The Critique of Judgement [55]
some day to be able to give a thrilling account of his adventures? But the mind of Sassure was bent on the instruction of mankind, and soul-stirring sensations that excellent man indeed had, and the reader of his travels got them thrown into the bargain. But the fact that culture is requisite for the judgement upon the sublime in nature (more than for that upon the beautiful) does not involve its being an original product of culture and something introduced in a more or less conventional way into society. Rather is it in human nature that its foundations are laid, and, in fact, in that which, at once with common understanding, we may expect every one to possess and may require of him, namely, a native capacity for the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e., for moral feeling. This, now, is the foundation of the necessity of that agreement between other men's judgements upon the sublime and our own, which we make our own imply. For just as we taunt a man who is quite inappreciative when forming an estimate of an object of nature in which we see beauty, with want of taste, so we say of a man who remains unaffected in the presence of what we consider sublime, that he has no feeling. But we demand both taste and feeling of every man, and, granted some degree of culture, we give him credit for both. Still, we do so with this difference: that, in the, case of the former, since judgement there refers the imagination merely to the understanding, as a the faculty of concepts, we make the requirement as a matter of course, whereas in the case of the latter, since here the judgement refers the imagination to reason, as a faculty of ideas, we do so only under a subjective presupposition (which, however, we believe we are warranted in making), namely, that of the moral feeling in man. And, on this assumption, we attribute necessity to the latter aesthetic judgement also. In this modality of aesthetic judgements, namely, their assumed necessity, lies what is for the Critique of judgement a moment of capital importance. For this is exactly what makes an a priori principle apparent in their case, and lifts them out of the sphere of empirical psychology, in which otherwise they would remain buried amid the feelings of gratification and pain (only with the senseless epithet of finer feeling), so as to place them, and, thanks to them, to place the faculty of judgement itself, in the class of judgements of which the basis of an a priori principle is the distinguishing feature, and, thus distinguished, to introduce them into transcendental philosophy.
General Remark upon the Exposition of Aesthetic Reflective Judgements.
In relation to the feeling of pleasure an object is to be counted either as agreeable, or beautiful, or sublime, or good (absolutely), (incundum, pulchrum, sublime, honestum). As the motive of desires the agreeable is invariably of one and the same kind, no matter what its source or how specifically different the representation (of sense and sensation objectively considered). Hence in estimating its influence upon the mind, the multitude of its charms (simultaneous or successive) is alone revelant, and so only, as it were, the mass of the agreeable sensation, and it is only by the quantity, therefore, that this can be made intelligible. Further it in no way conduces to our culture, but belongs only to mere enjoyment. The beautiful, on the other hand, requires the representation of a certain quality of the object, that pern-fits also of being understood and reduced to concepts (although in the aesthetic judgement it is not reduced), and it cultivates, as it instructs us to attend to, finality in the feeling of pleasure. The sublime consists merely in the relation exhibited by the estimate of the serviceability of the sensible in the representation of nature for a possible supersensible employment. The absolutely good, estimated subjectively according to the feeling it inspires (the object of the moral feeling), as the determinability of the powers of the subject by means of the representation
General Remark upon the Exposition of Aesthetic Reflective Judgements.
In relation to the feeling of pleasure an object is to be counted either as agreeable, or beautiful, or sublime, or good (absolutely), (incundum, pulchrum, sublime, honestum). As the motive of desires the agreeable is invariably of one and the same kind, no matter what its source or how specifically different the representation (of sense and sensation objectively considered). Hence in estimating its influence upon the mind, the multitude of its charms (simultaneous or successive) is alone revelant, and so only, as it were, the mass of the agreeable sensation, and it is only by the quantity, therefore, that this can be made intelligible. Further it in no way conduces to our culture, but belongs only to mere enjoyment. The beautiful, on the other hand, requires the representation of a certain quality of the object, that pern-fits also of being understood and reduced to concepts (although in the aesthetic judgement it is not reduced), and it cultivates, as it instructs us to attend to, finality in the feeling of pleasure. The sublime consists merely in the relation exhibited by the estimate of the serviceability of the sensible in the representation of nature for a possible supersensible employment. The absolutely good, estimated subjectively according to the feeling it inspires (the object of the moral feeling), as the determinability of the powers of the subject by means of the representation