CRITIQUE OF KANT ON BEAUTY IN THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2017.

The Critique of Judgment

Kant’s theory of beauty, as well as his theory of teleology, are contained in his third
critique, the Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft), first published in 1790.1 The task of
this third critique concerns the attempt to heal the fracture between the phenomenal world (which

1
Studies on Kant’s aesthetics and the Critique of Judgment: R. A. C. MACMILLAN, The Crowning Phase of the
Critical Philosophy: A Study in Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Macmillan, London, 1912 ; H. W. CASSIRER, A
Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Methuen, London, 1938 ; T. E. UEHLING, The Notion of Form in
Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Mouton, The Hague, 1971 ; F. COLEMAN, The Harmony of Reason: A
Study in Kant’s Aesthetics, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1974 ; D. W. CRAWFORD, Kant’s Aesthetic
Theory, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1974 ; P. GUYER, Kant and the Claims of Taste, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1979 ; E. SCHAPER, Studies in Kant’s Aesthetics, Edinburgh University Press,
Edinburgh, 1979 ; T. COHEN and P. GUYER (eds.), Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1982 ; S. KEMAL, Kant and Fine Art: An Essay on Kant and the Philosophy of Fine Art and Culture, The
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986 ; K. E. ROGERSON, Kant’s Aesthetics: The Roles of Form and Expression,
University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1986 ; M. MCCLOSKEY, Kant’s Aesthetic, State University of New
York Press, Albany, 1987 ; P. CROWTHER, The Kantian Sublime: From Morality to Art, The Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1989 ; A. HARPER, Essays on Kant’s Third “Critique,” Mekler & Deahl, London, 1989 ; H. GINSBORG,
The Role of Taste in Kant’s Theory of Cognition, Garland Publishing Co., New York and London, 1990 ; R.
MEERBOTE and H. HUDSON (eds.), Kant’s Aesthetics, Ridgeview Publishing Co., Atascadero, CA, 1991 ; L.
BALDACCHINO, A Study in Kant’s Metaphysics of Aesthetic Experience – Reason and Feeling, Edwin Mellen
Press, Lewiston, 1992 ; S. KEMAL, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory: An Introduction, Macmillan, London, 1992 ; J. H.
ZAMMITO, The Genesis of Kant’s “Critique of Judgment,” University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992 ; P.
GUYER, Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1993 ; R. A. MAKKREEL, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of the
Critique of Judgment, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995 ; P. GUYER, Kant and the Claims of Taste,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997 ; G. BANHAM, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics, Macmillan, New
York, 2000 ; D. BURNHAM, An Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Edinburgh University Press,
Edinburgh, 2000 ; H. E. ALLISON, Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001 ; M. A. CHEETHAM, Kant, Art and Art History: Moments of
Discipline, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001 ; M. FISTIOC, The Beautiful Shape of the Good:
Platonic and Pythagorean Themes in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, Routledge, London, 2002 ; P.
GUYER (ed.), Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment: Critical Essays, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD,
2003 ; J. KIRWAN, The Aesthetic in Kant: A Critique, Continuum, London, 2004 ; C. H. WENZEL, An
Introduction to Kant’s Aesthetics: Core Concepts and Problems, Blackwell, Oxford, 2005 ; D. BERGER, Kant’s
Aesthetic Theory: The Beautiful and the Sublime, Continuum, London, 2009 ; F. HUGHES, Kant’s ‘Critique of
Aesthetic Judgment’: A Reader’s Guide, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2010 ; R. ZUCKERT, Kant on Beauty
and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010 ; H.
GINSBORG, The Normativity of Nature: Essays on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2015 ; M. KÜPLEN, Beauty, Ugliness and the Free Play of Imagination: An Approach to Kant’s Aesthetics,
Springer, Cham, 2015 ; B. MURRAY, The Possibility of Culture: Pleasure and Moral Development in Kant’s
Aesthetics, Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ, 2015 ; J. N. BOOKS, The Supersensible in Kant’s Critique of Judgment,
Peter Lang, New York, 2017 ; A. COOPER, The Tragedy of Philosophy: Kant’s Critique of Judgment and the
Project of Aesthetics, SUNY Press, Albany, NY, 2016 ; M. CHAOULI, Thinking with Kant’s Critique of Judgment,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2017 ; A. COOPER, The Tragedy of Philosophy: Kant’s Critique of
Judgment and the Project of Aesthetics, SUNY Press, Albany, 2017 ; J. J. TINGUELY, Kant and the Reorientation
of Aesthetics, Routledge, Abingdon, 2017.

