This is a draft of my final paper for a Philosophy seminar. I know it’s kind of long, but any comments would be appreciated. Thanks!
-CDubs-
~ I. Introduction ~
Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment discusses, at first glance, the method we humans use in discussing objects we call "beautiful." Beauty, he says, is something that is judged subjectively by each individual, but that nonetheless lays claim to universal acceptance. Kant claims this universality for pure aesthetic judgments despite the fact that it is generally reserved for a priori valid logical arguments. Morality is derived from just such an a priori argument, based in concepts of pure reason. It is through this basis that it claims authority over all rational beings.
In the course of his argument, Kant makes it clear that there is a relation between aesthetics and moral judgment, which for him is the practical application of pure reason. In fact, the relationship between aesthetic judgment and moral judgment is strong enough that aesthetic judgment, if properly understood and applied, can serve as a heuristic for judgments of morality. Aesthetics require that the judge separate himself from interest in order that his consideration of beauty should remain pure. The development of this ability to divorce personal interest from aesthetic judgment is even more important when it comes to moral judgment, which must maintain its pure objectivity.
~ II. What is Judgment? ~
It will be useful in this discussion to understand first just what Kant means by "judgment." In order to do this we must begin with Kant's exploration of the domain of philosophy, which he divides into the "practical" and "theoretical" parts. He says in his Introduction to the Third Critique that "our cognitive power as a whole has two domains, that of the concepts of nature and that of the concept of freedom, because it legislates a priori by means of both kinds of concept." These two domains are disparate and do not directly interact with one another - the concept of the domain of nature is purely theoretical and has to do with our capacity for understanding, while freedom legislates through reason and is practical. Reason is capable of predicting natural events, to be sure, but it cannot actually create laws: reason has created a system of predicting what happens when an object is dropped, but it of course did not create the law of gravity. Yet it does seem clear that there should be some interaction between the two realms, some way for the transition from purely theoretical cognition to a practical application to take place. This mediating link is judgment.
Kant further derives this link by classifying the capacities of a rational mind into three irreducible categories: "the cognitive power, the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, and the power of desire." The cognitive power is legislated by understanding and is theoretical, while desire is an act of the will and is therefore practical and governed by the concept of freedom. The move from cognition to desire is accomplished by feeling pleasure or displeasure at the understanding of whatever is being cognized. If we feel pleasure, a desire is formed, and the will acts accordingly. This mediating link is analogous to judgment in the way that cognition and desire are analogous to concepts of nature and concepts of freedom, respectively.
Having connected judgment with feelings of pleasure, Kant wants to explain just what judgment is and what it does. "In general," he says, it "is the ability to think the particular as contained under the universal". As such, it must be divided into two types, depending on what is initially known. A judgment that starts with a universal rule or principle and looks to subsume particular instances under it is called determinative, while one that takes a particular presentation and finds a more general principle for it is reflective. Law for determinative judgments is known a priori, and particular objects are merely classified in terms of this law.
Reflective judgment, on the other hand, is trickier. The law is unknown and must be discovered, but it cannot come from anywhere else, since if it borrowed law from elsewhere it would be determinative. Reflective judgment, then, has some transcendental principle by which it is able to legislate, but only for itself, since judgment cannot, as we have seen, create or alter natural law. In order for us to make sense of the world, we must judge by the principle that “the particular empirical laws must be viewed in terms of such a unity as [they would have] if they too had been given by understanding (even though not ours) so as to assist our cognitive powers by making possible a system of experience in terms of particular natural laws.” For instance, this principle of reflective judgment gives rise to the concept of the purposiveness of nature, through which we view nature as if some understanding contained the basis of the unity of nature’s various laws. In other words, through reflection on observed natural phenomena, our judgment is able to deduce some of the laws of nature and group them together, giving us the ability to see a purposiveness in nature.
This concept of the purposiveness of nature is judgment's mediation between nature and freedom. We cannot fully grasp the fullness of natural law - there is always more to discover, and certain truths are out of our reach. However, we are able to accurately predict many outcomes in terms of the concept of freedom and practical reason. Judgment and the concept of the purposiveness of nature provide this link "from lawfulness in terms of nature to the final purpose set by the concept of freedom." In other words: the understanding suggests the existence of the supersensible in nature (that is, natural law), but it leaves this substrate undetermined. Reason and practical law give it determination, meaning that only judgment can provide determinability - it allows the intellect to make the transition from the concept of nature to the concept of freedom, from the power of cognition to the power of desire.
