Now the satisfaction in the manifold of a thing in reference to the
internal purpose which determines its possibility is a satisfaction
grounded on a concept; but the satisfaction in beauty is such as
presupposes no concept, but is immediately bound up with the
representation through which the object is given (not through which it
is thought). If now the judgement of Taste in respect of the beauty
of a thing is made dependent on the purpose in its manifold, like a
judgement of Reason, and thus limited, it is no longer a free and pure
judgement of Taste.
It is true that taste gains by this combination of aesthetical with
intellectual satisfaction, inasmuch as it becomes fixed; and though
it is not universal, yet in respect to certain purposively determined
Objects it becomes possible to prescribe rules for it. These, however,
are not rules of taste, but merely rules for the unification of Taste
with Reason, _i.e._ of the Beautiful with the Good, by which the former
becomes available as an instrument of design in respect of the latter.
Thus the tone of mind which is self-maintaining and of subjective
universal validity is subordinated to the way of thinking which can
be maintained only by painful resolve, but is of objective universal
validity. Properly speaking, however, perfection gains nothing by
beauty or beauty by perfection; but, when we compare the representation
by which an object is given to us with the Object (as regards what it
ought to be) by means of a concept, we cannot avoid considering along
with it the sensation in the subject. And thus when both states of mind
are in harmony our _whole faculty_ of representative power gains.
A judgement of taste, then, in respect of an object with a definite
internal purpose, can only be pure, if either the person judging
has no concept of this purpose, or else abstracts from it in his
judgement. Such a person, although forming an accurate judgement of
taste in judging of the object as free beauty, would yet by another
who considers the beauty in it only as a dependent attribute (who looks
to the purpose of the object) be blamed, and accused of false taste;
although both are right in their own way, the one in reference to what
he has before his eyes, the other in reference to what he has in his
thought. By means of this distinction we can settle many disputes about
beauty between judges of taste; by showing that the one is speaking of
free, the other of dependent, beauty,--that the first is making a pure,
the second an applied, judgement of taste.
§ 17. _Of the Ideal of beauty_
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