自由遊戲與美的形式　49
Free Play and Beautiful Form:
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Kant on Judgment of Taste
Jyh-Jong Jeng**
Abstract
Kant maintains that the only principle of the judgment of taste is the
principle of aesthetic purposiveness of nature. The two central concepts of which
this principle consists are free play and beautiful Form. Many interpreters
complain that Kant’s concept of free play is obscure and ambiguous, and criticize
that Kant can do no more than use metaphorical expressions to explicate his idea;
and, as a result, they attempt to modify and supplement Kant’s idea with their own
interpretations. Among those newly proposed interpretations, Paul Guyer’s so-called
“meta-cognitive” interpretation is seemingly regarded as the most comprehensive
and persuasive.
This paper aims to immanently analyze and criticize Kant’s concept of free
play so as to illuminate Kant’s “transcendental conception” of the judgment of taste,
and then to argue that not only is Kant’s concept of free play coherent, it also has
its modern meaning. The fundamental point of Kant’s transcendental conception is
that a priori ground of the possibility of the judgment of taste is established on the
basis of the features and procedure of the power of judgment.
My analysis is conducted through the following four steps. First, the
concept of free play is clarified and explicated by rearranging and comparing the
relevant paragraphs of Kant. Second, the two fundamental assumptions of the
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Received October 08, 2008; revised January 14, 2009; accepted January 15, 2009.
Proofreaders: Yi-Jen Tsai. Ya-Ting Yang.
Thanks to the National Science Council, Taiwan, for their financial support (NSC932411-H-007-016-). Because of its length, this article is published in two parts. The first part,
containing the Chinese abstract, introduction and section one was published in the previous issue
(No.19, February 2009).
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Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Philosophy, National Tsing Hua University
50　《東吳哲學學報》第二十期 (8, 2009)
“meta-cognitive” interpretation, which Guyer attributes to Kant, are analyzed
and criticized. In the first two steps, in addition to clarifying the concept of free
play and explicating Kant’s underlying conception of the judgment of taste, the
principal difficulties and problems about understanding Kant’s concept of free
play are also pointed out. This set of difficulties and problems can be regarded
as a leading thread that can be used to organize this paper’s discourse structure.
Two major problems are identified from this analysis: (1) How does an aesthetic
representation relate to an object? (2) How is the mutual promotion or prevention
between imagination and understanding in the aesthetic mere reflection to be
understood and interpreted? Third, Kant’s transcendental conception of free
play and his principle of aesthetic purposiveness are explicated by comparing the
similarities and differences of the procedures adopted in aesthetic “mere reflection”
and “cognitive reflection” by imagination and understanding. Finally I shall
succinctly explain how to apply the principle of aesthetic purposiveness to the
judgment of “adherent beauty” ; the explanation aims to show that the judgment of
adherent beauty is still a judgment of taste about beauty of an object, rather than
a judgment about the satisfaction in the perfection; and that although the latter is
also a “sensible” (aesthetic) judgment, it is no longer a judgment of taste in Kant’s
sense, because it contains a concealed judgment of reason about the perfection.
Keywords: Imagination, Free Play, Aesthetic Form, Judgment of Taste, Mere
Reflection