As we shall see, moral judgment is of the determinative variety. Kant's position is that morality is based on a single a priori principle: the Categorical Imperative in all its formulations. A judgment of morality must simply subsume a particular action under the heading "morally right" if it is in keeping with this principle, or under some other such heading (i.e. "unjust") if it is not. Aesthetic judgment, though, must be reflective. There is no universally accepted or logically arguable conception of what it means for something to be beautiful. For this reason, in order to classify a presentation as beautiful, one must look for a conception of beauty under which to classify it. This requires a principle of judgment that can be used to formulate an idea of what beauty is or ought to be. An important component of Kant's moral philosophy is the role that a developed understanding of the reflective judgment of aesthetics has in preparing us to make practical moral judgments.
~ III. Judgments of Morality ~
Before examining what impact aesthetics may have on Kant's morality, it is imperative that we discuss just what it means to Kant that a given individual is "moral." He opens the Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals by stating that "it is impossible to think of anything at all in the world or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will." Any other conception of good, he says, is contingent on the circumstances surrounding it. Wealth, pleasure, courage, and even happiness are not good in and of themselves, because an impartial observer who saw their characteristics exhibited in an individual who lacked a good will would not feel pleasure. In other words, his judgment would subsume them in such a way that his power of desire, his reason, would will that they not exist in this way. A truly good will, though, according to Kant, cannot help but be judged favorably: it inspires pleasure and a desire that it be perpetuated.
Furthermore, “a good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes, because of its fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because of its volition, that is, it is good in itself.” This is a major theme in Kant’s moral philosophy: ends do not justify means, but the other way around. An individual is not good because of what he is able to accomplish, but because of the will he harbors. Even a good will unable to achieve any purpose “like a jewel - would still shine by itself, as something that has full worth in itself. Usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add anything to this worth nor take anything away from it.” This is the case because a good will is the only adequate aim of our capacity for reason. Reason, which we as rational beings have been granted, is ill-suited to attaining happiness and self-preservation: instinct serves these aims much more efficiently. It is, however, both capable of the creation of a truly good will and absolutely necessary for it, as it alone is capable of aligning the will with whatever universal laws govern morality. For this reason, a good will is the end of reason, and it is an end in itself with no further goals or aspirations to which its creation is a means.
Just what is meant by the idea of a "good will" is not immediately clear from this preliminary exposition, but this concept will be crucial to the development of a faculty of moral judgment. Central to this discussion will be the idea of duty. A good will for Kant is one that acts not merely in accordance with duty, but from duty rather than through some other inclination. Treating others well as a means for personal gain, as in Kant's example of the shopkeeper, is in keeping with duty since the particular end is served. Yet this cannot be the delineator of a good will, since such a will is good in itself and not because it achieves this or that end. Only by acting from duty itself does a will demonstrate itself to be truly good: "if an unfortunate man, strong of soul and more indignant about his fate than despondent or dejected, wishes for death and yet preserves his life without loving it, not from inclination or fear but from duty, then his maxim has moral content." A will that acts strictly from duty is not affected by worldly inclinations - desires, sympathies, loves, or hates. Rather, it ignores them and acts only to foster a goodness of will as an end in itself.
The next question, of course, is to define duty. Kant does so by stating that it is "the necessity of an action from respect for law." That is, as has been seen, an action done from duty is done not because of any inclination or sympathy, but merely because it is right, in that it acts on principle and not with an eye towards an end. For, he says, "only what is connected with my will merely as ground and never as effect, what does not serve my inclination but at least outweighs it or at least excludes it altogether from calculations in making a choice - hence the mere law for itself - can be an object of respect and so a command." Now, since a good will, one that acts from duty and from respect for universal law, is entirely purged of inclination except for this respect, what remains to be found is under just what principle the will ought to act. The only principle that is in conformity with these guidelines is the Categorical Imperative: "I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law." Living in accordance with this imperative ensures that any action I take is worthy of respect as a universal law; that is, it is determined by the principle of the action and its end or even any inclination out of which it might grow. Duty, then, is to live in this manner, with respect for universal law in accordance with the Categorical Imperative. Finally, acting from this duty defines a good will and the ultimate good.
