Introduction

The first two Critiques left a gulf between nature, governed by necessary laws, and the moral world of freedom. In the third Critique Kant tries to bridge it through the faculty of judgement. The first part is the critique of aesthetic judgement. He analyses the beautiful, 'disinterested delight', 'purposiveness without purpose', whose judgement, though grounded in individual feeling, claims everyone's agreement; he analyses the sublime, in which, facing the boundless ocean or a raging storm, we feel our smallness yet become aware of the greatness of reason within us; and he discusses genius and art. The second part, the critique of teleological judgement, treats organisms and purposiveness in nature. The book laid the foundations of modern aesthetics and deeply influenced Schiller, Goethe and the whole of German Romanticism.