Critique of Judgement (Bernard Translation)

But as we reflect on our mental states, we find that so far no proper account has been given of the phenomena of feeling, which play such a large part in our experience. Kant saw this before he had proceeded very far with the Critique of Practical Reason. Consequently, he adopted a threefold classification of the higher mental faculties based on those used by previous psychologists. Knowledge, feeling, and desire—these are the three fundamental modes of consciousness, and the second, feeling, has not yet been described. When we compare this with the previous triple division we took from Aristotelian logic, we see that the parallel is significant. Understanding is preeminently original: "par excellence" the faculty of knowledge, and Reason is the faculty of desire (points developed in Kant's first two Critiques). This suggests that Judgment corresponds to the feeling of pleasure and pain. It occupies a position between Understanding and Reason, just as, roughly speaking, the feeling of pleasure is halfway between our perception of an object and our desire to possess it.

And so the Critique of Judgment completes the entire project of criticism. Its goal is to show that there are principles known before experience original: "a priori" at the foundation of Judgment, just as there are in the cases of Understanding and Reason. It aims to show that these principles, like the principles of Reason, are not constitutive In Kantian terms, "constitutive" principles are those that actually build or "make up" the world as we experience it. but only regulative "Regulative" principles are those that do not create the world, but rather provide rules or directions for how we should organize our thoughts about it. of experience. That is to say, they do not teach us anything positive about the actual characteristics...