Work · German Idealism & Its Heirs
Critique of Judgment
The beautiful, the sublime and the purposiveness of nature.
Introduction
The third Critique appeared in 1790. Its introduction presents the power of judgement as a link between nature, the domain of the first Critique, and freedom, that of the second. Part I deals with aesthetic judgement: a judgement of taste is based on disinterested pleasure, claims universal agreement without a concept and finds in beautiful objects a “purposiveness without purpose”; the sublime arises when nature overwhelms the senses but awakens awareness of reason. The section also treats fine art and genius. Part II, on teleological judgement, asks how we can understand living organisms as natural purposes. Goethe and Schiller were among its early readers.
Read the full text
Free full text, often an older edition or translation
Connections
Taken up in
- System of Transcendental Idealism1800 · Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
- The Life of the Mind1978 · Hannah Arendt
- The Differend1983 · Jean-François Lyotard
Criticized in
- Truth and Method1960 · Hans-Georg Gadamer
- Distinction1979 · Pierre Bourdieu
More works by Immanuel Kant
- 1795Perpetual Peace
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made