As regards the interest of inclination in the case of the Pleasant,
every one says that hunger is the best sauce, and everything that is
eatable is relished by people with a healthy appetite; and thus a
satisfaction of this sort does not indicate choice directed by taste.
It is only when the want is appeased that we can distinguish which of
many men has or has not taste. In the same way there may be manners
(conduct) without virtue, politeness without goodwill, decorum without
modesty, etc. For where the moral law speaks there is no longer,
objectively, a free choice as regards what is to be done; and to
display taste in its fulfilment (or in judging of another’s fulfilment
of it) is something quite different from manifesting the moral attitude
of thought. For this involves a command and generates a want, whilst
moral taste only plays with the objects of satisfaction, without
attaching itself to one of them.
EXPLANATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL RESULTING FROM THE FIRST MOMENT
_Taste_ is the faculty of judging of an object or a method of
representing it by an _entirely disinterested_ satisfaction
or dissatisfaction. The object of such satisfaction is called
_beautiful_.[18]
SECOND MOMENT
OF THE JUDGEMENT OF TASTE, VIZ. ACCORDING TO QUANTITY
§ 6. _The beautiful is that which apart from concepts is represented as
the object of a universal satisfaction_
This explanation of the beautiful can be derived from the preceding
explanation of it as the object of an entirely disinterested
satisfaction. For the fact of which every one is conscious, that the
satisfaction is for him quite disinterested, implies in his judgement a
ground of satisfaction for every one. For since it does not rest on any
inclination of the subject (nor upon any other premeditated interest),
but since he who judges feels himself quite _free_ as regards the
satisfaction which he attaches to the object, he cannot find the ground
of this satisfaction in any private conditions connected with his own
subject; and hence it must be regarded as grounded on what he can
presuppose in every other man. Consequently he must believe that he has
reason for attributing a similar satisfaction to every one. He will
therefore speak of the beautiful, as if beauty were a characteristic
of the object and the judgement logical (constituting a cognition of
the Object by means of concepts of it); although it is only aesthetical
and involves merely a reference of the representation of the object to
the subject. For it has this similarity to a logical judgement that we
can presuppose its validity for every one. But this universality cannot
arise from concepts; for from concepts there is no transition to the
feeling of pleasure or pain (except in pure practical laws, which bring
an interest with them such as is not bound up with the pure judgement
of taste). Consequently the judgement of taste, accompanied with the
consciousness of separation from all interest, must claim validity for
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