the faculties

characteristic of the transcendental schematism (and which give the
formal conditions for all experience), but also the completion of the
Copernican turn in a particular empirical application. The initial
conditions of cognition are combined with the necessary supplement
of the fit between mind and empirical nature as the conditions of cog-
nition in general. This is the form of empirical synthesis. It is thus that
Kant, in conclusion, suggests that this indicates ‘a purposiveness of
objects in relation to the subject’s reflective power of judgement, in
accordance with the concept of nature’.85
265
The general fit between mind and world is not merely inferred: it
is experienced in a particular phenomenon. In contrast, the system-
aticity of nature in its empirical laws could only be inferred from a
particular instance. Thus, aesthetic judgements, far from being
grounded in empirical systematicity, indirectly support the latter by
exhibiting the initial conditions of cognition in an empirical applica-
tion.
The singularity of the object under inspection reveals the general
possibility of cognition, but it does not do so as an explicit proof or
demonstration.86 What we get is a snapshot or intimation of the
general purposiveness between mind and world. A singular judge-
ment about this particular instance does not reveal the order of nature
in general. But it does show us that this object, at least, is conducive
to cognition.87 This encourages us in a cognitive hope that nature in
general may also fit with our subjective faculties. Moreover, it
reminds us that experience offers us evidence for such a fit. This sup-
ports the project of cognition and reveals the educative influence of
aesthetics.88 But it is still the case that the purposive fit between mind
and world can only be proven, if it can be proven at all, in the course
of experience itself. It is often put in question and sometimes we are
faced with the contrary insight that there is no harmony between
mind and world. This is only to be expected, for the fit between mind
and nature is strictly a presupposition, and a priori knowledge is a
task, not a mere fait accompli. Having the capacity to introduce
formal structure into the material given is only a necessary and not a
sufficient condition of experience. A priori cognition requires a mate-
rial given and in this sense counts as an anticipation, not simply an
achievement. It is crucial that aesthetic synthesis remains incomplete
or indeterminate and that no concept completes the synthesis.89 Only
thus is the very process of synthesis necessary for cognition in general
available for reflection and it is this that gives rise to the pleasure char-
acteristic of an aesthetic judgement. The peculiar capacity of aesthetic
judgements for presenting the possibility of cognition must be a
fragile one and, as such, the presentation counts as a deduction of the
principle of purposiveness only insofar as it offers an exemplary exhi-
bition of the possibility of cognition. The specific nature of this exhi-
bition will be explored in the next chapter.
It could be objected, however, that while the a priori conditions of
cognition are anticipatory and that even though the formal condition
of empirical knowledge – that is, the principle of reflective judgement
– also so qualifies, it is not the case that empirical knowledge per se
266
is anticipatory. This would result in a belated recognition that knowl-

edge at the empirical level, at least, is simply an achievement and not
a task. Even then, I would have established that Kant’s formalism is
not impositionalist. However, my further point is that any particular
claim for empirical knowledge necessarily arises as a synthetic process
and that this coming-to-know marks even the conclusion of a cogni-
tive process. While I do not pretend that this is an innocent interpre-
tation of Kant, I do think that his account opens up an understanding
of knowledge as a task. Our experience of objects in the world neces-
sarily arises as a network of inter-related claims, the totality of which
we cannot grasp. While we can have sufficient certainty about the reli-
ability of individual claims, they are therefore revisable in the light of
their wider context. This is not to say that they are merely provisional,
but only that we must be able to review them. It is because empirical
knowledge arises within an anticipatory or initiatory formal frame-
work – both a priori and empirical – that any particular empirical
judgement is marked by its openness to the possibility of revision.
This is what I mean by my claim that knowledge is anticipatory at the
empirical level. And aesthetic judgement has a role to play in this
development in my account. Empirical knowledge makes a claim to
a fit between mind and object that would establish its legitimacy. But
this claim is an anticipation of a proof that cannot be displayed in the
judgement itself; the fit can only be demonstrated in an exemplary
fashion by an aesthetic judgement of taste. Aesthetic harmony of the
faculties makes almost visible a trace of the general systematicity that
is the necessary background to any empirical knowledge claim.
Knowledge (Erkenntnis) is, as Nietzsche says, not ‘a bed to rest on,
or the way to such a bed’.90
Whether or not I have succeeded in convincing my readers that
even empirical knowledge is anticipatory, we can conclude that aes-
thetic judgement is not grounded in systematicity. If it is grounded in
the general level of purposiveness, then it is strictly in the sense that
it is a particular exhibition of the possibility of the latter. And the rela-
tion is reciprocal, for the ground, i.e. the fit between mind and empir-
ical nature, does not become apparent except in its exhibition in a
particular instance. Thus aesthetic judgement is the ratio cognoscendi
of the completion of the Copernican turn, while the fit entailed by the
latter is the ratio essendi of that exemplary exhibition. But as the
ground is exhibited in a singular instance, it can only count as a pos-
sibility or as a hypothetical ground that encourages our acting as if
there were a purposiveness of nature for our judgement.
267
We can now establish the significance of these two sides of judge-

