Critique of the Faculty of Judgment [Urteilskraft]
Dublin Core
Description
Received most often as Kant’s aesthetic treatise, but also understood as his mature political treatise (cf., Hannah Arendt’s “ectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy). Unlike most aesthetic treatises before and since, this one privileges natural over artistic beauty. In Kant’s telling, the power-of-judgment (Urteilskraft) mediates between “reason,” which governs the realm of human freedom, and “understanding,” which deals in the realm of necessity or nature. The individual who makes a judgment about beauty in nature—“This rose is beautiful,” for example—makes an infinitely particular yet universally binding claim, and this without reference to any predetermined set of standards. A politics which desires the liberal intercourse of free individuals would necessarily have an interest in the ability or inability of individuals to make such a judgment.
Creator
Publisher
Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987 [1790].
Date
08/01/2017
Contributor
Language
Type
Collection
Citation
Kant, Immanuel, “Critique of the Faculty of Judgment [Urteilskraft],” Legacies of the Enlightenment, accessed September 29, 2023, http://enlightenmentlegacies.org/items/show/72.