Kant: Reflective vs Determining Judgment

In both Introductions to the Critique of Judgment Kant seems to identify the a priori principle at the basis of aesthetic judgments with the principle that guides reflective judgment in its cognitive inquiry of nature, i.e. the purposiveness of nature or systematicity. For instance Kant writes.

The Critique of the Power of Judgment (a more accurate rendition of what has hitherto been translated as the Critique of Judgment) is the third of Kant's great critiques following the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason. This entirely new translation of Kant's masterpiece follows the principles and high standards of all other volumes in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. This volume includes: for the first time the indispensable first draft of Kant's (...) introduction to the work; the only English edition notes to the many differences between the first (1790) and second (1793) editions of the work; and relevant passages in Kant's anthropology lectures where he elaborated on his aesthetic views. All in all this new edition offers the serious student of Kant a dramatically richer, more complete and more accurate translation. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to discuss primarily the epistemological theory of reflection as seen by Heinrich Rickert, the main representative of Neo-Kantianism Baden School. The most important arguments put forward by Rickert against taking the cognition as a reflection of the reality are being analysed. Rickert’s standpoint turns out to be moderate. He argues against the transcendental theory of reflection, but does not reject the idea of reflection as a model of cognition and takes the immanent theory of (...) reflection as relatively justified. The paper contains also a discussion of the standpoint of another representative of Baden School, Emil Lask, who has rejected the theory of reflection in favour of the after-image theory. (shrink)

This article researches the historical and systematic background of Kant’s reflecting power of judgment theory based on a historical study of the concept of wit [ingenium, Witz]. Although the Notes from Lessons on Anthropology even expound the meaning of this concept in the context of Baumgarten’s empirical psychology, this material helps us interpret the concept of wit as one of the most important precedents of the reflecting power of judgment theory presented in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. The (...) exposition of wit furthermore highlights the systematic and historic connection between the third Critique and the theory of the hypothetical use of reason found in the Appendix of the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore historically the origin of the difficulty of founding the reflecting power of judgment as Kant outlines it in the Preface to the third Critique. Despite that a foundation of the power of judging in the system of Transcendental Philosophy was only established in 1790, we must interpret it as a critical solution for an old problem, which Kant had already recognized around 1770. Through his comprehension of the meaning of healthy understanding he (...) already confirms the impossibility of determining the correctness of our judging activity from the use of rules. This insight of the problem must be understood in the context of the controversy about the relation between logica naturalis and logica artificialis as it occurs in the Leibniz-Wolffian aesthetics and logic. Although Kant had not yet developed the transcendental critique of taste around 1770, he already elucidates the problematic of judging through the model of taste and in close conjunction with this tradition. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore historically the origin of the difficulty of founding the reflecting power of judgment as Kant outlines it in the Preface to the third Critique. Despite that a foundation of the power of judging in the system of Transcendental Philosophy was only established in 1790, we must interpret it as a critical solution for an old problem, which Kant had already recognized around 1770. Through his comprehension of the meaning of healthy understanding he (...) already confirms the impossibility of determining the correctness of our judging activity from the use of rules. This insight of the problem must be understood in the context of the controversy about the relation between logica naturalis and logica artificialis as it occurs in the Leibniz-Wolffian aesthetics and logic. Although Kant had not yet developed the transcendental critique of taste around 1770, he already elucidates the problematic of judging through the model of taste and in close conjunction with this tradition. (shrink)

This paper argues that the cognitive status and cognitive value of thoughts should be clarified through a description of the mechanics of the theoretical power of judgment. Three pairs of concepts essentially constitute its tools: 1. determinative and reflective judgments; 2. constitutive and regulative principles; and 3. transcendental and empirical applications. Against the general approach to dealing with these concepts, i.e., against the tendency to consider them as synonymous or as forming a parallel structure, this article sharpens the distinctions between (...) these three pairs of concepts. For that reason the methodological hypothesis according to which there is no inner relation between these respective pairs of concepts will be put to the test. The hypothesis says that these concepts should be prima facie combinable: e. g., one should be able to say what a judgment that is simultaneously transcendental, regulative and determining would be like, or why such a combination is impossible. Combining the three concept-pairs creates eight possibilities that are presented systematically in the table at the end of the article. The discussion shows the precise status of each kind of law of nature and their relationships to empirical experience are described in greater detail. (shrink)