CCP 1.

1 (2009) 89-104 Comparative and Continental Philosophy (print) ISSN 1757-0638

doi:10.1558/ccp.vlil.89 Comparative and Continental Philosophy (online) ISSN 1757-0646

The Demand of Freedom in Kant's Critique of Judgment

JAMES RISSER

Seattle University
jrisser@seattleu.edu

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the issue ofthe unity of the critical philosophy in Kants Cri-
tique of Judgment through a careful consideration of the actual bridge that joins
nature andfreedom. Kant argues that this bridge is made under the demand for
the furtherance of life, and is accordingly to be equated with the demand of freedom.
This article specificallyfocuses on this demand that is, in effect, carried out by the
principle ofpurposiveness. It is argued that this demand is somewhat artificial since
it does not fully take into account the real struggle between nature and freedom.

Parti
Let me begin from the broad perspective that frames the writing of Kant s third
Critique. In the initially unpublished First Introduction Kant tells us that the
Critique of Judgment pertains "to the system of the critique of pure reason" in
such a way that it effectively serves to complete the critical philosophy. 1 Kant is
quick to point out that such a completion would not itself constitute a system
of philosophy, that is to say, a system of knowledge from apriori principles, since
the entire critical philosophy only serves as an examination of the transcenden-
tal possibility of rational knowledge. To complete the critical philosophy will
mean accordingly that one exhausts the examination of tnz faculty for rational
knowledge, which is to say die faculty for apriori cognition. Up to this point,
Kant has carried out an examination of two of the three faculties of cognition
and has discovered that they both successfully legislate apriori, that is to say,
they both contribute to rational knowledge: The faculty of understanding con-

1. Immanuel Kant, 2000. Critique ofthe Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Mat-
thews (New York: Cambridge University Press), 41.

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90 The Demand of Freedom in Kants Critique ofJudgment

tains constitutive principles for the manifold of intuition in the realm of nature
and the faculty of reason contains a constitutive law for the manifold of desires
in the realm of freedom. These two domains of apriori legislation constitute in
fact the system oiphifosophy in its theoretical and practical parts, and the issue
now, following the demands of a critical philosophy for its systematic comple-
tion, is to exhaust the possibility of apriori principles in the faculty of judgment
as the third cognitive faculty.
When Kant then turns to this consideration of the faculty ofjudgment relative
to the demands of a critical philosophy, we see immediately that we have before
us a very complicated matter. The initial complication stems from the unique
character of judgment which stands as the middle term between understand-
ing and reason in the system of higher cognitive faculties.2 Kant states that the
faculty of judgment, unlike the faculties of understanding and reason, is not an
independent faculty of cognition, since "it is merely a power of subsuming under
concepts given from elsewhere."3 As such, the faculty ofjudgment does not have
a designated domain for apriori legislation (as do understanding and reason with
respect to nature and freedom). Now despite the fact that the faculty of judg-
ment does not have a domain for special legislation, it may contain nonetheless,
by analogy to the other higher cognitive faculties, an apriori principle. In fact
the discovery of this principle is sufficient for the judgment to be included in the
system of the pure faculty of conceptual cognition (although not in the system
of philosophy in its theoretical and practical parts). But since it has no field of
objects as its realm the apriori principle that issues from judgment is so only in
a "subjective respect"—thus there is the complication of a necessary conformity
to law (an apriori principle) that is in some sense subjective.
This complication concerning the faculty ofjudgment is now compounded by
the fact that Kant does not limit himself to identifying this apriori principle in
order to exhaust the possibility of apriori principles, but, as we see more clearly
from the Second Introduction, brings the principle to bear on what he consid-
ers the fundamental problem of the critical philosophy as a whole, namely, the
problem of its unity. There is, Kant tells us, an "immense gulf" that separates
the supersensible realm of the concept of freedom and the sensible realm of
the concept of nature, and as yet it is not possible to throw a bridge from one
realm to the other. The construction of this bridge is precisely what the third

2. Formally, Kant distinguishes the three terms relative to a capacity for thinking: under-
standing is the capacity for knowledge of the universal, the judgment is the capacity for
the subsumption of the particular under the universal, and reason is the capacity for the
determination of the particular through the universal (Kant, 2000, 8).
3. Kant, 2000,8.

