Critique of Judgment

He who imitates a model shows skill, but only shows taste in so far as he can judge of this model itself. Thus, the highest model, the archetype of taste, is a mere Idea, which every one must produce in himself; and according to which he must judge every Object of taste, every example of judgment by taste, and even the taste of everyone.

Idea properly means a rational concept, and Ideal the representation of an individual being, regarded as adequate to an Idea. The archetype of taste, which rests on the indeterminate Idea that Reason has of a maximum, but which cannot be represented by concepts, but only in individual presentation, is better called the Ideal of the beautiful. Although we are not in possession of this, we yet strive to produce it in ourselves. It can only be an Ideal of the imagination, because it rests on a presentation and not on concepts, and the Imagination is the faculty of presentation.

The beauty for which an ideal has to be sought
cannot be a beauty that is free and at large,
but must be one fixed by a concept of objective finality.
In other words, where an ideal is to have place
among the grounds upon which any estimate is formed,
then beneath grounds of that kind
There must lie some idea
Of reason according to determinate concepts,
By which the end underlying
The internal possibility of the object
Is determined a priori.

First, there is the aesthetic normal idea,
which is an individual intuition
(of the imagination).
This re-presents the norm by which we judge of a man as a member of a particular
Animal species.

Secondly, there is the rational idea.
This deals with the ends of humanity
So far as capable of sensuous representation,
And converts them into a principle
For estimating his outward form,
Through which these ends are
Revealed in the phenomenal effect.

The normal idea must draw from experience
the constituents which it requires for the form
Of an animal of a particular kind. But the greatest
Finality in the construction of this form—
that which would serve as a universal norm
for forming an estimate of each individual of the species in question—
the image that, as it were, forms an intentional basis
underlying the technic of nature,
to which no separate individual, but only the race
as a whole, is adequate,
has its seat merely in the idea of the judging subject.
Yet it is, with all its proportions,
an aesthetic idea, and as such, capable of being fully presented
in concreto in a model image.

The imagination, in a manner quite incomprehensible to us, is able to on occasion, even after a long lapse of time, not alone to recall the signs for concepts, but also reproduce the image and shape of an object out of a countless number of others of a different, or even of the very same, kind. If the mind is engaged upon comparisons, we may well suppose that it can in actual fact, though the process is unconscious, superimpose as it were one image upon another, and from the coincidence of a number of the same kind arrive at a mean contour which serves as a common standard for all.

Beauty is the form of finality in an object, so far as perceived in it apart from the representation of an end.