1
is the world of necessity, the world subject to the rigid determinism of mechanical laws inspired
by Newtonian physics) and the noumenal world of freedom by means of judgments of reflection.
“Both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason have established a
dualism – of phenomenon and noumenon, of the sensible and the suprasensible, the conditional
and the unconditional, mechanical necessity and liberty. No acceptable philosophy can conclude
with such a dualism, for the ego is at one and the same time the subject of both the theoretical
and the practical world. Hence it is necessary that the two aspects – theoretical and practical –
through which reality is revealed, be synthesized in a unity centering in the ego.”2

In the Critique of Judgment Kant attempts to connect theoretical philosophy (which he

reductionistically identifies with philosophy of Nature) and practical philosophy (which he
reduces to moral philosophy) by means of a critique of judgment, which is ‘a means to unite in
one whole the two parts of philosophy.”3 Kritik der Urteilskraft should, therefore, be considered
an integral part of his system of transcendental idealism. Kant writes that “the faculty of
judgment in general is the power of thinking the particular as being contained in the universal.”4
He distinguishes between determining or determinant judgments and reflecting or reflective
judgments: “If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) is given, then the faculty of
judgment which subsumes the particular under it is determinant, this being true also when the
faculty as a transcendental faculty of judgment gives a priori the conditions under which alone
the particular can be subsumed under the universal. But if only the particular is given, for which
the faculty of judgment is to find the universal, then judgment is merely reflective.”5 An
intermediary between reason and intellect, for Kant, is sentiment. By sentiment (or affectivity) he
means “the feeling of pleasure or displeasure.”6 Sentiment produces judgments of reflection
wherein the universal is not posited but rather discovered. Sentiment discovers the finality of
nature. Judgments of reflection include both teleological judgments, which derive from man’s
reflection upon the order of nature, and aesthetic judgments, which derive from the
contemplation of beauty, presenting a universality without concept together with a disinterested
pleasure. Now, Kant explains that one should not confuse judgments of sentiment with synthetic
a priori judgments explained in detail in the first Critique, for the synthetic a priori judgment
“presupposes an empty or void form of the intellect (category), which is determined by the
particular element grasped by the sense. Hence Kant calls the synthetic a priori judgment a
determining judgment, and it is that which gives us true and proper but phenomenal knowledge.
The judgment of sentiment, on the other hand, consists in referring the apprehended object to a
form that is not in the intellect, but in the affective power of the will (emotion). The form which
appears in sentiment is intermediate between the theoretical and the practical. Such a judgment
of sentiment is possible because the subject (the ego), by reflecting on the apprehended data,
judges these data to be adapted to the sentimental activities of the subject. Hence Kant calls this
operation a reflecting judgment. It is to be noted that the reflecting judgment has its origin
outside the a priori forms of the intellect. Consequently, it does not give us true and proper
knowledge, but only manifests an exigency of the ego.”7

2
C. MASCIA, A History of Philosophy, St. Anthony Guild Press, Paterson, NJ, 1957, p. 391.
3
I. KANT, The Critique of Judgment, xx, translation by J. H. Bernard, London, 1931, p. 13.
4
I. KANT, op. cit., xxv, p. 16.
5
I. KANT, op. cit., xxvi, pp. 16-17.
6
I. KANT, The Critique of Judgment, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1952, p. 38.
7
C. MASCIA, op. cit., p. 391.

2
 Now beauty, for Kant, belongs to the first of the reflecting or reflective judgments,
namely, the aesthetic judgment (the second reflecting or reflective judgment is the teleological
judgment arising from finality in nature). “Aesthetic judgment, by which we judge an object to
be pleasurable, begins by our separating the object from every determined concept and from
every practical interest, and by referring the object thus freed to the subject. The subject then
finds the satisfaction of its spiritual faculties in the object thus referred to it and expresses this
satisfaction in an aesthetic judgment: ‘This is beautiful.’ In aesthetic judgment, therefore, there is
lacking, for Kant, (1) all judgment of knowledge (e.g., ‘This field is broad’), and (2) all judgment
of interest (e.g., ‘This field is useful for grazing cattle’). The object of an aesthetic judgment is
the ‘form’ of the object considered in itself (e.g., the composition of colors in a landscape) and
referred to the subject. The subject finds therein the satisfaction of his spiritual faculties. In
becoming aware of aesthetic pleasure, the subject (ego) feels himself free of any theoretical or
practical interest; he feels himself to be one, a person, the subject of spiritual activity. Thus we
are in the sphere of the unconditioned. It is to be noted that aesthetic judgment, for Kant, is not
true knowledge. It is an exigency of the subject expressing his aesthetic sentiment in the manner
described.”8 “Following the usage of English writers on aesthetic, Kant called the judgment
which pronounces a thing to be beautiful the judgment of taste (das Geschmacksurteil). The
word ‘taste’ immediately suggests subjectivity; and we have seen that in Kant’s view the ground
of this judgment is subjective. That is to say, a representation is referred by the imagination to
the subject itself, to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The ground of our judgment that a
thing is beautiful or ugly is the way in which our power of feeling is affected by the
representation of the object. In modern language we might say that for Kant the judgment of
taste is an emotive proposition, expressing feeling and not conceptual knowledge.”9

