Collected Works of Immanuel Kant

by Immanuel Kant

The land of shadows is the paradise of dreamers.

Nevertheless, I dare assert that all these smatterers could be placed in a most awkward embarrassment, if it should occur to somebody to insist upon the question, just what kind of a thing that is about which these people think they understand so much.

A spirit, they say, is a being possessed of reason.

For by their presence they operate in space, but do not fill it, i.e., they cause no resistance, which is the basis of solidity.3 If such a simple spiritual substance be supposed, — notwithstanding its indivisibility, — it can be said that the space where it is immediately present is not a point, but itself a space.

The animal is a plant which has its roots in the stomach (inside).

The immaterial then would primarily comprise all created intelligences. Some of these are combined with matter, thus forming a person, and some not.

We should, therefore, have to regard the human soul as being conjoined in its present life with two worlds at the same time, of which it clearly perceives only the material world, in so far as it is conjoined with a body, and thus forms a personal unit.19 But as a member of the spiritual world it receives and gives out the pure influences of immaterial natures, so that, as soon as the accidental conjunction has ceased, only that communion remains which at all times it has with spiritual natures.

the human soul also in this life forms an indissoluble communion with all immaterial natures of the spirit-world, that, alternately, it acts upon and receives impressions from that world of which nevertheless it is not conscious while it is still man and as long as everything is in proper condition.23 On the other hand it is probable that the spiritual natures on their side can have no immediate conscious sensation of the corporeal world,24 because they are not conjoined with any part of matter which could make them aware of their place in the material world-whole, nor have they elaborate organs for entering into the mutual relations of beings of spacial extent.

Among

In order to imagine the vicious man as tormented with mental dissatisfaction by the consciousness of his transgressions, they must first represent him as in the main basis of his character, at least in some degree, morally good; just as he who is pleased with the consciousness of right conduct must be conceived as already virtuous.

Reason, which contains constitutive principles a priori nowhere except simply in respect of the faculty of desire,

The natural concepts, which contain the ground of all theoretical knowledge a priori, rest on the legislation of the Understanding.

For all faculties or capacities of the soul can be reduced to three, which cannot be any further derived from one common ground: the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the faculty of desire.9*

Now between the faculties of knowledge and desire there is the feeling of pleasure, just as the Judgement is intermediate between the Understanding and the Reason.

The reflective Judgement, which is obliged to ascend from the particular in nature to the universal, requires on that account a principle that it cannot borrow from experience, because its function is to establish the unity of all empirical principles under higher ones, and hence to establish the possibility of their systematic subordination. Such a transcendental principle, then, the reflective Judgement can only give as a law from and to itself. It cannot derive it from outside (because then it would be the determinant Judgement);

Tangible vs abstract

Thus the principle of the cognition of bodies as substances, and as changeable substances, is transcendental, if thereby it is asserted that their changes must have a cause; it is metaphysical if it asserts that their changes must have an external cause.

“Nature takes the shortest way (lex parsimoniae); at the same time it makes no leaps, either in the course of its changes or in the juxtaposition of specifically different forms (lex continui in natura); its great variety in empirical laws is yet unity under a few principles (principia praeter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda),” etc.

contingent (cannot be cognised a priori),

rejoiced (properly speaking, relieved of a want),

These rules, without which we could not proceed from the universal analogy of a possible experience in general to the particular, must be thought by it as laws (i.e. as necessary), for otherwise they would not constitute an order of nature; although their necessity can never be cognised or comprehended by it.

All the faculties of the mind All the faculties of the mind Cognitive faculties. Faculties of desire. Feeling of pleasure and pain. Cognitive faculties Understanding. Judgement. Reason. A priori principles Conformity to law. Purposiveness. Final purpose. Application to Nature. Art. Freedom.

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.

As regards the Pleasant every one is content that his judgement, which he bases upon private feeling, and by which he says of an object that it pleases him, should be limited merely to his own person. Thus he is quite contented that if he says “Canary wine is pleasant,” another man may correct his expression and remind him that he ought to say “It is pleasant to me.”

Here then we cannot say that each man has his own particular taste. For this would be as much as to say that there is no taste whatever; i.e. no aesthetical judgement, which can make a rightful claim upon every one’s assent.

Aesthetic judgment influences others in that people adhere to opinions based on taste.

The beautiful is that which pleases universally, without a concept.

Every purpose, if it be regarded as a ground of satisfaction, always carries with it an interest — as the determining ground of the judgement — about the object of pleasure.

Every interest spoils the judgement of taste and takes from its impartiality, especially if the purposiveness is not, as with the interest of Reason, placed before the feeling of pleasure but grounded on it.

The faculty of concepts, be they confused or clear, is the Understanding;

Idea properly means a rational concept, and Ideal the representation of an individual being, regarded as adequate to an Idea.

Beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, so far as this is perceived in it without any representation of a purpose.

The judgement of taste requires the agreement of every one; and he who describes anything as beautiful claims that every one ought to give his approval to the object in question and also describe it as beautiful.

The beautiful is that which without any concept is cognised as the object of a necessary satisfaction.

beautiful objects are to be distinguished from beautiful views of objects

the Sublime as that of a like concept of Reason.

The estimation of magnitude by means of concepts of number (or their signs in Algebra) is mathematical; but that in mere intuition (by the measurement of the eye) is aesthetical.

Who would call sublime, e.g. shapeless mountain masses piled in wild disorder upon each other with their pyramids of ice, or the gloomy raging sea?

The feeling of our incapacity to attain to an Idea, which is a law for us, is RESPECT.