Based on this conception of the Categorical Imperative, the question of moral judgment is simple: "I ask myself only: can you also will that your maxim become a universal law? If not, then it is to be repudiated, and that not because of a disadvantage to you or even to others forthcoming from it but because it cannot fit as a principle into a possible giving of universal law, for which lawgiving reason, however, forces from me immediate respect." Kant defines a maxim as the "subjective principle of volition," meaning the principle under which a rational being acts. This is not the principle under which it says or even thinks it acts, but under which it actually does act, eliminating external inclinations from consideration, for "though much may be done in conformity with what duty commands, still it is always doubtful whether it is really done from duty and therefore has moral worth." This leads to perhaps the most staggering difficulty in Kant's moral philosophy: it is at times all but impossible to know what our true motives for acting are, so how are we to judge our actions, or even know whether or not we have ever acted morally? Ideally, an understanding of aesthetic judgment will eventually serve to aid in the comprehension and judgment of these matters.
Kant, though, is not concerned so much with what actually happens, but with deducing through reason what ought to happen. It is by this standard that morality must be judged, whether we are capable of accurately judging ourselves or not. For, he says, "there is no art in being commonly understandable if one thereby renounces any well-grounded insight," by which is meant that by descending from rational philosophical thought to language and discourse that is more commonly understood and accepted, one loses credibility and indeed validity. A system of ethics must be universally valid amongst all rational beings, and one that is based on any one culture's established moral order is not apt to be accepted by members of another culture. The precepts of rational thought, though, must be universally accepted by rational creatures, and, moreover, "common human reason, with this compass [the Categorical Imperative] in hand, knows very well how to distinguish in every case that comes up what is good and what is evil." A rational creature, properly instructed and guided, must invariably accept the validity of Kant's logical conception of moral law, even as he transgresses it.
Moral law must be pure, not derived from merely empirical principles. Empirically based maxims or laws must necessarily be contingent on the conditions in which they arise, and are therefore no more valid than precepts based on an individual's inclinations. Moral law gains respect from its universal validity, its purity from worldly bases. As such, it must be developed and understood a priori. It cannot even be based on the human experience in general, since it must in fact hold for all possible rational beings as such, including those who have no experience like our own, but merely recognize the value and validity of a cogent a priori argument. Accordingly, morality must be derived from the concept of a rational being.
Kant begins the search for a Categorical Imperative by defining his terms. An imperative is merely a command that includes the word "ought." This is necessary in the case of rational beings such as ourselves because we do not always act from reason and duty, but are at times overwhelmed by inclination and desire. We ought to act according to the imperative (if we find one that is correct), but there is no guarantee that we actually will. Taking the next step, any imperative commands either hypothetically (as a means to some other end), or categorically (as necessary in and of itself). Since it has been established that an imperative that directs towards some end (i.e. in order to be credible, one ought to keep his promises) is contingent and therefore not universally valid, only a categorical imperative earns respect as the determining factor of universal moral law. Such an imperative contains only the idea that an actor's maxim conform with law - this law is not limited by any condition or goal whatsoever, and we are therefore left with the conception of the Categorical Imperative expressed above.
Kant asserts further that this Imperative can be also be expressed as, "act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature." This formulation is possible because the whole of natural law is universal, and any universal law must be natural, since it cannot originate subjectively from any being in particular. This conception has the effect of making each individual actor a lawgiver not only for himself (which he is merely by virtue of his autonomy), but additionally for all rational beings. In order to behave morally, he must give a law unto himself that he could simultaneously will to become universal. This means that, while selfishness and a lack of dutiful concern for others might be a logically universalizable maxim, it is not in fact an adequately moral one since each of us depends on social interaction and aid from other beings, and could not therefore will that such a maxim become universal law. In this case, an actor on such a maxim would actually be willing that the opposite be the case generally, but that a special dispensation be granted him because of some particular circumstance or inclination. Such a will does not necessarily contradict itself, but merely bows to the pressure of desire over the dictates of reason and therefore lacks moral worth.
