The principle of teleology in the critical philosophy of Kant

Contents

PAGE

PART I.— Historic al

\ I. Development of Kant's doctrine of the three-fold nature of mind, .... i

\ 2. Changes in the form and problem of the third Critique, 16

PART II. — The Critique of Judgment as a mediation of Kant's theoretical and practical Philosophy.

\ I. Formal and real mediation distinguished, 30

\ 2. Relation of the theoretical and practical philosophy, 34

\ 3. Kant's theory of the Beautiful, 49

(a) The doctrine of harmony, 6r

(b) Distinction between beauty and perfection, ... 68 fc) The doctrine of ' ' purposiyeness without purpose, ' ' 74

(d) Universality and necessity of aesthetic judgments, 76

(e) The beautiful object a union of freedom and na-

ture, 79

\ 4. Design in organic nature, 81

\ 5. Relation of the principle of Teleology to Kant's ethical

doctrines 8q

Preface

This Essay consists of two parts : the first being historical ; the second, expository and critical. In the historical part, an effort has been made to trace the influences and steps which led to the displacement of Aristotle's bipartite division of the fundamental powers of mind by the present generally accepted division into Intellect, Feeling, and Will. It is also shown in Part I that Kant's original plan comprised only the critiques of pure and practical philosophy, and that the third Critique was designed at a later time, to establish a priori principles for the newly discoved faculty of Feeling. Finally, it is maintained that Kant combined the Critique of Teleology with the Critique of Taste, and issued them under a common title — the Critique of Judgment — because both works center about the notion of purposiveness, or design. Part II is devoted to a consideration of the Critique of Judgment as a mediating link between the critiques of pure and practical philosophy ; or, if one is thinking of the content — the inner nature of three Critiques — the object is to consider the principle of teleology, which the Critique of Judgment illustrates, as a means of mediating the modes of thought prevailing in the realms of freedom and nature.

The edition of Kant's works by Rosenkranz and Schubert is referred to as R., and Hartenstein's second edition is indicated by the letter H. In the same way references have been made to Max Miiller's translation vi Preface.

of the Critique of Pure Reason, and Bernard's translation of the Critique of fudgment as M. and B., respectively.

I am, of course, indebted to many authors and books for help and suggestion on particular points, and in most cases I have been able to acknowledge this indebtedness by foot-notes. My obligations to Professor Caird's, The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, are, however, so great as to require special acknowledgement. I am also glad to have this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to all the professors under whom I studied while a member of the graduate department of Cornell University. And, in particular, I wish to express my obligations to Professor J. E. Creighton for encouragement and direction in the preparation of this work.

Ithaca, N. Y., August, 1897.-

PART I.

HISTORICAL.

§ I. DEVELOPMENT OF KANT'S DOCTRINE OF THE THREE-FOLD NATURE OF MIND.

The division of the Critical Philosophy into three parts rests upon Kant's recognition of three distinct mental faculties — Intellect, Feeling, and Will. That Kant was aware of the influence of his psychology in determining the main lines or divisions of his investigations, is clearly shown by the following sentences from a letter to Reinhold, 1787 : " I am at present engaged in a Critique of Taste and have in this way been led to the discovery of another kind of a priori principles than I had formerly recognized. For the faculties of the mind are three ; the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the will. I have discovered a priori principles for the first of these in the Critique of Pure Reason, and for the third, in the Critique of Practical Reason ; but my search for similar principles for the second seemed at first fruitless." 1 Many passages similar to the extract just quoted from the letter to Reinhold may be found in the Critique of fudgment, and also in the treatise Ueber Philosophie iiberhaupt, which was published in 1794. The following from § 3 of the Introduction to the former work is typical : " All the faculties or capacities of the mind can be reduced to three, which cannot be any further derived from one

1 R. XI. 86. H. VIII. 739 f. Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant. II. pp. 406 f.

common ground : The faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the faculty of desire. For the faculty of knowing the Understanding is alone a priori legislative by means of natural concepts. For the faculty of desire the Reason is alone a priori legislative. We may suppose, therefore, that Judgment which stands midway between Understanding and Reason may contain a priori principles for feeling." For each of the three faculties, Intellect, Feeling, and Will, there are, according to Kant's final statement, a priori principles of activity ; it is the province of the three Critiques to exhibit and explain those principles. In its completed form, therefore, the Critical Philosophy comprised three works corresponding to the three mental powers enumerated above.

