FIRST MOMENT, OF THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE, ACCORDING TO QUALITY

1. The Judgment of Taste is Aesthetical

When deciding whether a representation is beautiful or not one judges with imagination rather
than cognition, and therefore the judgment is a subjective one.

Sensations affected by a representation are objective, but pleasure and pain come from within,
not from the representation.

Viewing a building with one’s cognitive faculties will judge it for its utility, which is very
different from viewing it with the sensation of satisfaction, an aesthetical judgment based on the
building’s beauty.

2. The Satisfaction Which Determines the Judgment of Taste is Disinterested

“The satisfaction which we combine with the representation of the existence of an object is
called ‘interest’.” Such satisfaction is inevitably linked to the faculty of desire.

A judgment of taste has nothing to do with one’s interest in the object’s existence or inexistence.
For instance, if someone asks us to judge the beauty of a building that was built by slaves, the
question is not whether we think it should exist or not, but only whether we find it beautiful or
not. Whether we deplore the existence of the building, are indifferent to it, or feel partial to it, is
not what is being asked. When judging it we must be indifferent to its existence so as not to make
a biased judgment of taste (which is not a pure judgment).

Kant makes it clear that one cannot be partial to the existence of an object because that leads to
a biased judgment rather than a pure one. It may be difficult to escape such biases, though. And
what about after we make a pure judgment that something is beautiful? We may then tend to
become partial towards the object and become invested in its existence. Does the pure judgment
of beauty cease to be pure then, or is it only the initial judgment that counts?

3. The Satisfaction in the Pleasant is Bound Up with Interest

“That which pleases the senses in sensation is ‘pleasant’.”

“Sensation” is an objective representation of sense, belonging to the cognitive faculty. Therefore,

not all satisfaction is itself sensation, as one can have satisfaction from an aesthetical judgment
which is not objective but subjective. This particular kind of satisfaction Kant calls “feeling.”

Example: “The green color of the meadows belongs to objective sensation, as a perception of an
object of sense; the pleasantness of this belongs to subjective sensation by which no object is
represented.” This subjective sensation is “feeling”.

The satisfaction in the pleasant is inherently bound up with interest because the sensation of it
leads to desire for objects of that kind. This presupposes the existence of the object to one’s state,
thus one must have invested interest in such an object. In other words, one cannot make an
impartial judgment of objects that arouse desire because there is an inherent interest involved.
These objects of pleasant sensation not only please but gratify.

4. The Satisfaction in the Good is Bound Up with Interest

“Whatever by means of reason pleases through the mere concept is good. That which pleases
only as a means we call good for something (the useful), but that which pleases for itself is good
in itself.” The key aspect is that there must always be the concept of a purpose involved.

We must have a concept of an object before we can find it good. This is not the case with things
of beauty. For instance, we need not have a meaning assigned to flowers in order to find them
beautiful.

The pleasant is an immediate sensation that delights the sense. However, this does not
automatically make it good. One must first use reason to determine a concept of a purpose. For
example, when discussing one’s health, it is pleasant to be in good health and therefore not have
any bodily pains. However, it is not good until we reason the purpose of good health, which is
that it makes us fit to do a variety of activities.

Some describe happiness as the “greatest sum of the pleasantness of life” and this definition as
the highest good. However, if this were the case there would be no reason to be scrupulous on
how this is achieved. Reason tells us that it matters what we do, that living simply for enjoyment
does not have value in itself.

5. Comparison of the Three Specifically Different Kinds of Satisfaction

What the pleasant and the good do share is an interest in their object (derived from the faculty of
desire). The pleasant relies only on stimuli, while the good relies on not just the representation
but also the relation the subject has to the existence of the object (in other words, we must have a
concept of it).

The judgment of taste, however, is contemplative. It is indifferent to the existence of the object
and makes its judgment based on pleasure and pain. There are no concepts involved in the
judgment, as it is does not use the faculty of cognition, and thus has no interest in purpose either.

“That which gratifies a man is called pleasant; that which merely pleases him is beautiful; that
which is esteemed or approved by him, i.e., that to which he accords an objective worth, is
good.”

“The taste in the beautiful is alone a disinterested and free satisfaction; for no interest, either of
sense or reason, here forces our assent.”
SECOND MOMENT, OF THE JUDGMENT OF TASTE, ACCORDING TO QUANTITY

6. The Beautiful is That Which Apart from Concepts is Represented as the Object of a Universal
Satisfaction

Because the judgment of taste is disinterested, in that one knows that his judgment does not rest
on any personal inclination (it is free from any biases), it implies that the judgment is universal,
one that applies to all men. It is natural, then, to give the object a universal quality of beauty,
creating a concept of it by means of cognition, and thinking the judgment valid for all men.
However, the judgment is still fundamentally rooted in the subjective experience of the
representation.

7. Comparison of the Beautiful with the Pleasant and the Good by Means of the Above
Characteristic

Concerning the pleasant, there is no universality in the judgment because it is bound up with
interest. Each person’s sensations respond differently to various stimuli, so it would be folly to
apply one’s judgment based on sensation to everyone. “Everyone has his own taste (the taste of
sense).” All we can make are generalizations of what good taste is in cases of the pleasant.

It is different with judgments of beauty. One does not say, “It is beautiful for me,” but rather “it
is beautiful.” One shouldn’t count on agreement but it is natural to demand it of them. In this
case, “we cannot say that each man has his own particular taste.”

A judgment of the good also applies to the universal. It makes the claim of validity for all men,
as it is “represented only by means of a concept as the object of a universal satisfaction.” This, of
course, is different from the pleasant and the beautiful because it is based on reason.

8. The Universality of the Satisfaction is Represented in a Judgment of Taste Only as Subjective

Kant reminds us that the universality imputed upon everyone when making a judgment of beauty
is not logical, and therefore not objective, but rather aesthetical and subjective. He calls this
subjective universal validity. Judgments of the good, which use reason, have objective universal
validity. Judgments of the pleasant have no type of universal validity.

Kant, at least at this time, leaves it a mystery of why one imputes universality when making a
subjective, aesthetical judgment (“we do not yet inquire upon what it rests”).

THIRD MOMENT, OF JUDGMENTS OF TASTE, ACCORDING TO THE RELATION

OF THE PURPOSES WHICH ARE BROUGHT IN CONSIDERATION IN THEM

10. Of Purposiveness in General

As discussed earlier, through the faculty of cognition one creates a concept of purpose for an
object, and only then can it be judged as good or practical. Purposiveness is the result of a
concept of an object. We can also have a concept of purpose in mind when constructing an
object.