Problems with Religion and Politics 347ments of taste concern, strictly speaking, only the first kind. Judgments
that involve perfection really always have an intellectual component. Fi¬
nally, the "beautiful is that, which, without a concept, is cognized as an
object of necessary delight."^61 Judgments of taste mean to exact agreement
from everyone; they impute that we have a common sense. This means that
they "presuppose the existence of a common sense... which is not to be
understood as an external sense, but as the effect from the free play of our
faculties of cognition."^62
Kant defines the sublime as that which "is great per se."^63 It is similar
to the beautiful for him insofar as it pleases on its own and does not pre¬
suppose any concepts. Whereas the beautiful always involves a question
about the form of the object, the sublime can be encountered even in ob¬
jects without form. It involves a representation of limitlessness. Whereas
delight is connected with quality in beauty, it is connected with quantity in
the sublime. Accordingly, Kant tries to show that judgments about the sub¬
lime, which must of course involve the categories, are in their quantity
"universally valid," in their quality "independent of interest," in their re¬
lation "subjectively final," and in their modality "necessary."^64 This is the
same approach that he followed in discussing the beautiful. However, while
there is only one kind of beauty, there are, Kant claims, two kinds of the
sublime, the mathematical and the dynamical. The mathematical sublime
is related to the faculty of cognition, the dynamical sublime to the faculty
of desire. The one leaves the mind at rest; the other moves it.
The results of Kant's discussion of the beautiful and the sublime are
the following definitions: (i)The "beautiful is what pleases in the mere es¬
timate formed of it (consequently not by the intervention of any feeling of
sense in accordance with a concept of the understanding). From this it fol¬
lows immediately that it must please apart from all interest." (2) The "sub¬
lime is what pleases immediately because of its opposition to sense."^65 It is
"an object (of nature) whose representation determines the mind to regard
the elevation of nature beyond our reach as equivalent to a presentation of
ideas."^66 While ideas cannot be presented because their objects are non-
natural or supersensible, the feeling of the sublime enlivens these otherwise
abstract concepts. It "expands the soul." The sublime must always have
reference to our way of thinking or to maxims "directed to giving supremacy
over sensibility to the intellectual side of our nature and the ideas of rea¬
son." Kant argues:
Perhaps there is no more sublime passage in the Jewish Law than the commandment:
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in