Kant's final extrapolation of the Categorical Imperative is grounded in his assertion that a rational being is an end in itself in that it has the potential for the creation of the ultimate good (a good will). This idea holds universally because every rational being holds itself to be an end, and therefore despite being subjective on an individual basis the concept holds true objectively and universally as well. This conception leads to the formulation of the Kingdom of Ends: "act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, and never merely as a means." Since every rational being is objectively seen to have a will that is capable of prescribing universal law, the use of such a will as a means would mean that the law itself is a means. This implies that some other end exists other than conformity with and action from universal law, which contradicts the original and most basic sense of the Imperative.
Each rational being, treated as an end in himself, is a member of a kingdom ends, in that he is lawgiving but is simultaneously subject to his own law. A being’s autonomy is his determination of personal maxims such that they might be willed as universal law; that is, they are unaffected by inclinations and determined only though reason. Hence we now have a further view of what it is to judge the moral content of an action: “morality is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will, that is, to a possible giving of universal law through its maxims. An action that can coexist with the autonomy of the will is permitted; one that does not accord with it is forbidden.” Adherence to this, one’s own law, is duty.
On the other hand, action through a heteronymous will invariably leads to poor moral decisions, since such actions are given volition not by the will, but by external objects of desire. The will in this situation acts not on a universalizable maxim but with the thought of some other end in mind. It therefore must necessarily oppose reason and thereby the Categorical Imperative, which we have seen to be the supreme dictate of morality. Heteronomy belongs to objects of the world of sense, of which we as physical beings are members and therefore subject to the whims of natural inclination and instinct. Kant, though, cognizes himself and rational beings in general as almost Cartesian intelligences, members of a separate but related realm of understanding. It is in this realm of understanding that reason separates itself from inclination and attains autonomy and hence moral value.
With this in mind, it is now possible to outline just what is meant by “moral judgment.” Since judgment has been defined as the link between the supersensible world of understanding and the sensible world, we need only elucidate the moral dimension of these two worlds in order to find the connection that is moral judgment. In the moral sense, the world of understanding is represented by the Categorical Imperative. Since it is developed a priori without reference to the sensible world, it is pure in the sense that it is unaffected by material inclination. Its application, however, is in the sensible world, where it must be applied by practical reason to make morally correct choices, in accordance with the autonomy of the will. It is moral judgment that makes this transition possible. Given the a priori principle of morality (the Categorical Imperative), it must merely subsume a given action (or potential action) under the categories of “permitted” or “forbidden,” based on its maxim. Moral judgment is determinative - it allows us to guide our sensible existence based on the principles of objective, a priori moral reasoning.
~ IV. Judgments of Beauty ~
Aesthetic judgments are made in a different fashion. Rather than refer a given presentation (that which is to be judged) to some concept, “we use imagination - to refer the presentation to the subject and his feeling of pleasure or displeasure.” It is a judgment of taste, “whose determining basis cannot be other than subjective.” Any aspect of an object or presentation can be represented objectively via description or logic - except the purely subjective feeling of pleasure or displeasure that it creates in an individual observer. This can only be subjective in nature. However, this liking for the aesthetic, although subjective, lacks interest. For an interest always refers to a desire, which must necessarily influence the contemplation of the presentation.
When we judge something as beautiful, then, we care only about our reaction to our contemplation of it. We do not necessarily care about it existence; indeed, it need not even exist. We must simply be able to contemplate a presentation of it in our imagination in order to judge that it is beautiful. In fact, an aesthetic judgment mixed with any sort of interest in the object is impure: “if a judgment about beauty is mingled with the least interest then it is very partial and not a pure judgment of taste.” In fact, an accurate and true judgment of taste requires and even depends on the judge’s indifference.
In order to fully explain this requirement, Kant lays out three sorts of liking: liking for the agreeable, for the good, and for the beautiful. The first two, he says, are necessarily connected with interest and are therefore invalid when it comes to aesthetic judgment. A judgment that declares something to be agreeable immediately indicates an inclination. This much is obvious, because the very idea of something’s being agreeable implies a desire for that object by the subject. The agreeable, Kant says, is not merely another expression for that which we like; more strongly, it gratifies us. When an individual expresses that something is agreeable, he is “not granting mere approval: the agreeable produces an inclination” by definition.
