Editing Critique of Judgment (section)

== Context ==

[[Immanuel Kant]]'s ''Critique of Judgment'' is the third critique in Kant's Critical project begun in the ''Critique of Pure Reason'' and the ''Critique of Practical Reason'' (the ''First'' and ''Second Critiques'', respectively). The book is divided into two main sections: the ''Critique of Aesthetic Judgment'' and the ''Critique of Teleological Judgment'', and also includes a large overview of the entirety of Kant's Critical system, arranged in its final form. The so-called ''First Introduction'' was not published during Kant's lifetime, for Kant wrote a replacement for publication.

The Critical project, that of exploring the limits and conditions of knowledge, had already produced the ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]]'', in which Kant argued for a [[Critique of Pure Reason#Transcendental Aesthetic|Transcendental Aesthetic]], an approach to the problems of perception in which [[space]] and [[time]] are argued not to be objects. The First Critique argues that space and time provide ways in which the observing subject's mind organizes and structures the sensory world. The end result of this inquiry in the First Critique is that there are certain fundamental [[Antinomy|antinomies]] in the dialectical use of Reason, most particularly that there is a complete inability to favor on the one hand the argument that all behavior and thought is determined by external causes, and on the other that there is an actual "spontaneous" causal principle at work in human behavior.

The first position, of causal determinism, is adopted, in Kant's view, by empirical scientists of all sorts; moreover, it led to the Idea (perhaps never fully to be realized) of a final science in which all empirical knowledge could be synthesized into a full and complete causal explanation of all events possible to the world.

The second position, of spontaneous causality, is implicitly adopted by all people as they engage in moral behavior; this position is explored more fully in the ''[[Critique of Practical Reason]]''.

The ''Critique of Judgment'' constitutes a discussion of the place of Judgment itself, which must overlap both the Understanding ("Verstand") (whichsoever operates from within a deterministic framework) and Reason ("Vernunft") (which operates on the grounds of freedom).