object”^15 that causes“the harmonious free play of the cognitive faculties”^16
in us as the defining feature of any beautiful object, natural or artistic. The
point of Kant’s terminology is not to enable the clear resolution of disagree-
ments by specifying an art-relevant property in objects about whose
instances everyone will immediately agree. He is quite aware that the phrase
“form of purposiveness”is so vague that its application will be reasonably
disputed (even if underlying such disputes there is in principle a genuine
question of correctness).^17 Rather, the point of Kant’s phrases is to begin to
suggest why the experience of beauty, natural and artistic alike, matters
to us. It is more than a mere affirmative buzz or tingle. It is a pleasurable
feeling with a distinct causal history and, in virtue of that history, a distinct
significance for us.
In pleasing us, natural and artistic beauty, according to Kant, serve no
exterior purpose. The experience of beauty does not yield knowledge, and it
does not of itself enable the satisfaction of desires for material goods. Yet it is
not nonetheless merely agreeable or pleasant;^18 instead, the experience of
beauty matters. Beauty in nature makes usfeel as thoughthe natural world
were congenial to our purposes and projects. In feeling the beautiful natural
object to be “as it were” intelligible or made for us to apprehend it,
we further feel that nature as a whole–which seems to“shine forth”in
beauty–is favorable to our cognitive and practical interests as subjects.
To experience a beautiful sunset, according to Kant, is to feel (though not
to know theoretically) that nature makes sense. Pleasure in the beautiful(^15) Purposiveness without a purpose or finality without an end (Zweckmässigkeit ohne Zweck)is
the subject of the“Third Moment”of the“Analytic of the Beautiful,”§§10–17 of the
Critique of the Power of Judgment. See in particular Kant’s“Definition of the beautiful
inferred from this third moment”inCritique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer
and Eric Matthews (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 120.
(^16) Kant initially develops the idea of the harmonious free play of imagination (focusing on a
single object or work) and understanding in theCritique of the Power of Judgment, introduc-
tion, section 7. To say that imagination and understanding“play freely”is to say that we
intuit or focus on an object without seeking or arriving at any definite knowledge of the
object intuited; to say that they do this harmoniously is to say that in our focusing on the
object it is nonetheless“as though”understanding takes place.
(^17) SeeCritique, trans. Guyer and Matthews, p. 163. Kant’s defense of the intersubjective
validity of judgments of taste and his explanation of how there can nonetheless be
disagreement in overt verdicts issued by apprehenders will be considered in Chapter 7.
(^18) Kant distinguishes the (morally) good from the merely agreeable from the beautiful in
ibid., §5, pp. 94–96.
58 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art