We can do nothing more than remove this conflict between the claims and
counter-claims of taste. It is absolutely impossible to give a definite
objective principle of taste, in accordance with which its judgements
could be derived, examined, and established; for then the judgement
would not be one of taste at all. The subjective principle, viz. the
indefinite Idea of the supersensible in us, can only be put forward as
the sole key to the puzzle of this faculty whose sources are hidden
from us: it can be made no further intelligible.
The proper concept of taste, that is of a merely reflective aesthetical
Judgement, lies at the basis of the antinomy here exhibited and
adjusted. Thus the two apparently contradictory principles are
reconciled--_both can be true_; which is sufficient. If, on the other
hand, we assume, as some do, _pleasantness_ as the determining ground
of taste (on account of the singularity of the representation which
lies at the basis of the judgement of taste), or, as others will
have it, the principle of perfection (on account of the universality
of the same), and settle the definition of taste accordingly; then
there arises an antinomy which it is absolutely impossible to adjust
except by showing that _both_ the contrary (though not contradictory)
_propositions are false_. And this would prove that the concept on
which they are based is self-contradictory. Hence we see that the
removal of the antinomy of the aesthetical Judgement takes a course
similar to that pursued by the Critique in the solution of the
antinomies of pure theoretical Reason. And thus here, as also in the
Critique of practical Reason, the antinomies force us against our will
to look beyond the sensible and to seek in the supersensible the point
of union for all our _a priori_ faculties; because no other expedient
is left to make our Reason harmonious with itself.
_Remark I._
As we so often find occasion in Transcendental Philosophy for
distinguishing Ideas from concepts of the Understanding, it may be of
use to introduce technical terms to correspond to this distinction.
I believe that no one will object if I propose some.--In the most
universal signification of the word, Ideas are representations referred
to an object, according to a certain (subjective or objective)
principle, but so that they can never become a cognition of it.
They are either referred to an intuition, according to a merely
subjective principle of the mutual harmony of the cognitive powers
(the Imagination and the Understanding), and they are then called
_aesthetical_; or they are referred to a concept according to an
objective principle, although they can never furnish a cognition of
the object and are called _rational Ideas_. In the latter case the
concept is a _transcendent_ one, which is different from a concept of
the Understanding, to which an adequately corresponding experience can
always be supplied, and which therefore is called _immanent_.
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