The good, too, must be divorced from any judgment of aesthetics, because it carries with it an interest as well. The good in this context is broader than the concept of the moral good: it is “what, by means of reason, we like through its own concept.” Something can be good because of what it does or its skill in achieving a particular purpose, or it can be, like the good will discussed above, good because we like it for its own sake. In either case, though, it serves some purpose, whether this is the good will as an end in itself, or some other end that the object serves. In either case, this purpose is necessarily desired if the object is considered good because of it, which means that such a liking is therefore attached to interest.
Furthermore, the fact that the good requires a purpose prevents it from being considered as beautiful. The good is only considered good insofar as it achieves its purpose, but the beautiful needs no purpose and indeed would be corrupted if it did. A flower or an abstract sculpture might be considered beautiful, but as such they are considered to be purposeless. When a flower is subsequently declared to be good at its natural task, this description has no bearing on its beauty - indeed it must be removed from consideration if beauty is to be adequately judged.
Hence both the liking of the agreeable and that of the good are connected with interest because they refer to the actual existence of the object, and hence create a desire for it. A liking of taste, on the other hand, is contemplative in that it is indifferent to the object's existence; all that is required is the contemplation if the object's presentation with respect to our feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Further, it is not based on concepts or purposes, and therefore has no ends by which to judge. Kant defines the differences between the three terms thus:
We call agreeable what GRATIFIES us, beautiful what we just LIKE, good what we ESTEEM, or - that to which we attribute an objective value - Of all these three kinds of liking, only the liking involved in the taste for the beautiful is disinterested and free, since we are not compelled to give our approval by any interest, whether of sense or of reason.
Agreeableness is recognized by all creatures of the world of sense - that is, all animals are gratified by certain sensations. The good is recognized by all rational beings as such, both human and divine. Taste, though, is recognized only by humans, as creatures possessing both the power of reason and the capacity for sensation. This judgment, as we have seen, serves as a bridge between the supersensible world of pure understanding and the world of sense.
A further factor in the judgment of the beautiful is its universality. For when we say that something is beautiful, we expect that others - indeed, everyone - will concur with our judgment. This can be seen clearly in that the beautiful is, as has been shown, is devoid of interest and inclination. Since the judge of beauty does so without thought to his own interest or indeed those of any other, he may thereby infer that no one else takes an interest in the presentation of the object when they judge it as to its beauty. Without interest, it seems unavoidable that there should be some basis for his liking that is universally acceptable, despite the fact that he can give no concept or argument for this basis. His judgment is free of all inclination, even those brought on by his own private conditions. It is, however, based solely on the object's subjective presentation to the individual judge, and is not based on any concept or logical argument. For these reasons, it is said that any judgment of taste requires a claim of subjective universality.
In comparison, neither the agreeable nor the good possesses this unique characteristic. In the case of the agreeable, the judgment of which comes purely from the world of sense, there is no universality. A person who declares that he likes the color violet or the taste of a certain dish does so only for himself. From this we have the familiar concept of the unaccountability of taste of sense, for everyone has his own. As for the good, it is universally accepted, but this universality is based on logical arguments and concepts, which a pure judgment of beauty lacks. Beauty has no concept, for concepts are objectively defined and each individual judges beauty subjectively.
No one can talk or argue someone else into calling a given object beautiful. He might explicate certain characteristics of it, but no amount of debate can cause a nonbeliever to see beauty where it does not lie for him. Simultaneously, though, an individual “must not call [a thing] beautiful if [he means] only [that] he likes it,” for beauty must be universally accepted without purpose or concept. It does not assert that everyone agrees to the beauty - it merely requires it to be a valid judgment. At the same time, taste requires autonomy in its judge, “but to make other people’s judgments the basis for determining one’s own would be heteronomy.” Therefore a judge can neither accept the judgments of others as his own nor force his judgments of taste upon those around him. Although he cannot actually guarantee universal acceptance, the judge counts on it, expects it, as he makes his declaration of judgment.