Although it is true that the division of the Critical Philosophy into three parts rests upon the three-fold division of mind, and that each Critique has special reference to one particular faculty, it would be quite mistaken to suppose that Kant consciously set about the critical inquiry, to discover, if possible, a priori principles for each of the three mental faculties. We know, on the contrary, that the original plan comprised only a Critique of theoretical philosophy, and a Critique of practical philosophy, corresponding to the faculties of cognition and desire. The proof of this is derived from the famous letter to Herz of 1772. Kant's words there are: "I am planning a work under the title, The limits of Sensibility and Reason. The work will consist of two parts, a theoretical and a practical. The first falls into two sections : first, Phenomenology in general ; and second, the nature and methods of Metaphysics. The second, likewise, falls into two parts : first, the general principles of feeling, of taste and of sensuous desires ; second,

Development of Kanfs Psychology. 3

the foundations of morality." 1 It is here distinctly stated that the work contemplated is to consist of a theoretical and a practical part, and although Kant's plans were greatly changed subsequently, the Critiques of pure and practical reason are clearly foreshadowed in the passage just quoted. But it was not until Kant came to recognize the importance of the feeling life, and finally to coordinate Intellect, Feeling, and Will, that he conceived the plan of writing a third Critique dealing specially with Feeling as the completion of his system. Only after a vast amount of investigation and reflection by himself and his contemporaries upon the emotional experience did Feeling come to be differentiated from Intellect and Will, and not until Feeling had been thus marked off from and coordinated with those faculties did Kant see the necessity of assigning to it also a priori principles of activity. 2 It is now proposed to set forth, briefly, the steps and influences by which Kant came to accord Feeling a place beside Intellect and Will.

Before the middle of the 18th century, roughly speaking, Psychologists had recognized only two main mental faculties — Cognition and Desire. To quote Sir William Hamilton : " The feelings were not recognized by any philosophers as the manifestation of any fundamental power. The distinction taken in the Peripatetic School by which the mental modifications were divided into Cognitive or Appetent and the consequent reduction of

2 Another proof that Kant's plan did not, at first, include a Critique of Taste is found in a note to page 21 of the first edition to the K. d. r. V. In this note Kant discouraged as vain all endeavors to bring the critical judgment of the beautiful to rational principles. At that time he regarded the search for a priori principles of feeling as hopeless. In the second edition of the K. d. r. V., the note is changed so as to read, 'Judgments of taste are in their principal sources empirical. '

all faculties to the faatltas cognoscendi and the facie lias appetendi was the distinction which was long most universally prevalent." 1 Feeling was regarded either as a particular kind of intellectual consciousness, a lower kind of knowledge ; or it was confounded with desire or impulse. But during the half century immediately following 1740 — a period which is characterized by historians as one of great psychological ( activity ' — Feeling came to be regarded as an independent mental function, and was assigned a place along side Intellect and Will. The activity in psychology referred to, doubtless was caused by, or rather was a part of the wave of individualism that swept over Europe in the latter part of the 1 8th century. The same individualistic movement, the same subjectivism that revolted against custom and authority might naturally be expected to revolt against metaphysic. Interest in theories of the universe, its nature and origin, was overshadowed by enthusiasm for man the individual. The watchword of the age was, " the proper study of mankind is man." Man, his happiness, his welfare present and future, his virtues and vices, strength and foibles, became the center of interest for the illuminationists. It is not surprising, therefore, that a part of this grand movement should find expression in most searching analyses of individual psychical states. There thus sprang up a luxuriant growth of psychological literature. One need only mention the works of Mendelssohn, Sulzer and Tetens in Germany ; those of Bonnet, Condillac, DeTracy, Helvetius, and Cabanis among French writers as examples of a literature rich in observations and analyses of the individual psychical states. It was during this period of great psychological interest that Feeling attained a rank equal with Intellect and

Development of Kanfs Psychology. 5

Will. It was this period that saw the displacement of the bipartite division of mind by the tripartite.