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James Risser 91

critique is to accomplish. Let us note what such a bridge would entail. This
bridge must be more than a simple joining together such that through the join-
ing what stands on each side no longer stands in opposition. This simple joining
with respect to freedom and nature has already been established by reason in the
first critique in the resolution of the third antinomy. Rather, the constructing of
a bridge would entail establishing a unity in the precise sense that "the concept
of freedom is meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed by
its laws, and consequently nature must be so thought that the conformity to law
of its form at least harmonizes with the possibility of purposes to be effected in
it according to laws of freedom."4 Unlike the simple joining that would merely
hold up for view, in the true manner of speculation, the relation of the two
realms, this unity would effect a transition [Übergang] from one realm to the
other, at least, as he tells us twice within section two of the Second Introduc-
tion, with respect to thought. Most decisively, if the transition is to be made in
the mode of thought, we must continue to bear in mind that the theoretical
use of reason finds such a thought to be extraordinary, in fact, it finds it impos-
sible. This is perhaps the reason why Kant considers the gulf to be so immense
[unübersehbar].
But if the transition is actually impossible for theoretical reason, that is to say,
for cognition, under what ordering is the transition to be made? If we take the
perspective of the systematicity that frames the writing of the Critique of Judg-
menty we can say that the answer lies with the specific systematic order in which
the judgment is located. That order, which is an order broader than cognition,
Kant identifies as the life of the mind [Gemüt], Accordingly, we can say, in the
most provisional manner, that the transition to be effected is one relative to
the life of the mind and, we should add, it is to be effected for the sake of the
furtherance ofthat life. Precisely what this entails remains to be seen, but, fol-
lowing Kant, we want to maintain here at the outset that the transition to be
effected in fact is necessary for that life—a necessity that cannot be ascribed to
it on a strictly logical basis, but only with respect to a kind of practical necessity,
one that issues from what one would have to call the demand of freedom. Here
we should continue to bear in mind Kant s insistence that it is the concept of
freedom that is meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed
by its laws; and even if it cannot be shown that causality through freedom is
actually resident in nature, its effect "should exist."5 In this "should" is the
demand of freedom, and, accordingly, the constructing of the bridge is under-

4. Kant, 2000,63.
5. Kant, 2000,81.

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92 The Demand of Freedom in Kanù Critique ofJudgment

taken in the name of freedom. One could even put it more strongly and say
that the bridge is a constructing by freedom itself where freedom is understood
as the consciousness of a being that comes to itself only by making the world
its own. But this constructing will not be an easy matter, for what is at stake
now is not the fact that there is legislation under the concept of freedom, but
the exercising—or better, the accomplishing of—its legislation. The construct-
ing, in other words, must show how freedom can come to bear on the order of
nature, without violating the particular legislation of nature s order.
Now, to describe the bridge in this way only further compounds the compli-
cation introduced by the faculty ofjudgment. It is not an easy matter to see how
this bridge can be built, since it is in fact a bridge build by the judgment that,
in Kants initial description of it, has little connection to a demand of freedom.
Kants construction here begins with an analogy: just as the judgment in its
logical use makes possible a transition from understanding to reason, so Kant
argues we can suppose that the judgment will bring about a transition from
the realm of natural concepts to the concept of freedom. The transition to be
effected by judgment, though, can only be made by the judgment in its reflec-
tive rather than determining capacity, since the unity sought extends beyond
the analytic unity that a determinant judgment provides. That is to say, for the
sake of the bridge-building the functioning ofjudgment must be inverted: in its
function of subsumption, the reflective judgment engages in a movement from
the particular in nature to the universal, rather than the other way around, in
order to establish the possibility of a more fundamental ordering in the order of
nature. The faculty of judgment, in other words, is being asked to bring about
a unity of the laws of nature relative to a higher unity that stands in relation to
the law of freedom, and as such the unity cannot itself be determined by a law
of nature. Since the unity cannot be obtained by borrowing an apriori law from
experience, the judgment, we are told in a remarkable phrase, can only provide
the law "from and to itself."6 The reflective judgment thus mediates between
nature and freedom by considering the empirical laws of nature in accordance
with a unity "as they would have if an understanding (although not our under-
standing) had furnished them to our cognitive faculties, so as to make possible
a system of experience according to particular laws of nature."7
In giving the law, that is to say, the rule, to itself, we can better understand
Kant s claim that the apriori rule of the judgment is subjective in some sense,
but what is not yet understood is how this rule adheres to the demand of free-