Kant’s analytic of the beautiful in the Critique of Judgment describes the four moments of
the judgment of taste, four moments correlated with the four logical logical forms of judgment
(quality, quantity, relation and modality). The judgment of taste considered from the standpoint
of quality leads to his first partial definition of the beautiful: “Taste is the power of judging of an
object or of a way of representing it through an entirely disinterested satisfaction or
dissatisfaction. The object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful.”10 Consideration of the
judgment of taste according to quantity results in his second partial definition of the beautiful as
“that which pleases universally, without a concept.”11 Consideration of the third moment of the
judgment of taste according to relation results in Kant’s third partial definition of beauty:
“Beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, so far as this is perceived without any
representation of a purpose.”12 Lastly, consideration of the fourth moment of the judgment of
taste according to modality results in Kant’s fourth partial definition of the beautiful: “The
beautiful is that which without any concept is recognized as the object of a necessary
satisfaction.”13 “Il giudizio estetico. – Il giudizio estetico trova immediatamente l’accordo tra la
natura e la libertà, ed è pertanto il sentimento piacevole della bellezza. Esso nasce «dal gioco
armonico delle due facoltà conoscitive del potere di giudicare, e cioè dell’immaginazione e

8
C. MASCIA, op. cit., pp. 392-393.
9
F. COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy, book 2, vol. 6, Image Doubleday, New York, 1985, p. 356.
10
I. KANT, Critique of Judgment, 16., translation by J. H. Bernard, London, 1931, p. 55.
11
I. KANT, op. cit., 32, p. 67.
12
I. KANT, op. cit., 61, p. 90.
13
I. KANT, op. cit., 68, p. 96.

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dell’intelletto», ed esprime una finalità soggettiva, cioè un accordo della forma dell’oggetto col
nostro modo di vederlo. Il sentimento del bello. Il sentimento del bello è puramente soggettivo e
non dà luogo ad alcuna conoscenza dell’oggetto che lo determina. Anzi, esso non presenta alcun
legame con l’oggetto, ma solo con la sua rappresentazione, e pertanto è disinteressato.
Nonostante la sua soggettività e la sua libertà, il sentimento del bello è universale e
necessario…”14 “Giudizio estetico. – Il bello nasce dal rapporto che si instaura tra noi e gli
oggetti ai quali – commisurati al nostro sentimento di piacere – attribuiamo tale proprietà. Il
bello non è dunque una proprietà connaturata alle cose, ma un riflesso del nostro sentimento
estetico di fronte a determinate cose, capaci di suscitarlo. 1. «Bello è l’oggetto di un piacere
senza interesse»: esso non risponde a esigenze materiali o ai nostri bisogni fisici. 2. «Bello è ciò
che piace universalmente senza concetto»: il bello piace ad ogni uomo anche se ognuno gli
attribuisce dei canoni soggettivi (universalità soggettiva). 3. «La bellezza è la forma della finalità
di un oggetto, in quanto questo vi è percepito senza la rappresentazione di uno scopo»: pur
essendo evidente la presenza di un fine, non riusciamo a coglierne alcuno in particolare. 4. «Il
bello è ciò che è riconosciuto, senza concetto, come oggetto di un piacere necessario»: pur
essendo soggettivo – in quanto determinato dal gusto – esso si impone a tutti gli uomini.”15 “I
giudizi estetici, continua Kant, non aggiungono nulla alla conoscenza, ma creano una sorta di
comunità estetica tra giudizi soggettivi, un termine di paragone convenzionale. Per questo
motivo la loro universalità non è oggettiva ma è soggettiva. Il bello, dice in sostanza Kant, non
esiste in sé ma è l’uomo ad attribuire tale caratteristica agli oggetti; ma pur appartenendo al
soggetto è anche riferito (è termine che ha comparazioni) ad uno schema di giudizio estetico che
sta tra i soggetti.”16

Maritain’s Critique of Kant on Beauty

Jacques Maritain critiques Kant on beauty in the fifth chapter (Art and Beauty) of his Art
and Scholasticism as follows: “Saint Thomas, who was as simple as he was wise, defined the
beautiful as that which, being seen, pleases: id quod visum placet.17 These four words say all that
is necessary: a vision, that is to say, an intuitive knowledge, and a delight. The beautiful is what
gives delight -- not just any delight, but delight in knowing; not the delight peculiar to the act of
knowing, but a delight which superabounds and overflows from this act because of the object
known. If a thing exalts and delights the soul by the very fact that it is given to the soul’s
intuition, it is good to apprehend, it is beautiful.18

“Beauty is essentially an object of intelligence, for that which knows in the full sense of
the word is intelligence, which alone is open to the infinity of being. The natural place of beauty
is the intelligible world, it is from there that it descends. But it also, in a way, falls under the
grasp of the senses, in so far as in man they serve the intellect and can themselves take delight in
knowing: ‘Among all the senses, it is to the sense of sight and the sense of hearing only that the

14
P. DE VECCHI and F. SACCHI, Compendio di storia della filosofia, vol. 2, Bignami, Milan, 1993, pp. 219-220.
15
M. FRASCHINI, Filosofia 2: dall’umanesimo a Kant, Mursia, Milan, 1992, pp. 150-151.
16
L. SANTORO, Filosofia 2: dal Rinascimento a Kant, Memorix, EdiSES, Naples, 2013, p. 270 (italics mine).
17
Summa theol., I, 5, 4, ad 1. Saint Thomas, it must be added, means to give here only a definition per effectum. It is
when he assigns the three elements of the beautiful that he gives an essential definition of it.
18
“It is of the nature of the beautiful that by the sight or knowledge of it the appetite is allayed.” Summa theol., I-II,
27, 1, ad 3.