ment for the objective and subjective deductions.91 The principle of
reflective judgement allows for the completion of the objective
deduction insofar as it allows ‘understanding to go out into [empir-
ical] nature’, but it also deepens our grasp of the subjective side of
the deduction as the necessary cooperation of the faculties in the
process of synthesis. Indeed, it shows how the two sides require
one another. Formal reflective judgement achieves the completion of
the objective deduction by making possible the synthesis of under-
standing and intuition at the empirical level. Our response to a beau-
tiful object, where our understanding and our intuition freely
harmonise, exemplifies the general condition of cognition. Addition-
ally, Kant says that judgement supplies a bridge between reason and
understanding.92
Despite the overt insistence on a harmony between faculties in
Kant’s characterisation of aesthetic reflective judgement, it is easy to
lose sight of the importance of his ‘faculty-talk’. We might, as in the
narrowly cognitive terms of the first Critique, be inclined to see it as,
at best, merely a device for expressing the way in which we make
sense of the formative activity of the mind in the face of the natural
world. But in the third Critique, Kant’s pervasive rhetorical trope
emerges as the vehicle for the examination of the relation between
subject and object that is the starting point for transcendental ideal-
ism’s account of experience.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have shown that there is a way of linking the sys-
tematicity of empirical nature to aesthetic judgement via a more
general conception of purposiveness that refers us back to the general
project of the Copernican revolution. I have argued that grasping the
duality within purposiveness, that is, its relational status, reveals how
it is necessary for Kant’s epistemological project. General purposive-
ness is never directly proven, but it is exhibited and as if in a snapshot
in an experience of beauty. In an aesthetic judgement we experience
the subjective conditions of cognition as the cooperation of the fac-
ulties, that is, the subjective side of the Deduction, while at the same
time seeing how a particular empirical object could be determined
by the categories of the understanding. Yet what we actually experi-
ence is not the determination of an intuition under a concept, but the
free play between the faculties of intuition (or imagination) and
268
understanding, a harmony that is conducive to the possibility of ‘cog-

