The Distinction between the Beautiful and the Good in Kant's Critique of Judgment

        I have been trying to work through a systematic comparison of the structure of Kant's moral philosophy with his aesthetic philosophy, and, as is likely to happen when diving into new Kantian material, I have gotten a little lost. Below are the bits and bobs of my response to the Kant readings.

        “Beauty is an object's form of purposiveness insofar as it is perceived in the object without the presentation of a purpose.” (Critique of Judgment, 517) Thus goes Kant's famous formula regarding the separation between art and usefulness or functionality. Is it useful to analyze this formula in relation to Kant's categorical imperative in order to better understand what he means when he says “a judgment of taste must involve a claim to subjective universality”? (CJ, 510) I want to distinguish the structure of an aesthetic judgment from an ethical/moral one. How is the communicability of the subjective universal, that is necessary for a judgment of taste, related to and distinguishable from the categorical imperative as a universal law that should guide human actions? What is the larger theoretical structure at work that on the one hand allows for a universal law (the categorical imperative: “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, and never merely as a means” [4:429]) that cannot be deduced and is validated solely by the fact that it can become the determining ground of the will, and on the other hand allows for a subjective universality that

“although the principle is only subjective, it would still be assumed as subjectively universal (an idea necessary for everyone); and so it could, like an objective principle, demand universal assent insofar as agreement among different judging persons is concerned, provided only we were certain that we had subsumed under it correctly” (CJ, 518)?

        Since both beauty/aesthetics and morality involving acting as if a claim or action could be universally applied, then are aesthetics and morality inherently connected? Or, since the aesthetic judgment seems to involve a greater degree of uncertainty, does this indicate a fundamental difference in these two frameworks? Key to addressing these questions is the distinction between a priori and empirical knowledge. The categorical imperative is an a priori moral law that first takes shape through the use of pure reason. The moral law is objectively concerned with how rational beings should behave towards one another. This behavior must be cognized apart from any experiential interaction with other rational beings. We first see through the use of pure reason the logical validity of the categorical imperative. It then becomes a duty to act in conformity with this law solely based on its theoretical validity, that is, before it is applied to empirical experience. If the moral law is truly valid, then it must hold as an imperative of pure practical reason. It must be a practical as well as a theoretical law, and its worth as a practical law is the ground for assuming its theoretical validity. An individual first uses pure reason to form the moral law within his/her mind, then this abstract law becomes the foundation that grounds his/her actions, that determines the moral possibility of actions, finally, he/she wills him/herself to act in accordance with the law. In contrast, the judgment of taste, an aesthetic judgment, begins with the empirical and subjective. We do not begin by using pure reason to form an a priori aesthetic law, instead we begin with a sensation of pleasure that the presentation of an object gives to us. The object itself can be understood as an objective thing in the world, but the cognizance of the reality and properties of the object which belongs to the understanding and cognitive judgment is separate from the aesthetic judgment concerning the object. Aesthetic pleasure is subjective, and this subjective pleasure, in order for it to be pleasure of the beautiful, must be completely free from all personal interests. Such a freedom opens up the idea of a universal voice, that this disinterested pleasure is experience by all other humans when the object in question is presented to them. However, unlike the moral law, the affirmation of this pleasure in all other humans that one can question can never confirm the existence of an aesthetic “law,” it can only postulate and increasingly confirm the possibility of aesthetic judgment. On the universal voice only being an idea, Kant writes

“he can attain certainty on this point [that he is judging in conformity with idea of a universal voice], by merely being conscious that he is separating whatever belongs to the agreeable and the good from the liking that remains to him after that. It is only for this that he counts on everyone's assent, and he would under these conditions [always] be justified in this claim, if only he did not on occasion fail to observe these conditions and so make an erroneous judgment of taste.” (CJ, 511-12)

Is this ever looming possibility that one has failed to meet the conditions for subjective universalism and has made an erroneous judgment linked to the fact that one cannot use concepts and understanding when making an aesthetic judgment? Is this openness to failure a necessary and freeing release from the demanding structure of the categorical imperative? (After all, an individual is only acting in conformity with the moral law if he/she wills herself to do so.) At the end of the selections we were given from the third Critique Kant says “taste enables us, as it were, to make the transition from sensible charm to habitual moral interest without making too violent a leap; for taste presents the imagination as admitting, even in its freedom, of determination that is purposive for the understanding, and it teaches us to like even objects of sense freely, even apart from sensible charm.” (CJ, 535) Maybe then aesthetic judgment is not a release from the constraints of the moral law, but instead is training for following the moral law? Training through the imagination and not the understanding? And maybe it is this complete training that produces enlightened individuals.