6 - The Principle(s) of the Power of Judgment

Summary

What is the a priori principle of the new faculty? Kant apparently gives two answers in the Critique: First, he presents a ‘principle of systematicity’ that is supposed to authorize us to regard nature as a system with respect to its particular, or empirical, laws. This is also paraphrased as the principle that for every object in nature an empirical concept can be found, and Kant provides a transcendental deduction for it. Satisfaction of the principle is accompanied by pleasure, but it seems clear that this cannot be the pleasure of taste. A second principle is later entitled the principle of taste. The relation, if any, between these principles is a long-standing problem. I focus in this chapter on the first formulation and attempt to elucidate the role it plays in guiding the imagination in the process of concept formation and discuss the relation of the principles in Ch.7.