Kant's Aesthetics and TeleologyFirst published Sat Jul 2, 2005; substantive revision Wed Feb 13, 2013

Kant's views on aesthetics and teleology are given their fullest presentation in his Critique of Judgment(Kritik der Urteilskraft, also translated Critique of the Power of Judgment), published in 1790. Thiswork is in two parts, preceded by a long introduction in which Kant explains and defends the work'simportance in his critical system overall: in the first part, the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment,” Kantdiscusses aesthetic experience and judgment, in particular of the beautiful and the sublime, and alsoartistic creation; in the second part, the “Critique of Teleological Judgment,” he discusses the role ofteleology (that is, appeal to ends, purposes or goals) in natural science and in our understanding ofnature more generally. The Critique of Judgment was the third and last of Kant's three Critiques, theother two being the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, with a second edition in 1787), which deals withmetaphysics and epistemology, and the Critique of Practical Reason of 1788, which, alongside hisGroundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals of 1785, deals with ethics.

The Critique of Judgment has received less attention than the other two Critiques. One reason is thatthe areas of aesthetics and natural teleology have traditionally been considered less philosophicallycentral than those of ethics, metaphysics and epistemology. Another is that it raises an interpretiveproblem which has no analogue in the case of the other Critiques: that is, how to make sense of thework as a whole given the seeming disparity of the two parts, not only with each other, but also withthe “faculty of judgment” which is the work's ostensible focus. However, Kant's aesthetic theory hasalways been extremely influential within philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of art, and sincethe late 1970s there has been a rapidly expanding literature on Kant's aesthetics within Anglo-American Kant interpretation. Kant's views on natural teleology, very much neglected in comparison tohis aesthetics, started to receive more attention in the early 1990s, and there has been greatly increasedinterest, during the last ten years in particular, both in Kant's view of teleology in its own right, and inits potential relevance to contemporary philosophy of biology. Moreover, over the last twenty years orso, more attention has been directed towards the project of interpreting the Critique of Judgment as acoherent whole. With increased focus on its general philosophical underpinnings, it has come to beseen not only as significant within the disciplines of aesthetics and philosophy of biology, but also asplaying an important systematic role with respect to Kant's epistemology, metaphysics and ethics, andindeed, as relevant to contemporary discussions in these, and related, areas.

Kant's aesthetics and teleology together comprise a very wide field, and this article cannot cover all therelevant topics, nor take account of all the relevant literature. Three limitations should be mentioned.First, although Kant wrote on aesthetics and teleology throughout his career, this article considers onlyKant's Critique of Judgment (along with the so-called “First Introduction,” an earlier version of theIntroduction which was not published during Kant's lifetime but which is included with the mostrecent English translations of the Critique of Judgment). Second, this article is concerned primarily

with the interpretive and philosophical issues raised by Kant's writings on these topics, as opposed tohistorical questions regarding their origin and reception. Third, the article focusses primarily on thoseissues which have attracted most attention in the Anglo-American analytic tradition; this is reflected inthe bibliography, which is primarily restricted to works in English, and more specifically from ananalytic perspective. For some references to Kant's writings on aesthetics and teleology other than theCritique of Judgment, see under Primary Sources in the Bibliography. Some suggestions for secondaryliterature dealing with the history and reception of Kant's aesthetics and teleology, and for secondaryliterature in English from a less analytic perspective, are given under Secondary Sources in theBibliography.