6. Kant, 2000,67.
7. Kant, 2000,67-68.

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James Risser 93

dorn. At this point all we can say is that the furtherance of life that would
issue from the demand of freedom is caught up in the formative activity of the
reflective judgment. To say more than this requires that we take a look at the
actual apriori rule of judgment, but here too, as we will soon see, we will not have
freed ourselves from complication. Kant identifies the subjective apriori prin­
ciple of judgment as the purposiveness of nature. Kant actually formulates this
principle in the same language he uses for the description of the general nature
of the principle: The purposiveness of nature is a rule whereby "nature is repre­
sented by means of this concept as if an understanding contained the ground of
the variety of its empirical laws."8 If this description of the rule does not yet tell
us precisely how the gulf between freedom and nature is bridged, it does seem to
tell us something about the character of the demand for unity that is demanded
by freedom. The principle of the purposiveness of nature is in effect a principle
posited in the subjunctive mood and has accordingly the character of ζ fiction,9
No human understanding actually contains this ground of understanding and we
can only use the concept to reflect upon the unity of nature. The representation
of purposiveness is that of a formal purposiveness of nature, and not an actual
purposiveness of nature. It is a purposiveness that will allow nature to harmonize
with the purpose to be effected in it according to the law of freedom.
Certainly, one has reason to pause here and ask whether the systematic ordering
has become too much of a construction and whether Kant, caught within the pa­
rameters of this construction, is now engaged in a little wishful thinking, that is to
say, of being left with only a desire for unity and freedoms effectiveness since the
unity is pursued and in fact promulgated in the face of the knowledge that it can
never be known (in the Kantian sense of knowledge) to be so. And ifwishful, what
then are we ultimately to say about the bridge that is to be built ? It is this theme of
the ultimate effectiveness of the unity that I want to pursue in the remainder of my
remarks, and, of course, to pursue this theme properly one has to enter still further
into the compounding complication of the Critique of Judgment,

8. Kant, 2000, 68. In the subsequent section of the Second Introduction, Kant explains the
transcendental status of the principle and defines the transcendental concept of purposive­
ness of nature as "neither a natural concept nor a concept of freedom, because it ascribes
nothing to the object (of nature), but only represents the peculiar way we must proceed in
reflection upon the objects of nature in reference to a thoroughly connected experience,
and is consequently a subjective principle (maxim) of the judgment" (Kant, 2000,71).
9. The notion of "fiction" here follows the sense of the "as i f that we see presented by the neo-
Kantian Hans Vaihingen See Hans Vaihinger, The Philosophy of the'AsIf"'', 1935, trans. C.K.
Ogden (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

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94 The Demand of Freedom in Kants Critique ofJudgment

Part II
At this point in the Introduction, Kant is ready to introduce a division within
the reflective judgment such that the unity it is to provide must now take into
consideration not just two things, freedom and nature, but three: freedom, art,
and nature. Why three rather than two at this point certainly has something to
do with the way in which Kant came to compose the Critique of Judgment, From
early on Kant had an interest in aesthetics—more properly, what one should call
an empirical aesthetics, since he did not think that a critique of aesthetic taste
was possible. Although he writes to Marcus Herz in 1771 indicating that he
intends to write a work on aesthetics, as late as 1781 he considers this critique
of taste an unlikely possibility. But by 1787 Kant found what he was looking for.
He is able to write a critique of taste because he finds a distinct apriori principle
that would give a rule to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure involved in taste.
But when Kant then names the three parts of philosophy that have apriori prin-
ciples he does not include aesthetics, but names them as theoretical philosophy,
teleology, and practical philosophy. The obvious question is how Kant moves
from his intended purpose to write a critique of taste to teleology and how the
two areas, which come to constitute the main division in the Critique of Judg-
ment, namely, aesthetics and teleology, actually relate to each other.
Certainly, from what we have already seen, the very idea of a system (which
is much more pronounced in the first introduction than in the second) plays a
crucial, if not determining, role in this regard.10 Quite simply, Kant was able to
find an opening for completing the systematic unity of reason once he realized
that a critique of taste would complete the system of human powers [Gemüts-
vermögen], namely, the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, cognition, and de-
sire. In the investigation of taste Kants concern began to telescope outward to
judgment and the possible judgment of beauty in nature which in turn opened
up to the idea of a ideological judgment and how the two kinds of judgment
might stand together in a process of reflection. The beauty of nature suggests
that nature is artistically designed and this idea of teleology opens the way for
an "ethical turn." This ethical turn announced itself under the heading of the
supersensible. If the judgment is to make possible the transition between nature
and freedom, it can do so only in relation to the concept of a unifying super-
sensible ground of nature—a ground that would in some fashion then truly
unite human life. For Kant what is indispensable to human life is not the fact
of its actuality, but its accomplishing actuality that requires an orientation, if

10. For a more detailed discussion of this issue see John Zammito, 1992, The Genesis of Kants
Critique of Judgment (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), l69rT.