The liking, in fact, is necessary for an accurate judgment of beauty. While any presentation might potentially be liked in terms of agreeability, the truly beautiful is subjectively recognized as such by everyone who experiences its presentation. A judgment of the beautiful is to be regarded as an example of a universal rule that defines how we judge beauty, but that we cannot state since it is subjective and dependent on feeling. We cannot state such a rule because we lack a basis for it: it comes neither from understanding, since there is no concept for it; nor from experience, since it would thereby be contingent and hence lack necessity. In fact, the necessity is only conditional: everyone ought to assent to the beauty of a presentation judged to be so, much as everyone ought to behave according to the dictates of pure reason. The fact that not everyone does so indicates a flaw not in the judgment (so long as it is in fact made impartially without consideration for inclinations or likings), but in he who disagrees. His judgment is flawed, impure, clouded by partiality.
The condition for this necessity is a common sense, understood as the shared understanding of a community. For a judgment must be universally communicable, or else "we could not attribute to them a harmony with the object, but they would one and all be a merely subjective play of the presentational powers, just as skepticism would have it." In order for them to be communicable in this way, the mental state that goes along with them must be communicable as well, or they would not be fully understood. This shared sense of a mental state requires the existence of the common sense that is presupposed by all judgments of taste. In presupposing a common sense basis for our judgments of taste, we suggest that they are in fact objectively determined, since we expect that all ought to agree upon them. By asserting a judgment of taste, I present my judgment as an example of the common sense that I suppose exists. Its existence is a mere ideal standard through which we take a judgment that is in accordance with it and assert a rule for everyone, despite the subjectivity of my judgment. The idea of common sense allows the formulation of the Beautiful as that which "without a concept is cognized as the object of necessary liking."
~ V. Judgment of Beauty as a Heuristic for Judgment of Morality ~
Aesthetic judgment, though subjective, is developed and improved by experience. The more times an individual hears a piece of truly beautiful music or sees a beautiful work of art, the better he understands the common sense that is presupposed in the judging of such presentations of beauty. Judgment of beauty remains subjective, but the feeling through which the judgment is made can be sharpened and brought into harmony with the common sense. As this sense is developed, it makes possible an improved ability to judge morally.
A well-developed capacity for aesthetic judgment requires the ability to completely divorce one's judgment from inclination and desire. In fact, a judgment of the beautiful must precede any feeling of pleasure. If on the contrary pleasure came before judgment, there would be an immediate desire for the object, and the pleasure would be reduced to mere agreeableness. More importantly, the judgment would no longer be free, and for this reason would lack universal validity. Instead of the presentation itself being the basis for pleasure, the universal communicability of the judgment is the source of pleasure derived from making an accurate judgment. Having one's own taste in harmony with that of the community at large is itself pleasurable, but this pleasure comes after judgment has already been passed.
Identically, a judgment of morality must be disinterested in the world of sense. The practical good "is distinguished from the agreeable, [defined] as that which influences the will only by means of feeling from merely subjective causes, which hold only for the senses of this or that one, and not [like the good] as a principle of reason, which holds for everyone." Agreeability is merely subjective, and this only in a private sense. Something may be agreeable to one but not to another, and for this reason agreeability holds no sway in the development of anything held to be universal. Whether this universality is objective (like that of pure reason), or subjective (like that of aesthetic judgment), it cannot be based on or even affected by the taste of sense, which is merely private and therefore eliminates the possibility of universality.
For this reason, Kant in the Critique of Judgment - a book not aimed at producing a system of ethics - dismisses consequentialism in general and utilitarianism in particular as valid bases for moral judgment. He goes out of his way to say,
People commonly say that all gratification (especially if it lasts) is intrinsically good, which means roughly the same as to be (lastingly) agreeable and to be good are one and the same. Yet it is easy to see that in talking this way they are merely substituting one word for another by mistake, since the concepts that belong to these terms are in no way interchangeable.
The Good comes from concepts that are developed a priori and therefore valid for everyone. Agreeability is a merely subjective feeling of sense that is not even generally communicable. It is in fact impossible, in Kant’s view, for something to be both good and agreeable for the same person, because agreeability injects a corrupt element into what ought to be a pure judgment based on reason.
