Critique of Judgement (Kant - Dover ed.)

Author: Immanuel Kant

ISBN: 9780486445434

Binding: paperback

Section: Philosophy/Rhetoric/Logic

The Critique of Judgment informs the very basis of modern aesthetics by establishing the almost universally accepted framework for debate of aesthetic issues. As in his previous critiques, Kant seeks to establish a priori principles. The first part of this work addresses aesthetic sensibility. The human response to specific natural phenomena as beautiful, he asserts, is a recognition of nature's harmonious order that corresponds to a mental need for order. The critique's second half focuses on the apparent teleology in nature's design of organisms. The philosopher declares that the mind is predisposed to find purpose and order in nature, and this predisposition forms the main principle underlying all our judgments.