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James Risser 95

not a practice, that is always more than the mere thought of the supersensible.
The judgment provides this orientation in the concept of purposiveness. Thus
the Critique of Judgment is written and justified as part of the critical system on
the grounds of an apriori principle, namely, the purposiveness of nature, that in
fact can only be ascribed to aesthetic judgment, since the ideological judgment
which presupposes a concept of the object is not a pure reflective judgment.
And yet, if the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" holds privilege in this regard,
it must be tempered by the fact that a critique of aesthetic judgment is ulti-
mately secondary to Kant s ongoing concern for ethical life.

Partili
This brief look at the motivation and context for writing the third critique does
not resolve the complex issues surrounding its philosophical presentation. To
work our way through them so as to resolve to the issue of the bridge let me
proceed in stepwise fashion. First of all, we need to see how the concept of
purposiveness is linked to a judgment of taste as a judgment of the beautiful,
and how this link serves the issue of the bridge. The key to this link is the more
basic link that Kant establishes between the concept of purposiveness and a
feeling of pleasure. When we hear this word purpose [Zweck] we assume that
Kant means the conscious adaptation to an end, as if purpose is simply deliber-
ate creation. But in its eighteenth century use the word had a broader meaning;
it pertains as well to the harmonious unification of the parts of a manifold.11
In this sense, the adaption to an end also implies that, in relation to conscious
adaption the part is not just adjacent to another part, but has its existence con-
nected to that other part. This broader notion of purpose is not immediately
evident when Kant defines purpose in the Critique of Judgment, The definition
states that purpose is "the object of a concept, insofar as the concept is regarded
as the cause of the object (the real ground of its possibility); and the causality
of a concept in respect of its object is its purposiveness (forma finalis)?n From
this definition we get the clear sense that purpose pertains to intelligent agency:
the concept of purpose acts as the cause of the actuality of the object.13 What is
attained in the actuality of the object by the reflective judgment, which means
attained for itself since the understanding cannot prescribe this causality to na-
ture, is an ordering—an order of design where nature is not a mere aggregate.

11. Ernst Cassirer, 1981, Kants Life and Thought, trans James Haden (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press), 287.
12. Kant, 2000,105.
13. Zammito, 1992,90.

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96 The Demand of Freedom in Kants Critique ofJudgment

Now, as we note from section six of the Introduction, Kant simply asserts that
the attainment of this logical purposiveness of nature is bound up with a feeling
of pleasure. The assertion appears to rest on Kants claim that pleasure always
results from the fulfillment of a design or aim [Absicht], not unlike the way we
feel pleasure in accomplishment. And it would also appear to be the case that
pleasure is naturally connected to the sense of harmony in the broader notion
of purpose. Thus it can be said that in discovering the contingent orderliness of
nature—contingent because ultimately it is an order we read into nature—we
feel pleasure. Accordingly, Kant defines pleasure in the Critique of Judgment as
"a state or affection of the mind [Zustand des Gemüts] in which a representation
is in harmony with itself, as the basis either simply for conserving itself... or else
for creating its object."14 It would follow of course that the feeling of displeasure
would pertain to the lack of harmony. This definition of pleasure from the First
Introduction, though, does not say very much, but elsewhere we find Kant to be
more illuminating. In the Anthropology Kant distinguishes between inner sense
as the mere power of perception and an interior sense as the feeling of pleasure
and displeasure that Kant then defines as "our susceptibility to be determined
by certain representations, either to hold onto them or to drive them away."15
Pleasure is thus a state that involves a maintenance of attraction. Perhaps even
more illuminating is Kant s remark on pleasure in the Lectures on Philosophical
Theology where he distinguishes pleasure from desire, as a more originary rela-
tion to things. Pleasure, he writes, "consists in the relation of representations to
the subject insofar as these representations determine the subject to actualize
the object. Insofar as the representation is the cause of the actuality of the ob-
ject, it is called a faculty of desire. But insofar as it first determines the subject
to desire it is called pleasure."16 Here pleasure is not just a maintenance but is
involved in making in general.
With this basic link in mind let us pursue the link between purposiveness and
pleasure in Kant s turn to the aesthetical. In section eight of the Introduction
Kant writes:
purposiveness may be represented in an object given in experience on a merely
subjective basis as the harmony of the form—in the apprehension of it prior to
any concept—with the cognitive faculties ... or, it may be represented objec-

14. Kant, 2000,33.

15. Immanuel Kant, 1974, Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Mary Gregor
(The Hague: Martinus NijhofF), 32.
16. Immanuel Kant, 1978, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, trans. Alan Wood and Gertrude
Clark (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 96.