Furthermore, even empirical principles generally are unfit to determine moral judgments. They need not even be subjective to fail, because whatever situation or existence upon which they are based automatically makes them contingent on that set of circumstances, no matter how generally or widely-present they might be. Moral law must be universal in order to have validity. We expect that morality and justice should be the same for everyone, that no one should be judged differently than another. We have a right to expect this, as morality comes from an a priori principle that all rational beings can understand and abide by. Morality cannot be based on anything material and therefore contingent, because it must hold for all rational beings, even those who do not exist in the world of sense as we know it.
It is now abundantly clear that both moral and aesthetic judgments require a dispassionate attitude towards sensation and that which through sensation we determine to be agreeable. A developed faculty for judgment of beauty necessarily makes the separation of one's mind from the urgings of desire both easier and more immediate. An individual with a heightened sense of taste for beauty has developed himself so that he is able to eliminate outside considerations from his judgment. This is why, in Section 42 of the Third Critique, Kant asserts that "to take a direct interest in the beauty of nature (not merely to have the taste needed to judge it) is always a mark of a good soul; and that, if this interest is habitual, if it readily associates itself with the contemplation of nature, this [fact] indicates at least a mental attunement favorable to moral feeling." The beauty in nature is investigated particularly because "it is the only beauty that arouses a direct interest" - man-made beauty such as art is below it because it cannot arouse such an interest. That the interest is direct is evident from the fact that a person can desire the continued existence of natural beauty such as a wildflower without any further purpose for it. Yet artificial flowers, no matter how identical they might appear to the real thing, have diminished value - the direct interest would vanish as soon as the observer learned his mistake.
This direct interest in nature’s beauty is only possible once one has grasped that it is in fact beautiful, and therefore judgment is at least necessary, if not sufficient for the development of this interest. It is important to note that while aesthetic judgment “is not based on an interest and also gives rise to none,” moral judgment too “is not based on any interest, yet it gives rise to one.” So, to take a direct interest in nature’s beauty requires both aesthetic judgment to determine the beauty and moral judgment to develop the interest. Such a direct interest, it must be seen, can only be based in moral judgment, since “direct interest” implies that nature’s beauty is good in and of itself, without any other purpose in mind - including happiness and agreeability. Indeed, these potential interests are necessarily removed from consideration, since all moral and aesthetic judgments are made without them.
Finally, Kant gives us a direct link between the beautiful and the moral: "Whoever takes such a [direct] interest in the beautiful in nature can do so only to the extent that he has beforehand already solidly established an interest in the morally good." The two go hand in hand. In order to see the beautiful in nature as such, an individual must have a developed sense of aesthetic judgment. As this sense is developed, proficiency at moral judgment improves, since the ability to divorce his mental processes from his desires and interests becomes more powerful. Hence, being able to take a direct interest in nature represents a combined application of moral and aesthetic judgment, and requires both. Exhibiting this ability demonstrates both capacities.
An action is moral if its maxim is such that it can be willed as universal law. Objectivity is vitally important - indeed, it is the very basis of the idea of a Categorical Imperative. Even the formulation of the Kingdom of Ends, in which every rational being is an end in itself, depends on it. To look at other individuals as ends rather than means forces an actor "who is by his very rational nature a judge of morality" to remove from consideration any personal goals and thereby to prevent any subjective element from affecting judgment. By learning through experience of the beautiful to separate interest from judgment, an individual can actually sharpen his rational thinking and become a better judge of moral matters.
Judgment as a general capacity is what links supersensible a priori understanding with the practical, sensible world. Morally, this involves subsuming instances under the predetermined concept of moral reasoning, the Categorical Imperative. Aesthetically, judgment is reflective in that no concept is (or can be) known, so a method of judging beauty must be developed from individual instances. As one’s taste becomes more adept at performing this task, his capacity for moral judgment improves. Since beauty is disinterested and free "even more so than the good - the ability to see it accurately promotes the ability to make moral judgments that are wholly indifferent to corrupting influences. Without these influences, a maxim is perfectly objective and is therefore universalizable, so that action on such a maxim is permitted as actually good.