nition in general’. Thus the subjective and the objective sides of the
Deduction are exhibited not so as to give rise to an actual empirical
cognition, but rather by showing how empirical cognition in general
is possible in one singular and ungeneralisable case. The synthesising
activity of the faculties is the key to the way in which reflective judge-
ment relates or mediates both subjectively and between subject and
object.
If I am right, then the principle of judgement in its full form is the
principle of the purposiveness of nature for judgement, understood at
its general level as the condition of the possibility of empirical syn-
thesis. This is not as implausible as it may at first appear. Judgement
is the mediating capacity that allows for the synthesis of concepts
with intuitions. Ultimately Kant seeks to show that concepts apply to
empirical intuitions. In the Critique of Pure Reason, judgement oper-
ates directly under the jurisdiction of understanding, but this is
because the analysis has not yet reached the level of the empirical
given and concerns intuition only as the form of its givenness in space
and time. We saw this in the previous chapter. In his account of taste,
judgement emerges as a faculty in its own right and no longer oper-
ates in the interests of the understanding, as it did in the first Critique.
Judgement is our ability to make sense of objects in the world through
the formal structures our minds initiate: it makes possible a relation
between mind and world. An aesthetic judgement provides an
epiphany of judgement as a power in action in the world, in particu-
lar as our purposive capacity for taking up nature.93 As such, an aes-
thetic judgement is an exemplary exhibition of the principle of
reflective judgement.
The principle of judgement is only expressed in the exercise of
aesthetic judgement. It is not that there is a deeper principle of judge-
ment that grounds aesthetic judgement, but that only as aesthetic
judgement does the faculty of judgement operate autonomously,
that is, as a principle. This makes it a curious principle, not one that
is an independent foundation for experience, but rather one that
depends for its identification on a mode of experience.94 The activ-
ity of judgement would not exist as a principle – in contrast to its
role as the subjective side of all cognition – were there not aesthetic
judgements that displayed it. This principle is constitutive for taste,
but strictly exemplary for cognition and experience in general. In the
final chapter, I will explore the character of taste’s exemplarity for
cognition.
269
Notes
1. I had already argued this in my article ‘The Technic of Nature: What is
Involved in Judging?’; see especially pp. 184, 186–7. This was first pre-
sented at a colloquium on the Critique of Judgement at Cérisy-la-Salle
in 1993. See, also, Allison KTT, p. 169 and my discussion of the
‘Deduction’ in Chapter 5 (pp. 193–201).
2. CJ, AA 251′. See discussion in final section of this chapter, pp. 260–8.
3. For a discussion of the difficulty of establishing Kant’s view on the rela-
tion between empirical systematicity and the determination of empiri-
cal knowledge, see my ‘Technic of Nature’, p. 180; for a positive
conclusion on the matter, see p. 187. For a perceptive comment on the
gap between transcendental principles and their empirical instantiation,
see Rodolphe Gasché, The Idea of Form Rethinking Kant’s Aesthetics,
p. 39. Although reflective judgement allows for the applicability of the
categories, the latter never coincide with their application.
4. CJ, AA 209′, AA 179–80.
5. AA 186 ff; 211′ ff.
6. Kant calls these intrinsic and relative teleological judgements, respec-
tively. For the distinction between these, see AA 378.
7. AA 232′.
8. The phrase is at AA 192, in the title of Section VIII. The confirmation
that teleological judgement counts as logical comes at AA 193. This is
one reason why I prefer to use ‘formal purposiveness’ to refer to the
order that is necessary for any empirical nature whatsoever. Allison, in
contrast, principally uses ‘logical purposiveness’ for the order of empir-
ical nature. See Allison, KTT, pp. 6, 32–3, 169, 354–5 note 11. The
other reason for my preference is that we will see that both judgements
concerning the systematicity of nature and aesthetic judgements display
formal purposiveness according to Kant. Retaining this convergence at
the level of nomenclature makes it easier to go on to make sense of the
substantive link between these two types of reflective judgement.
Admittedly Kant’s own usage is not consistent and he also refers to the
formal purposiveness of nature as logical. See, for instance, CJ AA 219′.
9. Allison, KTT, pp. 38–9.
10. CJ, AA 180.
11. CPR, B 165; see also A 127/8.
12. At CJ, AA 181/2, Kant says that the principle of the purposiveness of
nature is transcendental insofar as it concerns ‘only the pure concept of
objects of possible empirical cognition in general and contains nothing
empirical’. This is contrasted at AA 181 with a metaphysical principle
that establishes the conditions for further determination of the emp-
irically given at the a priori level. The latter is the realm of the
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. The principle of pur-
270
posiveness and the metaphysical principles of MFNS, while occupying