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James Risser 97

tively as the harmony of the form of the object with the possibility of the thing
itself, according to a concept of it which precedes and contains the ground of
this form.17
In the first case the judgment relative to purposiveness is aesthetic, that is to
say, the representation of the object is made entirely in reference to the subject,
and in this case the purposiveness rests on the "immediate pleasure in the form
of the object." In different words, the representation of purposiveness in an
object is directly connected to a feeling of pleasure, and in this case the pleasure
expresses nothing other than the subject s harmony with the cognitive powers
that come into play in the reflective judgment. Accordingly, pleasure expresses
a subjective formal purposiveness of the object, one that can only "prompt" the
concept of purposiveness in nature. A judgment of aesthetic taste as a judgment
about the beautiful is then defined as one in which the form of the object in the
mere reflection upon it is judged as the ground of a pleasure.
So, at this point then we have the following distinctions before us: the
demand of freedom is a demand taken up by the judgment in its reflective ca-
pacity, which in turn posits a concept of purposiveness as a concept of intel-
ligent order, which in turn is felt in an aesthetic reflective judgment when, in
relation to the mere form of purposiveness, there is the harmonious free play of
the cognitive faculty (the interplay of the imagination and understanding).
Now, with respect to our first step, it remains to be seen how this link
between purposiveness and the feeling of pleasure directly serves the issue of
the bridge and the demand of freedom. For this we have to take into considera-
tion the real import of the feeling of pleasure as it is presented in the aesthetic
reflective judgment. That import concerns the intention of Kant to remove the
feeling of pleasure from the realm of empirical psychology. The sense of this is
given to us when Kant defines the aesthetic judgment all over again in the first
section of the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment." The aesthetic judgment is one
in which "the representation is altogether referred to the subject and to its feel-
ing of life under the name of the feeling of pleasure and pain."18 What is differ-
ent here is Kant s insertion of the phrase "the feeling of life." If we ask ourselves
what this life is that is referred to here, we have to assume that it is something
more than biological life. But how much more is not at all clear, since life in
relation to pleasure and pain is certainly a component of biological life. In the
Anthropology Kant in fact defines life as the alternation of states of pleasure and
pain, and his explanation of this alternation is itself interesting. He appears to

17. Kant, 2000,78.

18. Kant, 2000,90.

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98 The Demand of Freedom in Kann Critique ofJudgment

describe both, but most certainly with respect to pain, as a vital force. Thus im-
mediately we can say that the life at issue in aesthetic judgment— the life that
ultimately involves by definition the life of the mind [Gemüt] —is life in its vivi-
fication, life in its making alive of life. Pleasure is thus not a blind feeling, but
the feeling of life being promoted. And pain, he tells us, must precede pleasure
since in its opposition to pleasure it is "the spur of activity in which we feel our
life."19 This same idea—the idea that what is at issue in pleasure is not simply
the feeling of life but the furtherance of life—is also expressed by Kant in the
Nachlass, There Kant writes: "Everything comes down to life—whatever vivifies
[belebt] is pleasurable. Life is unity; hence all taste has as its principle the unity
of vivifying sensations." And to this Kant then adds, most dramatically so for
us: "freedom is original life and its coherence [Zusammenhang] is the condition
for the harmony [Übereinstimmung] of all living; thus that which furthers the
feeling of universal life is the cause of pleasure. Do we feel ourselves at home in
universal life"?20 The vital force of life is not merely biological, but a force rela-
tive to the highest order of life, namely, freedom.21 Accordingly, we can say, to
conclude our first step, that the demand of freedom taken up by the aesthetic
reflective judgment is translated into a feeling of pleasure as the feeling of intel-
ligent life relative to its promotion.