4
beautiful relates, because these two senses are maxime cognoscitivi.’19 The part played by the
senses in the perception of beauty is even rendered enormous in us, and well-nigh indispensable,
by the very fact that our intelligence is not intuitive, as is the intelligence of the angel; it sees, to
be sure, but on condition of abstracting and discoursing; only sense knowledge possesses
perfectly in man the intuitiveness required for the perception of the beautiful. Thus man can
doubtless enjoy purely intelligible beauty, but the beautiful that is connatural to man is the
beautiful that delights the intellect through the senses and through their intuition. Such is also the
beautiful that is proper to our art, which shapes a sensible matter in order to delight the spirit. It
would thus like to believe that paradise is not lost. It has the savor of the terrestrial paradise,
because it restores, for a moment, the peace and the simultaneous delight of the intellect and the
senses.

“If beauty delights the intellect, it is because it is essentially a certain excellence or

perfection in the proportion of things to the intellect. Hence the three conditions Saint Thomas
assigned to beauty:20 integrity, because the intellect is pleased in fullness of Being; proportion,
because the intellect is pleased in order and unity; finally, and above all, radiance or clarity,
because the intellect is pleased in light and intelligibility. A certain splendor is, in fact, according
to all the ancients, the essential characteristic of beauty -- claritas est de ratione pulchritudinis,21
lux pulchrificat, quia sine luce omnia sunt turpia22 -- but it is a splendor of intelligibility:
splendor veri, said the Platonists; splendor ordinis, said Saint Augustine, adding that ‘unity is the
form of all beauty’;23 splendor formae, said Saint Thomas in his precise metaphysician’s
language: for the form, that is to say, the principle which constitutes the proper perfection of all
that is, which constitutes and achieves things in their essences and qualities, which is, finally, if
one may so put it, the ontological secret that they bear within them, their spiritual being, their
operating mystery -- the form, indeed, is above all the proper principle of intelligibility, the
proper clarity of every thing. Besides, every form is a vestige or a ray of the creative Intelligence
imprinted at the heart of created being. On the other hand, every order and every proportion is
the work of intelligence. And so, to say with the Schoolmen that beauty is the splendor of the
form on the proportioned parts of matter,24 is to say that it is a flashing of intelligence on a
matter intelligibly arranged. The intelligence delights in the beautiful because in the beautiful it
finds itself again and recognizes itself, and makes contact with its own light. This is so true that
those -- such as Saint Francis of Assisi -- perceive and savor more the beauty of things, who
know that things come forth from an intelligence, and who relate them to their author.

19
Ibid.
20
Cf. Summa theol., I, 39, 8.
21
Saint Thomas, Comment. in lib. de Divin. Nomin., lect. 6.
22
Saint Thomas, Comment. in Psalm., Ps. XXV, 5.
23
De vera Religione, cap. 41.
24
Opusc. de Pulchro et Bono, attributed to Albert the Great and sometimes to Saint Thomas. Plotinus (Enneads, I,
6), speaking of beauty in bodies, describes it as “something which affects one sensibly from the first impression,
which the soul perceives with agreement, recognizes and welcomes, and to which it in some way accommodates
itself.” He goes on to say that “every thing without form and made to receive a form morphê and an intelligible
imprint eidos is ugly and outside the divine reason, so long as it does not share in such an imprint and spiritual
quality amoiron on logou kai eidous.” And let us also retain, from this very important chapter on beauty, the remark
that “the beauty of color is a simple quality which comes to it from a form dominating the obscure in matter, and
from the presence of an incorporeal light which is reason and idea logou kai eidous ontos.”

5
 “Every sensible beauty implies, it is true, a certain delight of the eye itself or of the ear or
the imagination: but there is beauty only if the intelligence also takes delight in some way. A
beautiful color ‘washes the eye,’ just as a strong scent dilates the nostril; but of these two ‘forms’
or qualities color only is said to be beautiful, because, being received, unlike the perfume, in a
sense power capable of disinterested knowledge,25 it can be, even through its purely sensible
brilliance, an object of delight for the intellect. Moreover, the higher the level of man’s culture,
the more spiritual becomes the brilliance of the form that delights him.

“It is important, however, to note that in the beautiful that we have called connatural to
man, and which is proper to human art, this brilliance of the form, no matter how purely
intelligible it may be in itself, is seized in the sensible and through the sensible, and not
separately from it. The intuition of artistic beauty thus stands at the opposite extreme from the
abstraction of scientific truth. For with the former it is through the very apprehension of the
sense that the light of being penetrates the intelligence.

