The Power of Judgment
Seminar
“Kant: Critique of the Power of Judgment”
University of Iceland
Session 3
20/9/2007
Text: Introduction (III-IX)
Claus Beisbart
What the power of judgment is
“The power of judgment in general is the faculty for thinking
the particular under the universal.”
- “the rule, the principle, the law”
- a concept
NB. R. Brandom: Kant’s insight: concepts as rules.
Translation: Guyer/Matthews 66 f.
Remark 1
Under this definition, the power of judgment is important for
both practical and theoretical philosophy (or theoretical
knowledge and practical reasoning).
Theoretical knowledge:
think of a wale as a mammal
Practical reasoning:
think of a certain action as a lie
Remark 2
What is sometimes been taken as a matter of judgment:
Application of concepts to particular cases:
sometimes borderline cases,
but, ultimately, there is an answer:
 “this is a matter of judgment”
Cf. Wittgenstein’s rule following problem: What makes it the
case that a certain instance counts as a correct application of
a rule? (Philosophical investigations)
Two kinds of power of judgment
Power of judgment
determining
reflecting
Universal rule/concept given
?
particular
particular
Translation: Guyer/Matthews
The determining power of judgment
Doesn’t have its own rule
Otherwise: regress problem (this isn’t Kant’s argument in Introduction II, but he has a similar argument in the Preface, p. 57)
Rule R1
Does this particular thing match the rule R1?
Rule R2 (as a different rule characteristic of poj)
But:
Does this particular problem match the rule R2?
(if it doesn’t, we can’t apply the rule R2!)
We need another rule R3, and so on.
The determining power of judgment
Conclusion of the regress argument:
The decision whether a certain rule applies to a particular case
shouldn’t be modeled as guided by another rule, because then the
questions arises: Is it okay to apply the other rule? If we need
another rule to answer this question, we are left with a regress
problem.
If you find the regress argument difficult, you could just say that,
whenever the determining power of judgment is at work, a rule (a
concept etc.) is already given, and this is enough (cf. p. 67).
The reflecting power of judgment
Warning: “reflection” is a technical term for Kant. It doesn’t
just mean “thought” etc.
Two kinds of reflection (this distinction is not in Kant)
1. The universal rule is in principle known to you, but at
the moment you don’t think of it.
2. The universal rule is not yet known to you at all.
A principle for the reflecting poj (I)
Natural laws
General laws
derive from the categories
of the understanding
Particular laws
Necessary conditions on
nature/experience
e.g. masses attract
each other
(Newton’s law of
gravitation)
Known a priori
Known a posteriori
A principle for the reflecting poj (II)
Particular natural laws
- are contingent for us (empiric research needed)
- are necessary as laws.
Unity of special laws required before experience
 A new a priori principle
A principle for the reflecting poj (III)
Analogy
General laws derive from our understanding (they enfold our
conceptual scheme)
Idea: Also the particular laws derive from an understanding
(which is not ours)
Principle:
Try to find very general rules by assuming that an
understanding has created a unity of particular laws “for the
sake of our faculty of cognition, in order to make possible a
system of experience in accordance with particular laws of
Translation: Guyer/Matthews, 67 f.
nature”
A principle for the reflecting poj (IV)
“for the sake of”  purpose
 principle of purposiveness of Nature
Status of the Principle:
- as if-mode: The principle entitles a kind of “as-if” thinking, but the purposiveness of Nature is not supposed to be
a substantive result a scientist could come up with.
- the reflecting poj gives a law to itself, not to nature
- regulative principle
A principle for the reflecting poj (V)
“But since such a unity [of particular laws] must still necessarily
be presupposed and assumed, for otherwise no thoroughgoing
interconnection of empirical cognitions into a whole of experience
would take place, because the universal laws of nature yield such
an interconnection among things with respect to their genera, as
things of nature in general, but not specifically, as such and such
particular beings in nature, the power of judgment must thus
assume it as an a priori principle and for its own use that what is
contingent for human insight in the particular (empirical) laws of
nature nevertheless contains a lawful unity, not fathomable by us
but still thinkable, in the combination of its manifold into one
experience possible in itself.”
Translation: Guyer/Matthews, 70
The principle of purposiveness at work
More concrete maxims of the power of judgment
“Nature takes the shortest way […]”
“it makes no leaps […]” (cf. Natura non facit saltus)
“the great multiplicity of its empirical laws is nevertheless unity
under a few principles”
Translation: Guyer/Matthews, 69
A modern example: J. C. Maxwell
Before Maxwell (a nineteenth century physicist):
various phenomena with electric currents and magnets
were known (“phenomenological laws”).
Maxwell’s equations describe these phenomena in a unified and
condensed way
Maxwell’s equations exemplify a unification program in physics.
Unification as a task for science. M. Friedman: Science has to
explains things, and to explain things means to account for a
variety of phenomena in a unified way.
The power of judgment and pleasure
If we find unity in the particular laws, then this can be thought of
as the realization of a goal.
Quite generally, the realization of a goal gives us pleasure
The exercise of the reflecting power of judgment goes along with
pleasure
The power of judgment has a legislation for our feeling of
pleasure.
The related pleasure is in some sense aprioristic.
See Guyer/Matthews, 73
The mediating role of the poj. (I)
“The effect in accordance with the concept of freedom is the final
end, which (or its appearance in the sensible world) should exist,
for which the condition of its possibility in nature (in the nature of
the subject as a sensible being, that is as a human being) is
presupposed. That which presupposes this a priori and without
regard to the practical, namely, the power of judgment, provides
the mediating concept between the concepts of nature and the
concept of freedom, which makes possible the transition from the
purely theoretical to the purely practical, from lawfulness in
accordance with the former to the final end in accordance with the
latter, in the concept of a purposiveness of nature […]”
Translation: Guyer/Matthews, 81 f.
The mediating role of the poj. (II)
“Through the possibility of its a priori laws for nature the
understanding gives a proof that nature is cognized by us only as
appearance, and hence at the same time an indication of its
supersensible substratum; but it leaves this entirely underdetermined. The power of judgment, through its a priori
principle for judging nature in accordance with possible particular
laws for it, provides for its supersensible substratum (in us as well
as outside us) determinability through the intellectual faculty.
But reason provides determination for the same substratum
through its practical law a priori.”
Translation: Guyer/Matthews, 82.
The structure of the third Critique (I)
Purposiveness of nature
purely aesthetic
representation
logical
representation
Where does the distinction come from?
representation
(perception in a broad sense, idea in the Lockean sense)
aesthetic properties
relate to subject
logical validity
relates to object, objective knowledge
See Guyer/Matthews, 75
The structure of the third Critique (II)
Critique of the Power of Judgment
Critique of the aesthetic
power of judgment
Critique of the
teleological power of judgment
Subjective purposiveness
Real/objective purposiveness
See Guyer/Matthews, 79