Part IV
This brings me to a second step, which for the sake of my purpose here I only
wish to oudine. The second step is to see how the beautiful carries out this fur-
therance of life and constitutes the "prompt" for the purposiveness of nature.
That the beautiful concerns the furtherance of life is explicidy indicated by Kant
in section twenty-three where he contrasts the beautiful with the sublime. In
contrast to the sublime in which there is a feeling of a momentary check to the
vital forces, the beautiful, Kant tells us, "is directly attended with a feeling of the
furtherance of life [Beförderung des Lebens]?11 This furtherance of life appears to

19. Kant, 1974,100.

20. Immanuel Kant, 2005, Notes and Fragments, trans. Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer and Fred-
erick Rauscher (New York: Cambridge University Press), 443.
21. In his Lectures on Ethics Kant writes: "Freedom is the faculty which gives unlimited useful-
ness to all others. It is the highest order of life The inner worth of the world is freedom
in accordance with a will which is not necessitated to action. Freedom is the inner worth
of the world" (Immanuel Kant, 1930, Lectures on Ethics, trans Louis Infield [London:
Methuen], 121.)
22. Kant, 2000,128.

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James Risser 99

be possible only under the condition where life is in accord with itself, which is
precisely what is displayed by the beautiful. Here then we can ask: How does the
beautiful display itself and precisely what is displayed by the beautiful?
Regarding thefirsthalf of this question, we know that Kant makes the follow-
ing distinctions. First, the beautiful displays itself either freely or dependently.
In the case of the former, there is no definite concept of what the object judged
beautiful ought to be, whereas in the latter the beautiful is conditioned by such
a concept. From this distinction one should not assume that Kant wants to
privilege free beauty over dependent beauty; rather, it is simply the case that in
a free beauty we judge the purposiveness of the form apart from any conceptu-
alization. In fact, Kant gives dependent beauty a certain preference in that it can
exhibit an ideal of beauty. The ideal of beauty is an archetype of taste that
rests on an indeterminate idea which can only be represented in an individual
presentation. Such an ideal would then be fixed by a concept of purposiveness
internal to the possibility of the object. Such an ideal, Kant tells us, is only found
in the human relative to the humanity of the person, and this entails that in the
ideal of beauty there is an expression of the moral.
In relation to this first distinction, Kant tells us, secondly, that the beautiful
displays itself in relation to a self-sufficing [selbständiges] satisfaction, which is
a satisfaction relative to a combination with moral ideas. Otherwise, as Kant
notes, the beautiful serves only as a diversion. This points to Kant s subtle dis-
tinction between an intellectual interest in the beautiful and an interested pleas-
ure that cannot be a determining ground for a judgment of taste. There can be
an immediate interest in beauty, albeit only indirectly. Kant says that taking an
immediate interest in natural beauty is always the mark of a good soul, since it
indicates a disposition to moral feeling relative to the beautiful forms of nature.
And, quite interestingly, in relation to this notion Kant then claims that art is
called beautiful only if it looks like nature.
Thirdly, and finally, the beautiful displays itself as sensible illustration. This
is, of course, the idea that the beautiful is a symbol of the moral good. Its
importance for Kant cannot be underestimated, for it is only in this capacity
for symbolic sensible illustration that the beautiful—and here we need to quote
from the text:
gives us pleasure with an attendant claim to the assent of everyone else, in which
the mind is at the same time aware of a certain ennoblement and elevation.... That
is the intelligible to which taste looks, with which our higher cognitive faculties
are in accord.... In this faculty judgment does not see itself... as subject to the
heteronomy of the laws of experience; it gives the law to itself in respect of the
objects of so pure a satisfaction ... ; and it sees itself, both on account of this inner

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100 The Demand of Freedom in Kant's Critique ofJudgment

possibility in the subject as well as on account of the outer possibility of nature

that corresponds to it, as related to something inside the subject itself and out-
side of it, which is neither nature nor freedom, but which is connected with the
ground of the latter, namely the supersensible in which the theoretical faculty is
combined with the practical in a mutual and unknown way, to form a unity.*23
In the particular vividness of the beautiful—a vividness in relation to a felt
accord—the mind is strengthened, as if it has received confirmation that it is
universal life. For it is now referred to something within and without. In the
experience of the beautiful the mind stands in relation to the unity of being—
the supersensible ground that unites freedom and nature.
To conclude the second step, then, we see that in each of the distinctions the
beautiful is linked to the good, as if the good is sheltered in the beautiful. And,
what is ultimately displayed in the beautiful, then, is the intelligent order that
we can now call transcendental freedom.