“The intelligence in this case, diverted from all effort of abstraction, rejoices without
work and without discourse. It is dispensed from its usual labor; it does not have to disengage an
intelligible from the matter in which it is buried, in order to go over its different attributes step by
step; like a stag at the gushing spring, intelligence has nothing to do but drink; it drinks the
clarity of being. Caught up in the intuition of sense, it is irradiated by an intelligible fight that is
suddenly given to it, in the very sensible in which it glitters, and which it does not seize sub
ratione veri, but rather sub ratione delectabilis, through the happy release procured for the
intelligence and through the delight ensuing in the appetite, which leaps at every good of the soul
as at its proper object. Only afterwards will it be able to reflect more or less successfully upon
the causes of this delight…

“This question of the perception of the beautiful by the intellect using the senses as
instruments would deserve a careful analysis which, in my opinion, has too rarely tempted the
subtlety of philosophers. Kant gave it his attention in the Critique of Judgment. Unfortunately the
direct, interesting, and sometimes profound observations much more frequently met with in this
Critique than in the other two are vitiated by his mania for system and symmetry, and above all
by the fundamental errors and the subjectivism of his theory of knowledge.

“One definition he gives of the beautiful calls for an attentive examination. ‘The
beautiful,’ says Kant, ‘is what gives pleasure universally without a concept.’26 Taken as such,
this definition runs the risk of causing us to forget the essential relation which beauty has to the
intellect. Thus it was that in Schopenhauer and his disciples it blossomed into an

25
Sight and hearing serving reason. (Summa theol., I-II, 27, 1, ad 3). -- Moreover sense itself delights in things
suitably proportioned only because it is itself measure and proportion, and so finds in them a likeness of its nature:
“Sense delights in things duly proportioned, as in what are like it, for sense too is a kind of reason, as is every
cognitive power.” Summa theol., I, 5, 4, ad 1. On the expression “a kind of reason” -- ratio quaedam he d' aisthêsis
ho logos -- cf. Comm. in de Anima, lib. 3, lect. 2.
It is permissible to conjecture that in glorified bodies all the senses, intellectualized, may be of use in the
perception of the beautiful. Already poets are teaching us to anticipate in a way this state. Baudelaire has annexed to
aesthetics the sense of smell.
26
It must be added that the “concept” for Kant is a form imposed on the sensible datum by the judgment, and
constituting this datum either as an object or science or as an object of voluntary appetition.

6
antiintellectualist divinization of Music. Nevertheless, it evokes in its way the much more exact
expression of Saint Thomas, id quod visum placet, that which, being seen, pleases -- that is to
say, being the object of an intuition. By virtue of this last definition, the perception of the
beautiful is not, as the Leibniz-Wolff school would have it, a confused conception of the
perfection of the thing or of its conformity with an ideal type. (Cf. Critique of Judgment,
“Analysis of the Beautiful,” § XV).

“If, owing to the nature of the intellect, it is normal that the perception of the beautiful be
accompanied by the presence or the outline of a concept, however confused, and that it suggest
ideas,27 nevertheless, this is not what formally constitutes it: the splendor or radiance of the form
glittering in the beautiful object is not presented to the mind by a concept or an idea, but rather
by the sensible object intuitively grasped -- in which there is transmitted, as through an
instrumental cause, this radiance of a form. Thus one may say -- at least this seems to me the
only possible way to interpret Saint Thomas’ words -- that in the perception of the beautiful the
intellect is, through the means of the sensible intuition itself, placed in the presence of a radiant
intelligibility (derived, like every intelligibility, in the last analysis from the first intelligibility of
the divine Ideas), which insofar as it produces the joy of the beautiful cannot be disengaged or
separated from its sense matrix and consequently does not procure an intellectual knowledge
expressible in a concept. Contemplating the object in the intuition which sense has of it, the
intellect enjoys a presence, the radiant presence of an intelligible which does not reveal itself to
its eyes such as it is. If it turns away from sense to abstract and reason, it turns away from its joy
and loses contact with this radiance.

“To understand this, let us recall that it is intellect and sense as forming but one, or, if one
may so speak, intelligentiated sense, which gives rise in the heart to aesthetic joy.

“It is thereby clear that the intellect does not -- except after the event and reflexively --
think of abstracting from the sensible singular in the contemplation of which it is fixed the
intelligible reasons of its joy. And it is also clear that the beautiful can be a marvellous tonic for
the intellect, and yet does not develop its power of abstraction and reasoning; and that the
perception of the beautiful is accompanied by that curious feeling of intellectual fullness through
which we seem to be swollen with a superior knowledge of the object contemplated, and which
nevertheless leaves us powerless to express it and to possess it by our ideas and make it the
object of scientific analysis. Thus music gives us enjoyment of being, more so perhaps than the
other arts; but it does not give us knowledge of being, and it is absurd to make it a substitute for
metaphysics. Thus artistic contemplation affects the heart with a joy that is above all intellectual,
and it must even be affirmed with Aristotle (Poetics, IX, 3, 1451 b 6) that ‘poetry is something
more philosophical and of greater import than history, because poetry is concerned more with the
universal and history is concerned only with the singular’; and yet the apprehension of the

27
Cf. on this point some very remarkable pages by Baudelaire, in L'Art Romantique (Calmann-Lévy edition, pp. 213
et seq.). Apropos the reveries evoked in him by the Overture to Lohengrin which startlingly coincided with those
which the same piece had evoked in Liszt, as with the program directions drawn up by Wagner of which the poet
was ignorant, he points out that “true music suggests similar ideas to different minds.” -- Whether “true music” is an
“expressive” and ideological music in Wagner’s sense is quite another question.

