Reflective Judgments in Kant’s Power of Judgment
Kant’s philosophy is characterized by its fundamental distinctions—between
nature and reason, phenomenon and noumenon, necessity and
freedom. The Critique of the Power of Judgment seeks to reconstruct
the connection between these domains, starting from the recognition of
the deep gulf that separates them. In this work, Kant examines the very
conditions of the faculty of judgment, for the gap between nature and
freedom can be bridged only through reflective judgments and their a
priori principle.
In determining judgments, the concept or law is given in advance, and
particulars are subsumed under these universals. Yet within the infinite
diversity of nature, there are cases in which only particulars are given
and universals must be sought. Kant calls such judgments “reflective
judgments.” In these, the concept or law under which the particular is
to be subsumed must be discovered through a process of deep reflection.
Nevertheless, a reflective judgment is still, in the end, an act of
subsuming particulars under universals.
In this context, Kant seeks to ground the existence of a transcendental
principle that, though not constitutive but merely regulative, enables us
to comprehend nature not as chaotic but as a systematic whole. At the
same time, he speaks of an a priori principle that makes possible the
universality of our judgments of taste. In this way, he argues that the
purposive structure of nature can be accounted for through the a priori
structure of reflective judgment.
Keywords: Philosophy; Kant; Reflective Judgments; Taste; Teleology