PartV
This brings me to the third and what would appear to be the final step. This
step consists in bringing to light the further movement—the movement that we
can now call the movement from beauty to moral destination—relative to the
demand of freedom. That is to say, if we ask, with respect to this demand, why
freedom should take place in the world, why nature should be compatible with
intelligent order, the answer, one must suppose, is that is should take place, not
just for the sake of itself, but for the sake of its perfection. This idea is precisely
what is developed in the second part of the Critique of Judgment, In effect, the
third step consists in connecting the aesthetic judgment on the beautiful to the
teleology of nature. And, we can say now, that the key to this connection is the
notion of life.
Life, as we have seen so far, is the actuality of freedom. With respect to the
beautiful, this life is "determined" in relation to feeling that, as the feeling of
pleasure, seeks its own furtherance. The feeling of pleasure is, accordingly, our
awareness of freedom in the world of sense. In relation to this we now want to
say that the teleology of nature is nothing other than Kants philosophy ö/life,
and as such the two parts of the Critique of Judgment are seen in their funda-
mental connection. If the first part of the Critique ofJudgment pertains to the
feeling of the furtherance of life, the second part draws to our attention what
that furtherance of life entails relative to nature. And, we should add here that
with respect to the reflective judgment in general this furtherance in art and na-

23. Kant 2000,227.

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James Risser 101

ture is to be understood formatively. In the reflecting judgment and its principle

of purposiveness the minds encounter with the world is something other than
astonishment, as the shock of incompatibility. It is, as Kant tells us in section
sixty-two, an experience of admiration—an astonishment that continually re-
curs. This admiration "enlarges the mind, allowing it as it were to suspect some-
thing lying beyond those sensible representations, in which, although unknown
to us, the ultimate ground ofthat accord could be found."24 This secret feeling
in effect tells us to go on and to bring about the good, which means to further
life as moral Bildung,
So, what precisely is this philosophy of life, this furtherance of life relative to
nature ? Here too I wish only to provide a sketch in my answer. In the opening
section of the "Critique of Teleological Judgment" Kant claims that the order
of nature can be comprehended only if purpose is added to its known order,
namely the order of mechanical causation. Then in section sixty-three Kant
makes an important distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic purposiveness.
An intrinsic purposiveness is simply the purposive organization found in all
organic forms, while extrinsic purposiveness is the purposiveness of something
in nature relative to something else; that is to say, a suitability for the purposes
of other living beings. This kind of purposiveness raises the question of whether
nature as a whole can be viewed as working towards a universal end. This pos-
sibility, in turn depends on another possibility, namely, whether there is a being
that could be regarded as the ultimate purpose [letzter Zweck] of nature, one for
whom all nature would then be a means. Kant argues that such a being could
only be a human being, since this being alone "can form a concept of purpose"
relative to a system of purposes. And this is to say that human intelligent life is
essentially that of a formative activity adapting nature to its ends.
But what then are we to say about the ultimate purpose of nature as it pertains
direcdy to this being that is in fact ethically an end-in-itself, a final purpose
[End Zweck] that so considered is independent of nature? Kant tells us in sec-
tion eighty-three that the ultimate purpose is to prepare the human for what she
or he must do in order to be afinalpurpose. Kant then tells us that the ultimate
purpose is in fact culture—ethical life. Without ethical life nature would then
be in vain. Or, to say this differently by inverting the formulation, nature is that
which is to be amenable to the history of freedom. Accordingly, we can say that
the preparation for the ultimate end is not a matter of contemplation, but of
practical activity. And, as a final note, Kant wants to then consider the highest
good with respect to this activity. This good, the summum bonum, is happiness,

24. Kant, 2000,238.

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102 The Demand of Freedom in Kants Critique ofJudgment

and our striving after this good—a striving that requires in this account the
notion of God—would place us before the thorough-going harmony of human
and natural purposiveness. It would constitute life s ultimate being at home
in the world, or, what one might call, as the appropriate term for harmonious
order, justice. In looking back, this idea we see was anticipated in beauty.
And so, to conclude the third step, the furtherance of life is now something
beyond feeling, it is the activity of intelligent life's own coming to itself through
the direction of reflective judgment.

