AN INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S AESTHETICS

PURPOSIVENESS: THIRD MOMENT 61
“mere sensations” and “only agreeable” and thus should not be called beautiful.
What they lack is structure and composition. They can be added, but they should
not distract from what is essential: “The charm of colors [in paintings] or of the
agreeable tones of instruments can be added, but drawing in the former and
composition in the latter constitute the proper object of the pure judgment of
taste” (section 14, 225). Also ornaments or a gilt frame of a painting can add to
beauty, but they should not distract. To make the distinction between charm and
beauty more prominent, theoretically and not just by giving some examples,
Kant uses the classical distinction between matter and form. He associates beauty
with various aspects of form (drawing, shape, composition) and charm with
matter. This will turn out to be highly problematic. For instance, what exactly
can “matter” be when we consider a color or a tone? And how can we be sure
that they do not have formal structures of some kind? Kant is well aware of these
problems and discusses them in section 14, drawing on theories by the Swiss
mathematician Leonard Euler (1707–83), as we shall see.
As it is the formal and not the material aspects of states of mind that are
traditionally associated with what is communicable, the justifying grounds of a
judgment of taste must somehow be formal and not material. Charm on the
other hand should be seen as material. Charm is more of a direct result of our
being affected by the object and involves to a lesser degree, if at all, any acts of
reflection on our side. It belongs to the sphere of mere sensation and is less communicable
than our feeling for the beautiful, because the latter involves reflection
in connection with cognition, and cognition is communicable. As is the case
with emotion, charm in the end hinders the impartiality that is required for a
judgment of taste. “Taste is always still barbaric when it needs the addition of
charms and emotions for satisfaction, let alone if it makes these into the standard
for its approval” (section 13, 223). Charm and emotion thus do not qualify
as grounds of a judgment of taste. They would only make it impure. If we want
to find the true grounds of judgments of taste, we have to abstract all charm and
emotion from our act of contemplating an aesthetic object.
Since the judgment of taste claims universal communicability, and since it is
formal aspects that are thought to be communicable, Kant addresses himself to
various kinds of form that are relevant to a judgment of taste. He focuses on
“form of purposiveness,” “formal purposiveness,” and “purposiveness of form.”
In section 14 alone, the word “form” appears as many as eleven times. Purposiveness
without a purpose, subjective purposiveness, formal purposiveness, and
form of purposiveness in the end all mean the same thing – at least roughly, and
taking into account specific differences in specific contexts (which we will point
out in what follows). But purposiveness of form, which is not in the above list,
is something different. Here, the form is not a form of some kind of purposiveness
but the form of the object itself, such as its spatial and temporal shape and