distinctive roles in the broader hierarchy of Kant’s philosophical inves-
tigation of the a priori structure of cognition, both count as further
determinations of the transcendental principles of the ‘Principles’
chapter of CPR.
13. See Chapter 2, pp. 53–4.
14. CJ, AA 215′.
15. CJ, AA 211′/12′.
16. Buchdahl, MPS, pp. 501/2. See Chapter 2, pp. 53–4.
17. CJ, AA 185.
18. AA 186.
19. AA 193.
20. See AA 181/2. At 241′, both aesthetic and teleological reflective judge-
ment count as a priori, although the latter does not count as ‘pure’ for
only the former is grounded – we must add ‘directly’ – on the principle
of judgement. See 243′. We can conclude that only aesthetic judgement
is transcendental, being directly founded on one of the higher cognitive
powers. Teleological judgement is only indirectly founded on the same
principle, being also dependent on the principle of reason.
21. See my ‘Technic of Nature’, pp. 179–80.
22. CJ, AA 232′.
23. See Chapter 6 for a discussion of the anticipatory status of knowledge.
24. CJ, AA 182. Importantly in this passage while insisting that a transcen-
dental deduction entails the establishment of the basis for such judge-
ments in the a priori sources of cognition, he also insists that we should
not try to follow ‘the psychological route’. The distinction is based on
the latter being concerned with how we actually judge, while the tran-
scendental deduction is concerned only with how we ‘ought to’ judge,
i.e. with the formal or structural norms of judgement.
25. Allison, KTI, pp. 30–1. Guyer also emphasises the range of roles played
by the principle.
26. Allison, KTI, p. 31.
27. Philip Kitcher argues that explanations of empirical phenomena neces-
sarily require a process of integration within a unified system. See
‘Projecting the Order of Nature’, p. 213. See also pp. 225 and 231.
Kitcher’s reconstruction of the link Kant makes between empirical
explanation and unification in a system of laws is surely correct. His
suggestion that causal laws ‘imply generalisations that legislate for
unactualized possibilities’ (p. 219) is, moreover, congenial to my inter-
pretation of form as an anticipation of empirical instantiation.
However, Kitcher’s aim of discarding ‘Kant’s apriorist lapses’ (p. 232)
clearly is not.
28. See discussion above in Chapter 2, pp. 59–60.
29. CJ, AA 183.
271
30. AA 183.
31. AA 183/4.
32. Allison, KTT, p. 63. Allison treats the formal or logical purposiveness
of nature as identical to the systematicity of empirical nature. In this,
he agrees with Christel Fricke, see Kants Theorie des reinen
Geschmacksurteils, p. 109. However, unlike Allison Fricke sees a way
of making sense of the link between aesthetic judgements and system-
aticity. She argues that the purposiveness without purpose displayed in
aesthetic judgements reveals the general conditions of the application of
schemata at the empirical level. See p. 115. Düsing gives a similar
account of the relation in which purposiveness without purpose stands
to empirical synthesis in his Die Teleologie in Kants Weltbegriff, see
p. 81. I agree that aesthetic judgements display the conditions of empir-
ical synthesis, while insisting with Düsing against Fricke that it is nec-
essary to identify a general level of purposiveness. Meanwhile in
contrast to Düsing, it is my view that purposiveness is principally an aes-
thetic, rather than a teleological, concept.
33. Ibid., p. 63.
34. For a more extended version of this argument, see Hughes 2006a.
35. CJ, AA 202′.
36. AA 202.
37. AA 180.
38. See Chapter 6, pp. 221–9.
39. Allison, KTT, p. 63.
40. CJ, AA 232/3′.
41. See Chapter 4 (pp. 124–6), for an account of the relation between intu-
ition and imagination that explains why the latter can stand for the
former.
42. See Allison, KTT, p. 365, referring to Christel Fricke, Kants Theorie des
reinen Geschmacksurteils, pp. 109–11. Fricke holds that the purpo-
siveness discussed in the third moment of the Analytic is the same notion
of systematic organisation introduced in the Introductions. Fricke con-
cludes that Kant’s position, as it stands, is incoherent. Allison insists that
the two discussions do not deal with the same issue.
43. Allison, KTT, p. 64. See Chapter 5 (p. 198) where I cited this passage.
44. CJ, AA 220′.
45. AA 232′.
46. AA 220′.
47. Howard Caygill, Art of Judgement, p. 316. See also Howard Caygill, A
Kant Dictionary, pp. 387–8.
48. Though, as Kant says, for the sake of understanding, which (as we have
seen) could not operate at the empirical level without the power of
judgement. See pp. 249–55.
49. AA 221′.
272
50. See my ‘Technic of Nature’ p. 184, where I claim that the two forms of
reflective judgement are different modes of access to the same principle
of judgement. This is close to Allison’s position (see Allison, KTT,
p. 64), although he would disagree with my further claim that the pur-
posiveness of nature reveals the subjective conditions of cognition.
51. See my discussion of the ‘Dialectic of Taste’ in Chapter 8 (pp. 299–302).
At AA 246, Kant states: ‘Independent natural beauty reveals to us a
technic of nature that allows us to present nature as a system in terms
of laws whose principle we do not find anywhere in our understanding:
the principle of a purposiveness directed to our use of judgment as
regards appearances.’ This strongly supports those readings, such as my
own and Fricke’s, that insist on the continuity between discussions of
purposiveness in the Introductions and the main body of the text.
52. CJ, AA 251′. Kant’s claim that the Analytic will provide a deduction of
taste could be seen as evidence for the position that Section 21 counts
as a first attempt at a deduction pace Allison. See Chapter 5
(pp. 189–94).
53. AA 247′.
54. AA 193.
55. See above, p. 258.
56. For a more positive account of Kant’s attempt to connect aesthetic
judgement and the purposiveness of nature, see Douglas Burnham,
Kant’s Philosophies of Judgement, p. 161. Referring to CJ, AA 300,
Burnham brings out how beauty counts as a trace (Spur) or hint (Wink)
of purposive action. See also Burnham, p. 164, where he says that
beauty ‘is not merely the ‘image’ but the symbol of the empirical system
of laws, of the immanent lawfulness of nature’.
57. See Ameriks’ helpful review of Imagination and Interpretation in Kant.
58. Moreover, Makkreel reads cognition as imposing form on matter. See
discussion in Chapter 4, p. 157.
59. See Chapter 6 and Chapter 7, pp. 249–55.
60. See discussion in Chapter 4, p. 159.
61. CJ, AA 220–1′.
62. See Chapter 4 (pp. 151–6) on synthetic process and my discussion of the
significance of the introduction of the power of judgement in Chapter 5
(pp. 194–201).
63. CJ, AA 187.
64. AA 187. Kant’s phrasing here is rather confusing, compounded by his
referring to three feminine nouns, Faßlichkeit, Einheit and Lust.
However, I take it he must be saying that our being able to grasp nature
and its unity in its division into genera and species, not the pleasure once
associated with this ability, is necessary for experience. This interpreta-
tion is supported not only by the fact that he could hardly claim that
something that is no longer the case is necessary, but also that he goes
273
on to say that what is necessary is easily conflated with mere cognition.

