The Dialectic: the Antinomy of Taste

The first part of the Critique of Judgement is divided into two sections:

1. Analytic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgement (§§1-54)
2. Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgement (§§55-60)

The second of these, the dialectic, is much shorter, at a mere 18 pages to the Analytic’s 124. Why does Kant choose this method of organisation?

What is a dialectic?

The terms analytic and dialectic are subdivisions of logic whose roots go back to Aristotle.

By ‘analytic’ (Analytik) Kant means he is going to analyse or dissect something, such as the notions of the ‘beautiful’ or the ‘sublime’, to discern its basic elements or forms of operation and draw some positive conclusions.

A ‘dialectic’ (Dialektik) on the other hand is an attempt to detect judgements which might seem true but in fact are illusory – a critique of the way reason can fall into error by overstepping its own limitations. Kant’s concern is that philosophy should not step into metaphysical speculation about unknowable things like the soul or God, ideas that are created solely by reason without any grounding in experience. Reason can get in a muddle when trying to handle ideas that can’t be empirically investigated, resulting in conflicting statements called antinomies that appear correct yet contradict each other. This is the sort of thing that can undermine reason and open the door to scepticism.¹ So in the dialectic, the analytic is put to the test. Problematic arguments are meant to partake in a dialogue to try and resolve their problems.

Kant applies this analytic and dialectic approach in all three Critiques, but it sits less comfortably in the CoJ, leading to suggestions that only Kant wants a dialectic in the latter because he has a mania for his architectonic, i.e. for having the same structure. In the first couple of sections he sticks to the formula, presenting us with a single antinomy that relates to the question of taste.

The antinomy of taste

He begins in §55:

A power of judgement that is to be dialectical must first of all be rationalistic, i.e., its judgements must lay claim to universality, and indeed do so a priori, for the dialectic consists in the opposition of such judgements. 

Kant dismisses judgements of the agreeable as not belonging to the dialectic. Conflicts of taste do arise between people, but insofar as they are disputes over personal preferences, they are merely subjective. No one thinks to try and make a universal rule out of them. The dialectic therefore must attend to the critique of taste, not to taste itself, i.e. to conflicts over the a priori possibility of judgements of taste.

A transcendental critique of taste will thus contain a part that can bear the name of a dialectic of the aesthetic power of judgement only if there is an antinomy of the principles of this faculty [i.e. taste], which makes its lawfulness and hence also its inner possibility doubtful.

It may seem a little late to start worrying about whether a critique of taste is possible, but Kant dutifully produces an antinomy, which he calls the Antinomy of Taste (die Antinomie des Geschmacks). This is a potential contradiction that revives the anxiety about validity that has dogged the entire work.

In §56 Kant presents the problem by laying down two ‘commonplaces’ of taste.

1. Everyone has his/her own taste

The judgement is non-conceptual; its determining ground is merely subjective (empirical, agreeable, sensory) and thus it cannot demand the assent of others. Consequently:

2. There is no disputing about taste

No dispute over taste can be decided by means of proofs. We can argue (streiten) about taste, but cannot dispute (disputieren). Both try to bring about agreement, but the difference is that arguing in this context is, so to speak, bickering over preferences; disputing, for which Kant uses the more Latinate verb, is a more formal kind of philosophical argument that appeals to proof via determinate concepts.

These two commonplaces pose subjective relativism against Kant’s oft-repeated claim in the CoJ that the judgement of taste has universal validity. But Kant thinks another commonplace is needed:

3. It is possible to argue about taste

There are, in fact, disagreements, and they must be based on something. Simply the possibility of agreement or disagreement suggests the existence of grounds, at least in principle, for making decisions that are not just privately and subjectively valid. This contradicts the claim that everyone has his/her own taste.

This is similar to how David Hume presents the paradox in Of the Standard of Taste: all taste is subjective, yet we think some taste is better than others. Kant discerns that the central problem here is whether or not judgements of taste are based on concepts that allow them to be proved true. That gives him the following antinomy, set out as thesis and antithesis:

1. Thesis: The judgement of taste is not based on concepts, for otherwise it would be possible to dispute about it (decide by means of proofs).

2. Antithesis: The judgement of taste is based on concepts, for otherwise, despite its variety, it would not even be possible to argue about it (i.e. to require the assent of others).

What Kant is doing is setting out two contradictory positions, both of them faulty, so they may enter a kind of discussion that will resolve the problem and move philosophy forwards. He tries to do that in §57. It seems to me his move in the third commonplace is pretty weak, but as always, while it is possible to raise all manner of controversies and debates², in these articles I am mostly attempting a simple elucidation of what Kant is saying – as far as that is possible, because of course any attempt at elucidation will itself necessarily be an interpretation.

Did this problem actually arise in the Analytic? Kant says the antinomy is the same as ‘two peculiarities’ he has already raised (in §32 and §33). These were:

1. The judgment of taste claims universality as if it were objective.
2. The judgment of taste is not determinable by grounds of proof at all, just as if it were merely subjective.

