The immediate synthesis of the representation of an object with pleasure can only be a matter of internal perception, and, were nothing more than this sought to be indicated, would only yield a mere empirical judgement.For with no representation can I a priori connect a determinate feeling (of pleasure or displeasure) except where I rely upon the basis of an a priori principle in reason determining the will.The truth is that the pleasure (in the moral feeling) is the consequence of the determination of the will by the principle.It cannot, therefore, be compared with the pleasure in taste.For it requires a determinate concept of a law: whereas the pleasure in taste has to be connected immediately with the sample estimate prior to any concept.For the same reason, also, all judgements of taste are singular judgements, for they unite their predicate of delight, not to a concept, but to a given singular empirical representation.
Hence, in a judgement of taste, what is represented a priori as a universal rule for the judgement and as valid for everyone, is not the pleasure but the universal validity of this pleasure perceived, as it is, to be combined in the mind with the mere estimate of an object.
A judgement to the effect that it is with pleasure that I perceive and estimate some object is an empirical judgement.But if it asserts that I think the object beautiful, i.e., that I may attribute that delight to everyone as necessary, it is then an a priori judgement.
SS 38.Deduction of judgements of taste.
Admitting that in a pure judgement of taste the delight in the object is connected with the mere estimate of its form, then what we feel to be associated in the mind with the representation of the object is nothing else than its subjective finality for judgement.
Since, now, in respect of the formal rules of estimating, apart from all matter (whether sensation or concept), judgement can only be directed to the subjective conditions of its employment in general (which is not restricted to the particular mode of sense nor to a particular concept of the understanding), and so can only be directed to that subjective factor which we may presuppose in all men (as requisite for a possible experience generally), it follows that the accordance of a representation with these conditions of the judgement must admit of being assumed valid a priori for every one.In other words, we are warranted in exacting from every one the pleasure or subjective finality of the representation in respect of the relation of the cognitive faculties engaged in the estimate of a sensible object in general.
In order to be justified in claiming universal agreement an aesthetic judgement merely resting on subjective grounds, it is sufficient to assume: (1) that the subjective conditions of this faculty of aesthetic judgement are identical with all men in what concerns the relation of the cognitive faculties, there brought into action, with a view to a cognition in general.This must be true, as otherwise men would be incapable of communicating their representations or even their knowledge; (2) that the judgement has paid regard merely to this relation (consequently merely to the formal condition of the faculty of judgement), and is pure, i.e., is free from confusion either with concepts of the object or sensations as determining grounds.If any mistake is made in this latter point, this only touches the incorrect application to a particular case of the right which a law gives us, and does not do away with the right generally.
Remark.
What makes this deduction so easy is that it is spared the necessity of having to justify the objective reality of a concept.For beauty is not a concept of the object, and the judgement of taste is not a cognitive judgement.All that it holds out for is that we are justified in presupposing that the same subjective conditions of judgement which we find in ourselves are universally present in every man, and further that we have rightly subsumed the given object under these conditions.The latter, no doubt, has to face unavoidable difficulties which do not affect the logical judgement.
(For there the subsumption is under concepts; whereas in the aesthetic judgement it is under a mere sensible relation of the imagination and understanding mutually harmonizing with one another in the represented form of the object, in which case the subsumption may easily prove fallacious.) But this in no way detracts from the legitimacy of the claim of the judgement to count upon universal agreement-a claim which amounts to no more than this: the correctness of the principle of judging validly for every one upon subjective grounds.For as to the difficulty and uncertainty concerning the correctness of the subsumption under that principle, it no more casts a doubt upon the legitimacy of the claim to this validity on the part of an aesthetic judgement generally, or, therefore, upon the principle itself, than the mistakes (though.not so often or easily incurred), to which the subsumption of the logical judgement under its principle is similarly liable, can render the latter principle, which is objective, open to doubt.But if the question were: How is it possible to assume a priori that nature is a complex of objects of taste? the problem would then have reference to teleology, because it would have to be regarded as an end of nature belonging essentially to its concept that it should exhibit forms that are final for our judgement.But the correctness of this assumption may still be seriously questioned, while the actual existence of beauties of nature is patent to experience.
SS 39.The communicability of a sensation.
