Welcome! 登入 註冊
美寶首頁 美寶百科 美寶論壇 美寶部落格 美寶地圖

Advanced

Critique of Judgment: §5 Comparison of the Three Sorts of Liking, Which Differ in Kind / Translated by Werner Pluhar

Posted by HP 
Section 5 of Critique of Judgment by Immanuel Kant, translated by Werner Pluhar

Both the agreeable and the good refer to our power of desire and hence carry a liking with them, the agreeable a liking that is conditioned pathologically by stimuli (stimuli), the good a pure practical liking that is determined not just by the presentation of the object but also by the presentation of the subject's connection with the existence of the object; i.e., what we like is not just the object but its existence as well. A judgment of taste, on the other hand, is merely contemplative, i.e., it is a judgment that is indifferent to the existence of the object: it [considers] the character of the object only by holding it up to our feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Nor is this contemplation, as such, directed to concepts, for a judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment (whether theoretical or practical) and hence is neither based on concepts, nor directed to them as purposes.

Hence the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good designate three different relations that presentations have to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, the feeling by reference to which we distinguish between objects or between ways of presenting them. The terms of approbation which are appropriate to each of these three are also different. We call agreeable what GRATIFIES us, beautiful what we just LIKE, good what we ESTEEM, or endorse [billigen], i.e., that to which we attribute [setzen] an objective value. Agreeableness holds for nonrational animals too; beauty only for human beings, i.e., beings who are animal and yet rational, though it is not enough that they be rational (e.g., spirits) but they must be animal as well; the good, however, holds for every rational being as such, though I cannot fully justify and explain this proposition until later. We may say that, of all these three kinds of liking, only the liking involved in taste for the beautiful is disinterested and free, since we are not compelled to give our approval by any interest, whether of sense or of reason. So we might say that [the term] liking, in the three cases mentioned, refers to inclination, or to favor, or to respect. For FAVOR is the only free liking. Neither an object of inclination, nor one that a law of reason enjoins on us as an object of desire, leaves us the freedom to make an object of pleasure for ourselves out of something or other. All interest either presupposes a need or gives rise to one; and, because interest is the basis that determines approval, it makes the judgment about the object unfree.

Consider, first, the interest of inclination, [which occurs] with the agreeable. Here everyone says: Hunger is the best sauce; and to people with a healthy appetite anything is tasty provided it is edible. Hence if people have a liking of this sort, that does not prove that they are selecting [Wahl] by taste. Only when their need has been satisfied can we tell who in a multitude of people has taste and who does not. In the same way, second, one can find manners (conduite) without virtue, politeness without benevolence, propriety without integrity, and so on. For where the moral law speaks we are objectively no longer free to select what we must do; and to show taste in our conduct (or in judging other people's conduct) is very different from expressing our moral way of thinking. For this contains a command and gives rise to a need, whereas moral taste only plays with the objects of liking without committing itself to any of them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2010 02:51AM by HP.
(編輯記錄)

Re: The Section 5 of Kant's 《Critique of Judgment》

分類標籤: 康德判斷力批判
I think the third paragraph is very difficult to comprehend. It switches the text from things more about statements to arguments, especially the last part:

......to show taste in our conduct (or in judging other people's conduct) is very different from expressing our moral way of thinking. For this contains a command and gives rise to a need, whereas moral taste only plays with the objects of liking without committing itself to any of them.

It would be interesting to know what is our moral way of thinking and what moral taste only plays with the objects of liking (without committing itself to any of them) means.