Part VI
By way of a conclusion, let me take a fourth step, one that in some sense is, more
appropriately, a step back. In order to take this step, let us see just what Kant
has purportedly accomplished in the third Critique. Under the heading of the
furtherance of life as the furtherance of the life of freedom, Kant has brought
together the experience of the beautiful and the ideological import of nature.
Together they resolve the problem of the bridge between nature and freedom.
The bridge is accordingly that construction whereby the life of freedom can go
on. In looking back now at this construction we see that indeed it is a peculiar
one. Expressed in terms of the demand of freedom, the construction takes place
as a hegemonic demand, one that will not permit itself, by the force of its own
will, to be ruined. It stands before nature in astonishment that only encourages
it; and, with respect to beauty, the felt order will only uplift the mind, giving
it the strength to continue. If this demand of freedom is a matter of a certain
wishful thinking ("as if"), we certainly want to say this is no exercise in futility.
After all, one cannot ignore the fact that by virtue of it nature is excessive in its
appearance, and when thinking does return to itself from this appearance, it has
thereby undergone an expansion.
But at the same time one has to wonder about the ultimate character of this
life of freedom furthering itself under these conditions. That is to say, one can-
not fail to notice—unless one introduces the idea of the sublime here and do
so only with qualification—that there is no real struggle in the opposition
between freedom and nature. Nature is bidden to the demand of freedom. Thus
it appears that in freedom s demand to be at home in the world, freedom is only
struggling against itself. Nature is beautiful, Kant tells us, because it looks like
art, and art can only be called beautiful if it looks like nature, that is, if it looks
like nature s purposiveness, which is really already intelligent life.
It may be possible though to find the beautiful otherwise, that is to say, it may
be possible to encounter in the beautiful something more than the awareness

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James Risser 103

of our empirical freedom. Such an encounter one could perhaps call, in light of
Kant s claim that pleasure fosters our consciousness of empirical freedom, the
"pain of beauty." What I am thinking of here is described by Georg Simmel in his
essay "The Ruin."25 Speaking specifically about architecture, Simmel notes that
it is the only art in which the struggle between the upward striving in the will
of the spirit and the downward gravity in the necessity of nature issues in a real
peace. This peace is broken, though, the instant a building begins to decay and
crumble, shifting the balance in favor of nature. In this shift something decisive
occurs: nature and spirit separate to reveal their "original enmity," as if the intro-
duction of artistic form is already an act of violence. But the ruin is not, in fact,
the separation of nature and spirit, but, as Simmel claims, a growth in the forces
and forms of nature producing a new unity. This unity is not longer grounded
in human purposiveness, but "in that depth where human purposiveness and the
working of non-conscious natural forces grow from their common root."26 "It
is the fascination of the ruin," Simmel writes, "that here the work of human life
appears to us as entirely a product of nature."27 This reversal of the more typical
order in art has a metaphysical significance: the return to the earth in the ruin is
the realization of a tendency in the existence of the destroyed, as if the satisfac-
tion in the art of ruin is enjoined to the "secret justice of destruction."
But the ruin remains art, preserving the tension between nature and freedom,
only now in the equalizing in which works "can no longer create and maintain
their own forms out of their own strength."28 What we learn from the example
of the ruin is that it is no easy matter for spirit to make the world its own. And
to turn back to Kant, one has to wonder if nature, under the demand of free-
dom, is ever anything but an accomplice to freedom s demand, and as such Kant
does not bring into play an element that would further life—the furtherance of
freedom in a still deeper sense.

References

Cassirer, Ernst. 1981. Kant s Life and Thought. Translated by James Haden. New Ha-
ven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1930. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by Louis Infield. London:
Methuen.
25. Kurt Wolff, cd. 1959, Georg Simmel, 1858-1918 (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press).
26. Wolff, 1959,260.
27. Wolff, 1959,261.
28. Wolff, 1959,266.

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104 The Demand of Freedom in Kant's Critique ofJudgment

. 1974. Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Mary

Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
. 1978. Lectures on Philosophical Theology. Translated by Alan Wood and Ger-
trude Clark. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
. 2000. Critique ofthe Power of Judgment. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric
Matthews. New York: Cambridge University Press.
. 2005. Notes and Fragments. Translated by Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer and
Frederick Rauscher. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wolff, Kurt, ed. 1959. Georg Simmel, 1858-1918. Columbusut : Ohio State Univer-
sity Press.
Vaihinger, Hans. 1935. The Philosophy ofthe !As If*. Translated by C.K. Ogden. Lon-
don: Roudedge and Kegan Paul.
Zammito, John. 1992. The Genesis of Kants Critique of Judgment. Chicago, IL: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.

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