AN INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S AESTHETICS

124 BEYOND BEAUTY
aesthetics in his overall system and of its significance even beyond the third
Critique.
Kant is famous for drawing distinctions, and in the first two Critiques he took
great care to distinguish between nature and freedom, the general and the particular,
the possible and the actual, understanding and sensible intuition, and,
most fundamentally, appearance and the thing in itself. But here in the third
Critique, and even more so in his later writings, we see that his wish to bridge
these gulfs is becoming increasingly pronounced. He wants to see his own distinctions
overcome, of course not on the level where they were drawn – there
they shall remain as they are – but from a higher point of view. It is also at this
point more than at any other that we may say philosophers such as Hegel were
greatly inspired by Kant and took over.
This higher point of view is that of an almost God-like non-human understanding:
an “intuitive understanding.” For human beings, sensibility and understanding
are two separate sources of knowledge that always need to cooperate.
Intuitions without concepts are blind, and concepts without intuition empty.
Intuition and understanding are separate and we do not have an “intuitive
understanding.” We cannot intuitively understand nature at a single glance.
Instead, we have to investigate it, empirically and step by step, if we want to learn
about particular empirical objects and about particular laws of the natural sciences,
such as physics, chemistry, and biology. For us there is always an element
of contingency in nature, because neither the individual (for instance a tree) is
fully understandable and fully describable through general concepts and scientific
laws (our concept of a tree or our scientific knowledge about trees), nor is
the web of such scientific laws (especially in biology) given a priori. For Kant,
although some very basic laws of the natural sciences are given a priori, many
particular laws are not. Nevertheless we have the ability to discover such laws,
and we may thus say our mental faculties happen to fit a world that affects our
outer senses.
In aesthetic contemplation we can at least feel this kind of fitting, and as
philosophers we can point out the principles of purposiveness to explain this phenomenon:
subjective purposiveness (as studied in aesthetics) and objective purposiveness
(the subject of teleology). An intuitive understanding, on the other
hand, would not have any of this; it would not need it.
We can try to imagine a being with such a higher point of view, equipped
with an understanding different from ours, as underlying ourselves, outer nature,
and the subject–object distinction. Such a being could understand nature at a
single glance. We can even try to imagine a creative understanding for which the
merely imagined and possible are already what is real. There would then be
no distinction (and also no conflict) between freedom and nature for a being
with such an understanding. Many gaps would be bridged if there were such a