Critique of the Power of Judgment

Kant's third Critique, which looks to the faculty of judgement for a bridge between nature, known through the understanding, and freedom, known through practical reason. Its subject is reflecting judgement, which seeks a general rule for a given particular. Part One, on aesthetic judgement, analyses the beautiful in four moments: a judgement of taste is disinterested, claims universal agreement without resting on concepts, finds purposiveness without purpose in the form of the object, and presupposes a common sense shared by all. The Analytic of the Sublime separates the mathematical sublime of sheer size from the dynamical sublime of overwhelming power, and argues that both reveal reason's superiority over nature. Kant then discusses fine art as the work of genius and beauty as the symbol of morality. Part Two, on teleological judgement, asks how we must think of organisms, whose parts are both cause and effect of the whole, and ends with a moral argument for God.

It founded modern aesthetics and remains the starting point for arguments about taste, art, the sublime and how we should understand living things.