As he has already said that the latter does not give rise to pleasure, the
evidence seems overwhelming. Pluhar’s translation seems to suggest that
it is the pleasure that is necessary.
65. AA 187–8. Kant refers here to the purposiveness of nature for our
understanding. He means the purposiveness that is necessary when
understanding goes out into empirical nature.
66. CJ, AA 188, in the title of Section VII. At AA 192, he offers another
exhibition of the indeterminate purposiveness of nature, that is, logical
or teleological presentations. However, those are not presentations of
formal purposiveness, while aesthetic judgement is.
67. AA 237. In the first Critique examples were deemed necessary for those
lacking in the natural talent of judgement. They encourage our using
rules as formulae rather than as principles (A 134, B 173/4). In the third
Critique the artistic genius is exemplary for other geniuses (AA 318).
This shows that exemplarity has taken on a more positive role. This new
development is, however, more indirectly related to the status of taste
than the two passages I refer to here. See, nevertheless, my discussion of
a possible parallel in Hughes, ‘Taste as Productive Mimesis’. Moreover,
examples have a role to play in the development of Kant’s aesthetic
argument. See, for instance, the case of Antiparos, which I discuss in the
next chapter. Nevertheless, the exemplarity I argue for here concerns the
relation between cognitive and aesthetic judgement only.
68. Both Düsing and Fricke also see aesthetic judgements as exemplary of
empirical cognition as I mentioned in a note earlier in this chapter, in
which I also noted the distinction between their positions and my own.
In her article ‘Lawfulness without a Law’, Hannah Ginsborg argues
that aesthetic judgements are exemplary of rule-following. See
pp. 59 ff. As for Düsing and Fricke, aesthetic reflective judgements
reveal ‘a condition of the very possibility of empirical concepts’ (see
p. 66). For Ginsborg, however, this is because they are exemplary of
how our perceptual synthesis ought to be (ibid.), Generally, I think her
approach is much more promising than those readings that focus on
the subjectivity of aesthetic judgement and seek to distinguish the
latter from cognition. However, I am not sure how helpful it is to say
that aesthetic judgements reveal how perceptual judgements should
respond to the object (see pp. 70 and 73). Ginsborg’s account suggests
that perception in an epistemic judgement should aspire to the quality
of perception characteristic of an aesthetic judgement. But, surely, this
cannot be the case for the two types of judgement are distinct from one
another. I prefer to say that aesthetic judgements are exemplary of the
possibility of cognitive judgements, insofar as they display the subjec-
tive conditions of knowledge and the relation in which they stand to
the object.
274
69. On the first issue, see Chapter 8 (pp. 284–90). I intend to argue else-
where that the sublime is a symbol of the limitation on our will to know.
70. CJ, AA 251′, 193 and 247′, respectively. See above, p. 261.
71. See Chapter 4 (pp. 152–6) where I first suggested this.
72. See pp. 255–7.
73. AA 287. See Chapter 5, p. 195.
74. AA 287. See Chapter 4 (pp. 151–6) on synthetic process.
75. AA 189–90.
76. AA 190.
77. Guyer, ‘Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kant’s Aesthetics’.
I discuss this problem in Chapter 8 (pp. 280–4).
78. AA 192.
79. Compare AA 220′. See discussion on pp. 259–60.
80. AA 193. I have removed Pluhar’s emphasis, which is not in the original
text.
81. AA 187–8.
82. In general, exhibition (Darstellung) consists in placing beside a concept
an intuition corresponding to it, see AA 192. See Pluhar’s note to AA
233. In this case the concept does not subsume the intuition under it. It
is for this reason I speak of an exemplary exhibition.
83. AA 190. See also AA 249′.
84. AA 190. See also AA 192.
85. AA 192. He says, specifically, that judgements of the sublime do not
display this characteristic of judgements of taste.
86. See Chapter 8, pp. 284 and 295.
87. This reveals that aesthetic experience is educative in the sense that it
encourages our cognitive exploration of the world. But it is not didac-
tic, because the insight and encouragement it gives is only ever exem-
plary. We are encouraged to pursue ‘cognition in general’, but we are
given no rules for that task.
88. Although I am mostly here concerned with the pre-cognitive status of
aesthetic judgement, this is not incompatible with the position that aes-
thetic judgement also plays a post-cognitive role in encouraging the
development of our knowledge. One way in which Kant suggests this is
in saying that an aesthetic judgement involves the ‘quickening’ of our
cognitive powers; see AA 222. Makkreel’s account is extremely helpful
in this regard. See discussion in Chapter 4, pp. 158–60.
89. See Chapter 4 (pp. 151–6) on synthesis in process. See Chapter 8
(p. 283) on indeterminacy of aesthetic form.
90. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book 4, Aph. 324.
91. See extensive discussion of this in Chapter 5.
92. The bridge between understanding and reason would have to be strictly
propadeutic. That is, the harmony between intuition and understanding
in aesthetic judgement can serve as a symbol for the possibility of the
275
application of moral purposes within the empirical world. However, in