Our effort to trace the steps which led to this change must take account first of the work of Leibnitz. For while there is no disposition on the part of that philosopher to break with the old division, yet the investigations which led to the new classification of the mental powers, and especially to the reflection upon the feeling of beauty and pleasure-pain experience, are directly traceable to the influence of his doctrines. To understand Leibnitz's influence upon subsequent psychology and aesthetics it is necessary to recall a few of the leading doctrines of his philosophy. In the first place, he maintained that the world is composed of an infinite number of harmoniously related parts and that true knowledge consists in accurately mirroring that harmony. In the second place, we may recall Leibnitz's doctrine that there are three stages of clearness with which the mind mirrors the harmony and perfection of the world. 1 Corresponding to the first stage we have obscure perceptions as in a dreamless sleep or in a swoon ; corresponding to the second stage we have confused perceptions as "when one hears the roar of the sea which strikes one when on the shore, but does not perceive that the roar is made up of an infinite number of little noises." 2 We also perceive confusedly when we are unable to see that a given color is

1 The reader will notice that this account leaves out of view Leibnitz's doctrine of the continuity of all being, the theory that from the lowest monad to the highest there is a gradual increase in clearness of perception. It would be misleading to say that Leibnitz made a sharp line of division between the perceptions denominated obscure, confused, clear and distinct. On the contrary, each class shades off into those near it as dawn into daylight. The words obscure, clear, etc., are used only to mark prominent stages in the scale of perceptual being.

2 Gerhardt, Leibnitz's Schriften v. 47. Duncan's Trans., p. 293.

made by mixing two different colors, e.g., we do not see that green is caused by mixing yellow and blue. The highest stage of perception is the stage of knowledge, or truth, in which the mind faithfully and adequately represents the external world. " The mind beholds ideas as though in perspective. The nearer a picture the clearer the lines ; the further away the less clear and less distinct. We have obscure ideas when it is not possible to distinguish them from ourselves or from other ideas ; confused ideas when the elements of the ideas are not distinguishable ; distinct ideas when it is possible to resolve them into their factors." l If the ideas are distinct the mind is said to possess true knowledge, and to accurately mirror the harmony and perfection of the world. But if that perfection and harmony are indistinctly perceived the mind experiences not truth but the feeling of beauty. The pleasure which a product of art causes is the result of an unconscious recognition, a confused perception of the perfection and harmony in the relation of its parts. " Music charms us, although its beauty only consists in the harmony of numbers and in the reckoning of the beats or vibrations of sounding bodies, which meet at intervals, of which we are not conscious and which the soul does not cease to make. The pleasures which sight finds in proportions are of the same nature." 2 The harmony, or perfection, in the relation of musical vibrations, if confusedly apprehended, arouses the feeling of Beauty. If that perfection is distinctly cognised we should experience not beauty but truth. " Beauty and Truth differ only in the fact that perfection is confusedly apprehended in one case, distinctly in the other. 3 Iyeibnitz, thus, by the conception

^Schmidt, Leibnitz and Baumgarten, p. 41.

2 Prin. d. I. Nat., 17.

3 Erdtnann, History of Phil., \ 288, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Development of KanPs Psychology. 7

of Beauty as the confused apprehension of perfection moulded the character of all aesthetical speculation prior to the appearance of the critical philosophy. The men who developed that branch of philosophy merely elaborated the thought of the master.

Wolff, upon whom the mantle of L,eibnitz fell, is important for our purpose mainly because of things he did not do, but handed down as problems to his pupil Baumgarten. Following Leibnitz, Wolff distinguished two main forms of mental activity — knowing, (factiltas cognoscendi) and desiring {facultas appetendi). He also adopted Leibnitz's distinction of two forms or stages of cognition : (i) a higher form concerned with clear and distinct ideas including Attention, Understanding and Reason ; and, (2) a lower form concerned with confused ideas and comprising Sensation, Imagination, and Memory. Wolff having treated only the higher forms of cognition his pupil, Baumgarten, took up the investigation of the lower forms under the title Aesthetics, which he defined as " the science of the lower forms of knowledge. ' ' l Wolff, in his logic, had established the science of the correct use of the higher forms of mind ; Baumgarten wished to complement the logic with a science of the proper use of the lower forms of knowledge. Inheriting the Leibnitzian psychology through Wolff, he also inherited the fundamental tenet of the Leibnitzian theory

Note. — The use of the term aesthetics to designate both the theory of the beautiful and the science of the sensibility will be understood if it is remembered that the experience of the Beautiful depends upon the activity of the senses. The close connection between their activity and the beautiful experience justifies the double use of the word "Aesthetics." Sense- perception of the perfect produces the experience of the beautiful, perfection-sensed gives pleasure. The fact also that both are for Leibnitz confused knowledge warrants their inclusion under a common title.

