Reconciliation of Freedom and Nature in Kant’s Third Critique

Abstract

No work of Kant has so persistently influenced the development of German Idealism after Fichte as the Critique of Judgment. Nevertheless, compared with the other two Critiques, it has attracted little attention outside the area where German is spoken.1 It is the task of this article to work out the status and the role of the Critique of Judgment in its relation to the critiques of theoretical and practical reason, and to show that by writing this book Kant did not intend simply to make a contribution to philosophical aesthetic “in reference to the formation or the culture of taste (for this will take its course in the future as in the past without any such investigations), but merely in a transcendental point of view.”2 That the Critique of Judgment (published in 1790) should be understood as completing a whole — comprising itself, the Critique of Pure Reason (published in 1781) and the Critique of Practical Reason (published in 1788) — is supported by a hint given by Kant himself. Kant himself announced his intention to turn towards metaphysics after the completion of the “critical business.” He himself pointed out the tricho-tomous character of his philosophy, and he appealed to the concept of synthesis to justify this trichotomy.3