𝔎𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔦𝔨 𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔘𝔯𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔦𝔩𝔰𝔨𝔯𝔞𝔣𝔱 #25 - Understanding understanding

So the question came up about the relationship between beauty and understanding. Here's some things that Kant says about it which we can discuss further at our next meeting.

5:287: . . . taste, as a subjective power of judgment, contains a principle of subsumption, not of intuitions under concepts, but of the faculty of intuitions . . . (i.e., of the imagination) under the faculty of concepts (i.e., the understanding), insofar as the former in its freedom is in harmony with the latter in its lawfulness.

5:321: The . . . harmony of the two cognitive faculties, the sensibility and the understanding . . . must seem to be unintentional and to happen on their own; otherwise it is not beautiful art.

5:217: Thus the state of mind in this representation [aesthetic pleasure] must be that of a feeling of the free play of the powers of representation in a given representation for a cognition in general. Now there belongs to a representation by which an object is given, in order for there to be cognition of it in general, imagination for the composition of the manifold of intuition and understanding for the unity of the concept that unifies the representations.

5:218: The subjective universal communicability of the kind of representation in a judgment of taste, since it is supposed to occur without presupposing a determinate concept, can be nothing other than the state of mind in the free play of the imagination and the understanding

FOR NEXT TIME

We finished the opening of §57, whereby Kant resolves the conflict between beauty as a concept about which we can argue but about which we can never agree. Please read the assigned.

§57, Remarks I and II - The Antinomy of Taste
§58 - On the Idea of Purpose in Nature
§59 - On Beauty as a Symbol of Morality

The reading comprises Sections 57 thru 59, or paragraphs 5:339 thru 5:351 (pages 214 to 225 in the Guyed translation),

IN OUR LAST EPISODE

§57 - Resolving the Controversy

• Underlying objective concepts is something not objective, something purely speculative.
• While certain pure concepts cannot be objectively verified, we can in some cases compare them to our empirical observations and establish objective criteria for evaluation according to the theory of correspondence.
• The pure concept of substance, i .e., of objects capable of alteration, correspond to our objective observations of objects in the world.
• But ultimate or absolute or total substance, e.g., all the substance in the universe itself, can only be idealized. Nothing we see in the world corresponds to it. It, like beauty, is an idea.
• Ideas can be exemplified but not used as criteria for objective resolution.
• We can, and do, argue about indeterminate concepts, but unlike determinate concepts, disputes cannot thereby be resolved.

COMING UP

06/15/25 - Session 25 - Finish the main part of the Antinomy
06/29/25 - Session 26 - Finish the appendix to the section on taste
07/13;25 - Session 27 - Start the section on teleology

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

My slides. They are a work in progress. And far from complete.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xUHfISzIjpPxF9Zf_fkVniM3Q6xr3ROG/view?usp=share_link

My blog, with essays about Critique of Judgment:

COJ #1 - The Divisions of Philosophy

https://geraldpriddle.substack.com/p/1-critique-of-judgment?r=2rot22

COJ #2 - Abstracting from Philosophies to Cognitions

https://geraldpriddle.substack.com/p/2-critique-of-judgment?r=2rot22

COJ #3 - Abstracting from Cognitions to Faculties

https://geraldpriddle.substack.com/p/3-developing-a-transcendental-philosophy?r=2rot22

FOR THOSE WHO CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF IMMANUEL KANT

In addition to this meetup about Critique of Judgment, I am hosting another meetup about the Critique of Pure Reason on alternating Sundays. Here's the next meeting to that for anyone interested.

https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/308049117/?eventOrigin=your_events

COPR Essay #1 on the synthetic a priori -

https://geraldpriddle.substack.com/p/critique-of-pure-reason-1?r=2rot22

Groundwork Essay #1 on the relevance of Kantian architectonics to practical philosophy -

https://open.substack.com/pub/geraldpriddle/p/1-kants-groundwork-to-a-metaphysics?r=2rot22&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true