1 Schmidt, op. cit. p. 15.

of beauty, viz., that beauty consists in a confused perception of perfection. So far as aesthetics is concerned Baumgarten's work consisted mainly in an effort to determine the subjective and objective conditions of the beautiful, and thereby contributed towards bringing into prominence the feeling life.

It seems proper at this point to consider the claim made by Gottsched, and quoted with approval by Schmidt, that Baumgarten, although adopting and retaining the main features of the Iyeibnitzian philosophy, clearly anticipated the tripartite division of mind established by Kant. 1 In support of their claim on behalf of Baumgarten they cite the fact that he distinguished clearly the faculty of cognizing anything obscurely and confusedly, or indirectly as the faculty of lower cognition from the higher faculty of knowledge which possesses logical clearness and certainty. He assumes, therefore, it is said, for the sensuous idea a special though lower faculty as an independent factor of the human mind, having its own peculiar nature, laws and perfection. It is claimed, moreover, that Baumgarten distinguishes between conceptual truth and material perfection, i. <?., sensuous truth — -Beauty — and so between logic and aesthetics as belonging to entirely different spheres. This, it is said, is a distinct advance beyond the Wolffian separation of empirical and rational disciplines. In Wolff's scheme the lower and higher faculties differed only in degree, while Baumgarten originated the idea of two separate faculties. It is very difficult to judge of the merits of this claim made on behalf of Baumgarten because of the uncertain meaning that attaches to the word 'faculty.' But it is quite probable that Baumgarten meant by ' faculty of lower

Development of Kanfs Psychology. 9

cognition ' a capacity or power (not very different from Wolff's meaning) of having knowledge of a lower order than that yielded by Reason and Understanding. It is not probable that he thought of making Feeling a faculty distinct from and coordinate with Intellect and Will as was done by Kant and the contemporary psychologists. If this view of the matter is correct, Baumgarten can scarcely be said to have advanced in his psychology beyond his teacher, Wolff.

Baumgarten's aesthetical theories were developed by Meier, a zealous student of the subject who adopted the Wolffian division of cognition into higher and lower (sensuous) forms. Like Baumgarten, Meier regarded beauty as sensuously perceived perfection, and therefore, as belonging to the lower form of knowledge. " Die Schonheit ist eine Vollkommenheit, insofern sie undeutlich oder sinnlich erkant wird. " * Meier repeatedly insisted that the schbne Erkenntniss must be indistinct, that is, sensuous. An act of the Understanding, he maintained, which analyzes a perceived object into its parts destroys the sensation of beauty ; for ' beauty is perfection confusedly apprehended ' . It is thus seen that Meier's contribution to the science of Aesthetics does not differ from, or carry any further, the work of Baumgarten ; his influence upon the psychology of his time consisted in bringing into the foreground the emotional experience.

The next noteworthy name in this connection is that of Sulzer who insisted that the Wolffian division of mind into Intellect and Will implied " an undue disregard of the sensations of the agreeable and disagreeable. " 2 To Sulzer, therefore, belongs the credit of first laying special emphasis upon the pleasure-pain experience. In the

1 Sommers, Deutsche Psychologie unci Aesthetic, p. 28.

2 Brdmann, op. cit. \ 294. 4.

io Teleology in Kanfs Critical Philosophy.