Might is that which is superior to great hindrances. It is called dominion if it is superior to the resistance of that which itself possesses might. Nature considered in an aesthetical judgement as might that has no dominion over us, is dynamically sublime.

Bold, overhanging, and as it were threatening, rocks; clouds piled up in the sky, moving with lightning flashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence of destruction; hurricanes with their track of devastation; the boundless ocean in a state of tumult; the lofty waterfall of a mighty river, and such like; these exhibit our faculty of resistance as insignificantly small in comparison with their might. But the sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is, provided only that we are in security; and we readily call these objects sublime, because they raise the energies of the soul above their accustomed height, and discover in us a faculty of resistance of a quite different kind, which gives us courage to measure ourselves against the apparent almightiness of nature. Now, in the immensity of nature, and in the inadequacy of our faculties for adopting a standard proportionate to the aesthetical estimation of the magnitude of its realm, we find our own limitation; although at the same time in our rational faculty we find a different, non-sensuous standard, which has that infinity itself under it as a unit, and in comparison with which everything in nature is small. Thus in our mind we find a superiority to nature even in its immensity. And so also the irresistibility of its might, while making us recognise our own [physical48*] impotence, considered as beings of nature, discloses to us a faculty of judging independently of, and a superiority over, nat...

It appears to conflict with this solution of the concept of the sublime, so far as sublimity is ascribed to might, that we are accustomed to represent God as presenting Himself in His wrath and yet in His sublimity, in the tempest, the storm, the earthquake, etc.; and that it would be foolish and criminal to imagine a superiority of our minds over these works of His, and, as it seems, even over the designs of such might. Hence it would appear that no feeling of the sublimity of our own nature, but rather subjection, abasement, and a feeling of complete powerlessness, is a fitting state of mind before the manifestation of such an object, and this is generally bound up with the Idea of it during natural phenomena of this kind. Generally in religion, prostration, adoration with bent head, with contrite, anxious demeanour and voice, seems to be the only fitting behaviour in presence of the Godhead; and hence most peoples have adopted and still observe it. But this state of mind is far from being necessarily bound up with the Idea of the sublimity of a religion and its object. The man who is actually afraid, because he finds reasons for fear in himself, whilst conscious by his culpable disposition of offending against a Might whose will is irresistible and at the same time just, is not in the frame of mind for admiring the divine greatness. For this a mood of calm contemplation and a quite free judgement are needed. Only if he is conscious of an upright disposition pleasing to ...

The Beautiful is what pleases in the mere judgement (and therefore not by the medium of sensation in accordance with a concept of the Understanding). It follows at once from this that it must please apart from all interest. The Sublime is what pleases immediately through its opposition to the interest of sense.

We may describe the Sublime thus: it is an object (of nature) the representation of which determines the mind to think the unattainability of nature regarded as a presentation of Ideas.

And although the immediate pleasure in the Beautiful of nature likewise presupposes and cultivates a certain liberality in our mental attitude, i.e. a satisfaction independent of mere sensible enjoyment, yet freedom is thus represented as in play rather than in that law-directed occupation which is the genuine characteristic of human morality, in which Reason must exercise dominion over Sensibility.

Astonishment, that borders upon terror, the dread and the holy awe which seizes the observer at the sight of mountain peaks rearing themselves to heaven, deep chasms and streams raging therein, deep-shadowed solitudes that dispose one to melancholy meditations — this, in the safety in which we know ourselves to be, is not actual fear, but only an attempt to feel fear by the aid of the Imagination; that we may feel the might of this faculty in combining with the mind’s repose the mental movement thereby excited, and being thus superior to internal nature, — and therefore to external, — so far as this can have any influence on our feeling of well-being.

(gratification or grief);

Attaining something vs. Losing something.

if we were pure intelligences (or even regarded ourselves as such in thought).

We don't regard ourselves as pure.

The object of a pure and unconditioned intellectual satisfaction is the Moral Law in that might which it exercises in us over all mental motives that precede it.

Civilizizing social contracts usurping and dominating primal instincts/ideas.

Hence it follows that the intellectual, in itself purposive, (moral) good, aesthetically judged, must be represented as sublime rather than beautiful, so that it rather awakens the feeling of respect (which disdains charm) than that of love and familiar inclination; for human nature does not attach itself to this good spontaneously, but only by the authority which Reason exercises over Sensibility.

The Idea of the Good conjoined with affection is called enthusiasm.

Emotions, which may rise to the strength of affections, are very different. We have both spirited and tender emotions. The latter, if they rise to the height of affections, are worthless; the propensity to them is called sentimentality. A sympathetic grief that will not admit of consolation, or one referring to imaginary evils to which we deliberately surrender ourselves — being deceived by fancy — as if they were actual, indicates and produces a tender,57* though weak, soul — which shows a beautiful side and which can be called fanciful, though not enthusiastic. Romances, lacrymose plays, shallow moral precepts, which toy with (falsely) so-called moral dispositions, but in fact make the heart languid, insensible to the severe precept of duty, and incapable of all respect for the worth of humanity in our own person, and for the rights of men (a very different thing from their happiness), and in general incapable of all steady principle; even a religious discourse,58* which recommends a cringing, abject seeking of favour and ingratiation of ourselves, which proposes the abandonment of all confidence in our own faculties in opposition to the evil within us, instead of a sturdy resolution to endeavour to overcome our inclinations by means of those powers which with all our frailty yet remain to us; that false humility which sets the only way of pleasing the Supreme Being in self-depreciation, in whining hypocritical repentance and in a mere passive state of mind — these are n...