7
universal or the intelligible takes place in poetry without discourse and without any effort of
abstraction.28

“This seizure of an intelligible reality immediately ‘sensible to the heart,’ without

resorting to the concept as formal means, creates, on an entirely different plane and by an
entirely different psychological process, a distant analogy between aesthetic emotion and the
mystical graces. [I say ‘by an entirely different psychological process.’ In reality, mystical
contemplation takes place by virtue of the connaturality of love; here, on the contrary, love and
affective connaturality with regard to the beautiful thing are a consequence or a proper effect of
the perception or aesthetic emotion -- a proper effect, moreover, which normally reverberates
back on this emotion itself to intensify it, to give it content, to enrich it in a thousand ways. In his
interesting essay on Poetic Experience (London: Sheed and Ward, 1934), Father Thomas Gilby
has not, in my opinion, sufficiently stressed this difference. Cf. later on, n. 138.]

“I would add that if the very act of the perception of the beautiful takes place without
discourse and without any effort of abstraction, conceptual discourse can nevertheless play an
immense part in the preparation for this act. Indeed, like the virtue of art itself, taste, or the
aptitude for perceiving beauty and pronouncing a judgment on it, presupposes an innate gift, but
can be developed by education and instruction, especially by the study and rational explication of
works of art. All other things being equal, the better informed the mind is of the rules, the
methods and the difficulties of art, and above all of the end pursued by the artist and his
intentions, the better it is prepared to receive into it, by means of the sense’s intuition, the
intelligible splendor emanating from the work, and thus to perceive spontaneously, to relish, its
beauty. So it is that the artist’s friends, who know what the artist sought to accomplish -- as the
Angels know the Ideas of the Creator -- derive far greater enjoyment from his works than the
public; so it is that the beauty of certain works is a hidden beauty, accessible only to a small
number.

“The eye and the ear are said to accustom themselves to new relations. It is rather the
intellect which accepts them, as soon as it has realized to what end and to what kind of beauty
they are ordered, and so prepares itself to enjoy better the work which involves them.

“We therefore see the role concepts play in the perception of the beautiful: a dispositive
and material role. I have said that this perception is normally accompanied by the presence or the
outline of a concept, however confused it may be. In the simplest case, the border-line case, it
might be simply the very concept of ‘beautiful,’ for the intellect, being capable of a return on
itself because of its spirituality, knows (at least confusedly and in lived act) that it is
experiencing delight when it is. In fact there is often a whole host of conceptual outlines which
the mind is stimulated to produce by the fact of its being put into play, and which secretly
accompany its intuitive delight. After the first shock when the tongue can find nothing to say,
these will be able to spill out in exclamations: ‘What strength! Such solidity!’ etc. Contrariwise
at times a single word, a concept deposited in the mind (‘You think he’s a great painter? Taste is

28
The capital error in Benedetto Croce’s neo-Hegelian aesthetics (Croce, too, is a victim of modern subjectivism:
“Beauty is not inherent in things. . . .”) is the failure to perceive that artistic contemplation, however intuitive it may
be, is none the less and above all intellectual. Aesthetics must be intellectualist and intuitivist at one and the same
time.

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his strongest point’) will be sufficient to spoil in advance and inhibit the delight one would have
felt in the presence of a work. But, in all this, the role of the concepts does not go beyond the
sphere of dispositive causality.

“It may be further observed that Kant is right in considering emotion in the ordinary
sense of the word (‘the excitement of vital energies’) as a posterior and ensuing fact in the
perception of the beautiful. (Ibid., § IX.) But for him the primary and essential fact is the
‘aesthetic judgment’ (although on this point his texts seem to conflict at times); for us it is the
intuitive delight of the intellect and (secondarily) of the senses: or, to put it in a less summary
and more exact manner -- for delight is essentially an act of the appetitive faculty (it is of the
nature of the beautiful that by the sight or knowledge of it the appetite is allayed) -- it is the
quieting of our faculty of Desire which finds repose in the proper good of the cognitive faculty
perfectly and harmoniously released by the intuition of the beautiful. (Cf. Summa theol., I-II, 11,
1, ad 2. The end and perfection of every other faculty is contained under the object of the
appetitive faculty, as the proper is enveloped in the common.) The beautiful goes straight to the
heart, it is a ray of intelligibility which reaches it directly and sometimes brings tears to the eyes.
And doubtless this delight is an ‘emotion,’ a ‘feeling’ (gaudium in the ‘intellective appetite’ or
will, joy properly so called, in which ‘we communicate with the angels,’ ibid., 31, 4, ad 3).
However it is a question here of an altogether special feeling, one which depends simply on
knowledge and on the happy fullness which a sensible intuition procures for the intellect. It is a
superior emotion, whose essential nucleus is spiritual in nature, although in actual fact, like every
emotion in us, it sets in motion the whole domain of affectivity. Emotion in the ordinary sense of
the word, biological emotion, the development of passions and feelings other than this
intellectual joy, is but an effect -- an absolutely normal effect -- of this joy; it is posterior, if not
in time, at least in the nature of things, to the perception of the beautiful, and it remains extrinsic
to what formally constitutes the latter.

