(2.) _Dialectic._—A dialectic of the æsthetic faculty of judgment, like every dialectic, is only possible where we can meet with judgments which lay claim to universality apriori. For dialectics consists in the opposition of such judgments. The antinomy of the principles of taste rests upon the two opposite elements of the judgment of taste, that it is purely subjective, and at the same time, lays claim to universal validity. Hence, the two common-place sayings: “there is no disputing about taste,” and “there is a contest of taste.” From these, we have the following antinomy. (_a_) Thesis: the judgment of taste cannot be grounded on conception, else might we dispute it. (_b_) Antithesis: the judgment of taste must be grounded on conception, else, notwithstanding its diversity, there could be no contest respecting it.—This antinomy, says Kant, is, however, only an apparent one, and disappears as soon as the two propositions are more accurately apprehended. The thesis should be: the judgment of taste is not grounded upon a definite conception, and is not strictly demonstrable; the antithesis should be: this judgment is grounded upon a conception, though an indefinite one, viz., upon the conception of a supersensible substratum for the phenomenal. Thus apprehended, there is no longer any contradiction between the two propositions.
In the conclusion of the æsthetic faculty of judgment, we can now answer the question, whether the fitness of things to our faculty of judgment (their beauty and sublimity), lies in the things themselves, or in us? The æsthetic realism claims that the supreme cause of nature designed to produce things which should affect our imagination, as beautiful and sublime, and the organic forms of nature strongly support this view. But on the other band, nature exhibits even in her merely mechanical forms, such a tendency to the beautiful, that we might believe that she could produce also the most beautiful organic forms through mechanism alone; and that thus the design would lie not in nature, but in our soul. This is the standpoint of idealism, upon which it becomes explicable how we can determine any thing apriori concerning beauty and sublimity. But the highest view of the æsthetical, is to use it as a symbol of the moral good. Thus Kant makes the theory of taste, like religion, to be a corollary of morality.