no sense can beauty serve as a guarantee for moral reason’s success at
the empirical level. Just as we have cognitive hope, so can we also have
moral hope. The latter, however, is more fragile even than the former.
93. The epiphany is, of course, perceptual and not divine.
94. Although this characteristic is striking, it is not idiosyncratic. All tran-
scendental principles ultimately rest on the possibility of experience; the
principle of judgement makes explicit what would otherwise remain
implicit.
276

Empirical Systematicity and Its Relation To Aesthetic Judgement

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Chapter Title: Empirical Systematicity and its Relation to Aesthetic Judgement

Book Title: Kant's Aesthetic Epistemology

Empirical Systematicity and its Relation to

We have found that the ‘Deduction’ of aesthetic judgement reveals

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

account of determining judgement, I argue that it is necessary for the

I Understanding goes out into the empirical world

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

the first Critique is supplemented by a further system founded on the

The principles of the understanding establish the most general order of

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

empirical laws. Purely intelligible order arising principally – though, as

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

The principle by which we reflect on given objects of nature is this: that

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

Buchdahl and Pippin suggest – but rather is an anticipation that makes

Allison resolves the diversity of functions by saying that, in all cases,

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

a hierarchical organisation of such laws, then the attempts to estab-

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

presupposition of empirical systematicity is required. Kant’s empha-

II A distinction between general purposiveness and

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

should distinguish between a more general and a more specific level

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

III Purposiveness of Judgement and the Dual Direction of

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

Purposiveness is the relation in which empirical nature stands to our

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

forms counts as a mediation between the subjective and objective

The first alternative refers to the formal purposiveness of nature,

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

Only now does Kant go on to address the subjective side of the

But when we merely reflect on a perception we are not dealing with a

Kant’s point is that the technic or purposiveness of nature arises out

IV The link between the purposiveness of nature and

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

both editions of the Introduction.50 Admittedly, the claims are less

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

merely to its successful application at the empirical level, as Makreel

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

for any cognition.71 Such cooperation is thus the necessary subjective

It is clear in this passage, as it was in the first Introduction, that formal

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

harmonious subjective relation characteristic of aesthetic judgements.

Aesthetic judgements display not only the cooperation of the faculties

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

is anticipatory. This would result in a belated recognition that knowl-

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

We can now establish the significance of these two sides of judge-

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

understanding, a harmony that is conducive to the possibility of ‘cog-

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

posiveness and the metaphysical principles of MFNS, while occupying

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

Empirical Systematicity and Aesthetic Judgement

Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology

on to say that what is necessary is easily conflated with mere cognition.