But these issues have already been addressed. It seems Kant wants here to do something further, namely to take them up a level.

Solution

Kant claims that the conflict arises because the word concept is, wrongly, used in the same sense in both statements. The essence of his argument in §57 is that the concept in the thesis is determinate (a concept of the understanding, allowing for proofs and knowledge) and the concept in the antithesis is indeterminate (a concept of reason, unable to be proven scientifically). Thus:

1. The judgement of taste is not based on determinate concepts.
2. The judgement is based on indeterminate concepts.

Kant reasserts that the judgement of taste is a merely reflective judgement: it is not cognitive and does not seek to determine a concept for the beautiful object. ‘To provide a determinate objective principle of taste, by means of which its judgements could be guided, examined, and proved, is absolutely impossible.’ What could this indeterminate concept be, that grounds the judgement of taste? Here he introduces something new. The judgement must be based on some sort of concept,

but a concept that cannot be determined by intuition, by which nothing can be cognised, and which thus also leads to no proof for the judgement of taste. A concept of this kind, however, is the mere pure rational concept of the supersensible, which grounds the object (and also the judging subject) as an object of sense, consequently as an appearance. (my emphasis)

This is an ingenious move, wriggling out of a problem while respecting the age-old difficulty inherent in proving why one aesthetic valuation is ‘better’ than another. Kant claims that the judgement of taste draws its validity by means of this concept

which can be regarded as the supersensible substratum of humanity.

Kant’s ‘pure rational indeterminate concept of the supersensible substratum of appearances’ seems to be a generic concept of cognition in general, or even being in general. He offers us a vague, generic, indeterminate, non-cognitive (‘unfit for cognition’) sort of concept rooted not in our experience but in reality itself, the world of things in themselves about which we can make no knowledge claims. 

He himself acknowledges this concept of the supersensible is an odd idea. It is

the sole key to demystifying this faculty which is hidden to us even in its sources, but there is nothing by which it can be made more comprehensible.

Kant is trying to unpack a phenomenon – the paradox of taste – that has puzzled civilisation for centuries, and concludes that it is hard to explain because that is simply the kind of phenomenon it is: something that touches the supersensible realm about which we can know little or nothing.

Kant has already answered the question about the universal validity of taste (in the Deduction and elsewhere) by reference to our shared cognitive faculties, so why is he introducing this new notion? The best explanation is probably that he is adding to and extending what he has already said. If the judgement of taste is rooted in the indeterminate harmony of our cognitive faculties, in cognition in general, it is not a great leap to appeal to a concept that is similarly rooted in cognition in general.

But this concept cannot be not any old concept; it is supposed to resolve the antinomy of taste. Kant says:

The antinomy that has here been set out and resolved is based on the correct concept of taste.

Unfortunately he does not elaborate about this correct concept of taste. Christian Helmut Wenzel suggests it must relate to taste’s a priori ground, the principle of subjective purposiveness:

This principle... must be ‘correct’ in two senses: (1) It must establish the judgment of taste as an a priori judgment, so that an antinomy of principles (not just an empirical contradiction between particular judgments of taste) can arise; and (2) it must allow for a solution to this antinomy... The principle of subjective purposiveness does indeed satisfy these two requirements. It gives an a priori basis and allows for the antinomy; and it is indeterminable and thus allows for the solution.³

This is corroborated by the Remark II that follows §57, where Kant makes a significant comment on the supersensible that confirms a connection to subjective purposiveness, while also indicating a grander purpose behind the treatment of the Antinomy of Taste:

Three ideas are revealed: first, that of the supersensible in general, without further determination, as the substratum of nature; second, the very same thing, as the principle of the subjective purposiveness of nature for our faculty of cognition; third, the very same thing, as the principle of the ends of freedom and principle of the correspondence of freedom with those ends in the moral sphere.

Thus by his recruitment of the supersensible Kant is doing more than simply searching around for a fudge that will rescue him from a difficulty. He is connecting the judgement of taste, and judgement in general, with the same ultimate noumenal reference that underlies theoretical and practical philosophy, thus uniting the CoJ with the two previous Critiques (and tying a bow on top).

At the end of §57 Kant is keen to indicate that his conclusion is consistent with the previous two Critiques, and he reminds us that he has resorted to a similar strategy before:

In the same way both here and in the Critique of Practical Reason one is compelled, against one’s will, to look beyond the sensible and to seek the unifying point of all our faculties a priori in the supersensible: because no other way remains to make reason self-consistent [i.e. without contradiction].

In conclusion, the dialectic is not merely filling a required plot in Kant’s architectonic but is playing an important part in his larger plan, both for the Third Critique and for his critical philosophy in general.

Notes

1. The CPR for example includes the famous Third Antinomy: 1) Everything is causally determined according to natural law. 2) Human beings have freedom of the will.
2. E.g. there is an incisive discussion of the Dialectic in chapter 10 of Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (1979, 2nd ed. 1997).
3. Christian Helmut Wenzel, An Introduction to Kant’s Aesthetics (2005), p123.