“It is interesting to observe that the subjectivist ‘venom’29 which has infected
metaphysics in the wake of the Kantian revolution has almost inevitably compelled philosophers
to seek the essence of aesthetic perception -- in spite of Kant himself -- in emotion (in the
ordinary sense of the word). One expression of this subjectivism is Lipps’ and Volkelt’s
ingenious but arbitrary theory of Einfühlung, which reduces the perception of the beautiful to a
projection or infusion of our emotions and feelings into the object. (Cf. M. de Wulf, “L’Oeuvre
d’art et la beauté,” Annales de l'Institut de philosophie de Louvain, vol. IV, 1920, pp. 421 et
seq.).”30

Answer to Kant’s Subjectivism Concerning Beauty: The Existence of Objective

Beauty

Aside from defending beauty (pulchrum) as a transcendental property of being founded

on the act of being (esse), the actuality of all acts and the perfection of all perfections (pulchrum
secundum quid, which is rejected of course by Kant since he maintains that extra-mental
noumenal reality remains unknown and unknowable), Alvira, Clavell and Melendo also defend
the existence of objective beauty as pulchrum simpliciter in beings having harmony or

29
Cf. G. Mattiussi, “II Veleno kantiano,” in Scuola Cattolica, II, 1902.
30
J. MARITAIN, Art and Scholasticism, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1962, ch. 5 and footnote 56.

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proportion, integrity or completeness, and splendor or clarity (for example, Michelangelo’s
statue of the Pietà is a beautiful statue not just because of its pulchrum secundum quid founded
on its act of being (esse as actus essendi) but because of its pulchrum simpliciter, that is, it is a
beautiful marble statue that exists in extra-mental reality having the objective characteristics or
elements of a beautiful being, namely, harmony or proportion, integrity or completeness, and
splendor or clarity (Kant of course would not agree with this since, for him, the objective extra-
mental reality of the thing-in-itself that is the Pietà marble statue is, for him, unknown and
unknowable). Beauty is not to be subjectivistically identified with the pleasure or delight that
something gives us when we contemplate it, but rather with the properties of something that
render their contemplation pleasing to behold: “Il fondamento della belezza. Anche se la
contemplazione del bello porta sempre con sé un certo piacere, la bellezza non si identifica con il
piacere, ma con le proprietà che rendono appunto la contemplazione piacevole. «Domanderò –
scrive Sant’Agostino – se le cose sono belle perché piacciono, o se piacciono perché sono belle.
Senza dubbio mi si risponderà che piacciono perché sono belle». Lo stesso vale per la bontà, che
non è un attributo avente la propria origine nella volontà del volente, ma una perfezione
dell’oggetto voluto: le cose continuerebbero ad essere buone o belle anche se non esistessero
uomini capaci di desiderarle o di valutarle esteticamente.

“Come avviene per la bontà e l’unità, le caratteristiche che rendono bello un oggetto
derivano, in definitiva, dall’essere di ogni creatura. Per questo, Dio, il quale ha l’essere in tutta
la sua pienezza è anche la Bellezza suprema e assoluta.

“Bellezza e perfezione. Indicare l’essere come il fondamento della bellezza, implica,

come nel caso degli altri trascendentali, affermare la convertibilità o equivalenza fra pulchrum ed
ens. Ma, come per il bonum, anche qui è bene precisare: le cose sono belle in quanto sono, dato
che, per il semplice fatto di essere, hanno una certa attualità, godono di una perfezione. È questo
il senso fondamentale della bellezza, ma non è unico.

“Consideriamo una cosa bella in senso pieno (simpliciter) quando ha tutta la perfezione
richiesta dalla sua natura. Diciamo così che una gazzella è bella in quanto possiede l’armonia e
la perfezione proprie della sua natura (pulchrum simpliciter), e non soltanto perché ha l’essere
(pulchrum secundum quid). Tale senso principale della bellezza si rivela attraverso alcuni
caratteri, i quali sono la causa immediata del piacere estetico. San Tommaso elenca tre aspetti
fondamentali:

“1) Innanzi tutto, una certa armonia o proporzione del soggetto in se stesso e in relazione
a ciò che lo circonda; proporzione che non esclude la varietà, e che non è monotonia o assenza di
sfumature differenti. Si pensi, ad esempio, alla meravigliosa disposizione dell’universo nel suo
insieme, che acquieta sensi e intelligenza, o al ritmo preciso che attraversa un brano di musica
classica, o ancora all’armonia di un organismo vivente.

“2) Un altro elemento costitutivo del bello è l’integrità o completezza dell’oggetto in

relazione alle perfezioni richieste dalla sua forma sostanziale o dalle sue forme accidentali. Un
ente bello deve essere compiuto, e non soltanto nel senso più stretto, ma anche quanto al tocco
finale che fa di una realizzazione più o meno corretta, un’opera d’arte riuscita.

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 “3. Infine, lo splendore o chiarezza (claritas), riferito sia all’ambito materiale sia a quello
spirituale. Per l’intelletto, claritas vuol dire intelligibilità, verità, essere. Per la vista, luce, colore,
nitidezza, pulizia. Per l’udito, quella particolare disposizione dei suoni che rendono piacevole
l’ascolto.