Allgemeine Theorie der schbnen Kiinste, 177T, Sulzer coordinates the faculty of sensing, i. e., of being affected in a pleasant or unpleasant manner, with the faculty of cognizing the characteristics of things. l In the same work he places the aesthetic sensibility between thought and actioii. In explaining methods of inspiring men to noble conduct he points out that one must not only appeal to the Intellect, but must touch the feelings as well. " The Understanding yields nothing but knowledge and in this there is no power of acting. If the truth is to be effective then must it not only be cognized in the form of the Good, but must also be sensed, for only by this means is the active power excited. " 2 Here Sulzer approaches very nearly to a definite statement of a tripartite division, and, perhaps, failed to do so only because he was concerned with Aesthetics and not with Psychology-

The examination of the pleasure-pain experience which Sulzer was the first to treat with special care was more thoroughly and exhaustively carried out by Mendelssohn in Brief e iiber die Empfindungen, 1755. In the Brief e, Mendelssohn contended against those who would acknowledge only Cognition and Will as fundamental activities, and demanded that Sensibility be put along side those faculties. The sensibility here referred to is the power of sensing the beautiful. In the Morgenstunden, Mendelssohn describes the character and indicates the place of the faculty of sensing the Beautiful. His language is, " As a rule one ought to distinguish two mental faculties — the cognitive and the volitional — and place the sensation of pleasure and pain with the faculty of desire. . . . But it seems that the satis-

1 Dessoir, Geschichte, d. n. Deutschen Psychologie, I, p. 269. 2 Sommers, op. tit., p. 205.

Development of KanPs Psychology. 1 1

faction one feels in the beauty of Nature and Art is wholly free from inclination or desire ; it can be contemplated with quiet satisfaction. I shall call the faculty of beauty the Billigungsvermbgen, and thereby distinguish it from cognition of the truth as well as from the desire for the good. " l That is, Mendelssohn proposes as a substitute for the old division of mind into cognition and desire a division that would include also a faculty of sensing the Beautiful. The new faculty is made to stand between the other two and unites by 'the smallest gradations ' their activity. It thus appears that the present commonly accepted division of the mind into Intellect, Feeling, and Will was first stated, though somewhat vaguely, by Mendelssohn.

In 1776, Tetens, a distinguished psychologist of the period, was led to make the same classification of the mental faculties. "I discover," he writes in the Philosophische Versuche uber die menschliche Natur und Hire Entwicklung, i three fundamental powers of mind ; Feeling, Understanding, and Will. Feeling includes sensitiveness as well as the mere feeling of new changes. The power of ideating and the power of thinking, both belong to the Understanding. The remaining faculty which is coordinated with Feeling and Understanding, and is called Will." 2 Whatever one may say of a certain vagueness in the statement of the three-fold division of the mental faculties by Sulzer, Mendelssohn, and Baumgarten, if that merit is accredited to the last named, there is no mistaking Tetens' language. It is a clear and definite statement of the division which met the approval of Kant and which was established by the might of his authority.

2 Tetens, Versuche, Vol. I, p. 625.

The result of the foregoing sketch may be summed up by noting, (i) that the three-fold division of mind owes its existence directly to the widespread activity in the field of aesthetics and to the particular trend, or direction, given that activity by the doctrines of Leibnitz and Wolff, more especially to the L,eibnitzian conception that, ' Beauty is perfection confusedly apprehended.' After the work of the writers on aesthetics had brought to the foreground the feeling life, it was but natural that the power or faculty of Feeling should attain a rank coordinate with Intellect and Will.

Contenting ourselves with this somewhat fragmentary historical outline, we have now to inquire (i) when Kant first became interested in the question of the division of the mental faculties, and (2) what influence, if any, each of the investigators mentioned above had upon his reflections upon the subject. The following passage from a work entitled Untersttchung uber die deutlichkeit der Grundsatze der natiirlichen Theologie tend Moral, published 1763, shows that at that time Kant saw the need of a careful examination of the fundamental mental faculties : " Without an exact knowledge and analysis of the many feelings of the mind, the feelings of the sublime, the beautiful, disgust, etc., the motives of our nature cannot be known. Explanations of pleasure and pain, of desire, nausea and the like have never been furnished because adequate analyses were lacking." 1 In the same treatise Kant distinguished between cognition as the faculty of perceiving the truth and feeling the faculty of sensing the goody 2 It is evident from these expressions that at that time, 1763, the problem of the

J R. I., 84, f. H. II, 288. The passage is quoted by J. B. Meyer, KanVs Psychologie, p. 41.

