In a Critique of Judgement the part containing the aesthetical
Judgement is essential, because this alone contains a principle
which the Judgement places quite _a priori_ at the basis of its
reflection upon nature; viz., the principle of a formal purposiveness
of nature, according to its particular (empirical) laws, for our
cognitive faculty, without which the Understanding could not find
itself in nature. On the other hand no reason _a priori_ could be
specified,--and even the possibility of a reason would not be apparent
from the concept of nature as an object of experience whether general
or particular,--why there should be objective purposes of nature,
_i.e._ things which are only possible as natural purposes; but the
Judgement, without containing such a principle _a priori_ in itself,
in given cases (of certain products), in order to make use of the
concept of purposes on behalf of Reason, would only contain the rule
according to which that transcendental principle has already prepared
the Understanding to apply to nature the concept of a purpose (at least
as regards its form).
But the transcendental principle which represents a purposiveness of
nature (in subjective reference to our cognitive faculty) in the form
of a thing as a principle by which we judge of nature, leaves it quite
undetermined where and in what cases I have to judge of a product
according to a principle of purposiveness, and not rather according to
universal natural laws. It leaves it to the _aesthetical_ Judgement
to decide by taste the harmony of this product (of its form) with our
cognitive faculty (so far as this decision rests not on any agreement
with concepts but on feeling). On the other hand, the Judgement
teleologically employed furnishes conditions determinately under which
something (_e.g._ an organised body) is to be judged according to
the Idea of a purpose of nature; but it can adduce no fundamental
proposition from the concept of nature as an object of experience
authorising it to ascribe to nature _a priori_ a reference to purposes,
or even indeterminately to assume this of such products in actual
experience. The reason of this is that we must have many particular
experiences, and consider them under the unity of their principle, in
order to be able to cognise, even empirically, objective purposiveness
in a certain object.--The aesthetical Judgement is therefore a special
faculty for judging of things according to a rule, but not according
to concepts. The teleological Judgement is not a special faculty, but
only the reflective Judgement in general, so far as it proceeds, as it
always does in theoretical cognition, according to concepts; but in
respect of certain objects of nature according to special principles,
viz., of a merely reflective Judgement, and not of a Judgement that
determines Objects. Thus as regards its application it belongs to
the theoretical part of Philosophy; and on account of its special
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