“Si tratta di tre caratteristiche che rivestono in ogni caso modalità diverse, ma che si
trovano, in un modo o in un altro, presenti in tutto ciò che gode di bellezza simpliciter.

“Quanto fin qui detto sulla bellezza costituisce il fondamento oggettivo dell’estetica, che
pur essendo una scienza diversa dalla metafisica, vi si connette attraverso il pulchrum
simpliciter. Per questo, tutto ciò che riunisce le caratteristiche essenziali (armonia, integrità,
splendore) è oggetivamente bello, anche se può soddisfare una determinata sensibilità estetica.

“I gradi della bellezza. La bellezza divina, unica e semplicissima, si riflette nelle creature
in modi diversi. La partecipazione dell’essere rende anche la bellezza degli enti finiti limitata,
così che nessuno di essi la possiede totalmente, ma soltanto nel modo specifico determinato dalla
forma. Ci riferiamo ora alle due grandi regioni dell’universo creato – mondo spirituale ed enti
composti di materia –, per vedere come la bellezza si realizza in ciascuna di esse.

“a) Le sostanze spirituali, che non hanno la forma sostanziale limitata da alcuna materia,
posseggono tutta la bellezza che corrisponde al loro grado e modo di essere. Un angelo, nella
stessa misura in cui è, è anche buono e bello. Gli spiriti puri si dispongono così secondo una
scala di bellezza che riflette fedelmente la gerarchia dei loro gradi di entità. Quanto detto vale
per il pulchrum trascendentale o bellezza secundum quid. Per il pulchrum simpliciter conviene
tener presente ciò che segue. Poiché esso dipende dalla pienezza di perfezione dovuta alla natura,
bisogna affermare che ogni angelo, dal punto di vista dei suoi fini immanenti, lo possiede
necessariamente in pienezza, poiché ciascuno esaurisce la proprie specie, ha cioè tutte le
perfezioni (quantitas virtutis), che competono alla sua natura. Nell’angelo questo pulchrum
simpliciter si identifica con la sua bellezza secundum quid.

“Se invece ci riferiamo ai fini trascendentali, il loro raggiungimento dipende dalle

operazioni libere. Pertanto, è questa la autentica bellezza simpliciter dell’angelo, poiché la
precedente si riduce a quella secundum quid. Le caratteristiche proprie della bellezza simpliciter
(armonia, integrità, splendore) possono essere perse dall’angelo soltanto a causa del peccato,
cioè dal libero allontanameno dal fine.

“b) Negli enti composti di materia, la bellezza si presenta con maggior frazionamento e
dispersione, dovute al fatto che ogni ente, per la limitazione della materia, non può esaurire, da
nessun punto di vista, tutte le perfezioni della proprie specie.

“Nessun ente materiale manifesta la bellezza in tutta la sua estensione, nemmeno quella
del genere o della specie, poiché nei diversi individui la forma sostanziale si trova realizzata in
modi diversi, con accidenti più o meno perfetti e adeguati allo loro natura. Un tale individuo, poi,
difficilmente potrà essere bello secondo tutti i suoi aspetti: un cavallo può stupire per la sua
figura slanciata e per l’armonia della corsa e del salto, ma potrà lasciar a desiderare quanto al

11
colore; una composizione musicale può presentare una melodia molto suggestiva, ma insieme
un’orchestrazione meno riuscita.

“Come nelle sostanze spirituali, anche negli enti materiali vi è una gradazione di bellezza
secundum quid corrispondente al loro grado ontologico. Da questo punto di vista, le specie più
perfette sono le più belle. Ma, se consideriamo la bellezza nel suo senso più pieno (pulchrum
simpliciter), un individuo di una specie inferiore può essere più bello di un soggetto che
appartiene ad una specie superiore, così come una rosa perfetta ha una maggiore bellezza di un
cavallo deforme.

“Quanto abbiamo esposto si riferisce ai fini immanenti agli individui. Tuttavia, il vertice
della bellezza si misura rispetto al raggiungimento del fine trascendente, poiché è in esso che si
trova il culmine di ogni perfezione. L’uomo, in quanto non è una creatura semplicemente
materiale, è dotato di libertà, ed è suo compito raggiungere il proprio fine trascendente (Dio). In
tal modo, il grado più alto di bellezza raggiungibile oggettivamente dall’uomo è quello che
deriva dalla sua libera ordinazione a Dio. La bellezza del corpo si trova allora in un secondo
piano; e si comprende finalmente perché si parli di «bruttezza del peccato», incomparabilmente
maggiore di ogni deformazione fisica: il libero allontanamento dal fine implica la più grave
disarmonia che si può introdurre nell’universo, la dispersione più forte, il più evidente
oscuramento.”31

31
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, and T. MELENDO, Metafisica, Le Monnier, Florence, 1987, pp. 148-151. For the
text in Spanish see: T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, and T. MELENDO, Metafisica, eighth edition, EUNSA, Pamplona,
2001, pp. 189-192.

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