2 It is possible, Meyer thinks, that this distinction was suggested to Kant by Hutcheson's Theory of the moral sense.

Development of Kant's Psychology. 13

true division of the faculties was clearly before Kant. Further, an examination of the correspondence compiled by Kant's editors shows that his views experienced numerous changes before he finally settled upon the division into Intellect, Feeling, and Will. Setting aside the needless task of enumerating those changes, we proceed to the second question : What influence had Kant's contemporaries or predecessors upon his reflection on the problem of the proper classification of the fundamental mental powers ?

First, the historians agree in the statement that Kant was familiar with the works of Baumgarten and Meier, and used them as his guides in the sphere of aesthetics. These works, it is said, 1 were always before him in preparing and delivering his lectures on that subject. The influence from this source we may suppose, therefore, to have been considerable, for the obvious reason that following the lead of such zealous students of aesthetics naturally would lead to an increased knowledge and sense of the importance of the feeling life. It is highly probable, also, that Kant knew Sulzer's essay in which he had coordinated the faculty of being affected in a pleasant or unpleasant manner with the faculty of Ideas. There is no ground for supposing, however, that Kant could have received more than an impetus to his own reflection from Sulzer's work.

The two men who seem to have exerted the most direct and marked influence upon Kant are Tetens and Mendelssohn. Krdmann makes the positive, but probably not carefully considered statement, that Kant based his assumption of three distinct mental faculties upon the authority of Tetens. Meyer questions this statement, and maintains with good ground that, while Kant doubtless was familiar with Tetens' Versuche, and the three-fold division which it proposed, he received from it no more than direction and guidance in his own investigations. Kant was not the man to adopt the views of other writers without first carefully scrutinizing their validity. It would be very unlike the Copernican philosopher to adopt a view or theory on the authority of some other man or men.

Mendelssohn, in the opinion of Meyer, influenced Kant's reflections upon this subject much more than Tetens ; yet there is ground for supposing that the influence was mutual. In 1776, Mendelssohn placed the faculty of Sensation, by which we sense anything as pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, etc., between the faculties of cognition and desire. This view clearly does not accord with Kant's final statement of the tripartite division ; it differs from it especially in that it confuses the aesthetical and the ethical elements in sensation. In 1785, however, Mendelssohn made a sharp distinction between Sensation, as the faculty of sensing the pleasant and unpleasant, and the desire for and the sensation of the Good. This view approaches that expressed by Kant in the letter written to Reinhold in 1787. 1 But the strongest reason, in the opinion of Meyer, for believing that Mendelssohn was largely influential in bringing Kant to his final position on this question, is the fact that Mendelssohn visited Konigsberg in 1777, and, while there, conversed with Kant on philosophical subjects. This circumstance, together with the fact that both had long been interested in the problem of the distribution of the mental powers, leads Meyer to think it highly probable that they exchanged views concerning it. However, as Meyer would admit, it is wholly a mat-

Development of Kant's Psychology. 15

ter of conjecture, that Kant and Mendelssohn discussed the point referred to ; further, it is a matter of conjecture what the result of such a discussion would be, supposing it to have occurred. But the fact that Mendelssohn was deeply interested in explorations and investigations regarding the feeling experience seemed to Meyer to afford ground for supposing that he would not neglect the opportunity of urging upon Kant the importance of that aspect of individual consciousness. We are warranted in thinking, therefore, he maintains, that Kant received from Mendelssohn a new and deeper interest in the feeling life, especially the feeling of beauty, and was thus led to assign this experience to a separate faculty of the mind.

It must be admitted, however, that we cannot exactly determine how much Kant owes to Mendelssohn, or to any other thinker, and how much is due to his own independent reflection ; we cannot measure exactly the influence which Kant's contemporaries, or any one of them, had upon his investigations regarding the proper division of the mental powers. The proposed innovation in the division of the fundamental powers of mind was only one of the many psychological novelties with which the air was charged. And Kant, like every great scientific worker, was responsive to the influences of his time, and in turn he influenced the world of thought and action about him. So with reference to the question in hand, we may be sure that Kant's displacement of the bipartite division of the mental powers by the tripartite was the result of his own reflection guided and stimulated by other investigators.