JHP_Beauty-Science-3-clean


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The Beauty of Science without the Science of Beauty 

Kant and the Rationalists on the Aesthetics of Cognition 

 

Angela Breitenbach 

 

(forthcoming in Journal of the History of Philosophy) 

 

 

Abstract 

Claims about the beauty of theories and explanations are often inspired by the Platonic vision that 
beauty will lead us to truth. By contrast, Kant’s aesthetics is commonly regarded as providing the 
most influential critique of this vision. In this paper I show that this popular contrast is mistaken in 
important respects. By examining Kant’s views in comparison with those of his immediate 
contemporaries, A. G. Baumgarten and G. F. Meier, I show that the Kantian position offers an 
important contender to the Platonic ideal, namely, a conception of the beauty of science that is 
independent of the science of beauty. 
 

 

1. Introduction 

 

It is common to praise the beauty of theories, the elegance of proofs and the pleasing simplicity 

of explanations. We may admire, for example, the beauty of Einstein’s theory of general 

relativity, the simplicity of Darwin’s idea of natural selection, and the elegance of a geometrical 

proof of Pythagoras’ theorem. Aesthetic judgments such as these have much currency among 

scientists, and they are employed in the search for knowledge more widely. But while the use of 

aesthetic judgments in science is widespread, it is not uncontroversial.1 On one side, such 

judgments are often inspired by the Platonic vision that beauty and truth are ultimately one. As 



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Henri Poincaré saw it, science is the “disinterested pursuit of truth for its own beauty,” and it is 

the “intellectual beauty” of science “which gives certainty and strength to the intelligence.”2 

Perceiving beauty in science is, on this conception, simply another way of cognizing the true 

order of nature. Experiencing the beauty of theories and explanations and knowing their truth are 

two perspectives on one and the same thing, the fundamental structure of reality. On the other 

side, by contrast, Kant’s aesthetics is commonly regarded as the most influential critique of this 

vision, a vision that had also inspired many of Kant’s rationalist contemporaries. Kant construes 

aesthetic judgments as involving the free play of imagination and understanding, and hence as 

essentially distinct from determinate cognition. For this reason he dismisses the possibility of 

genuine intellectual beauty. His aesthetics has consequently been taken to support a skeptical 

approach to the idea of beauty in science, and aestheticians have offered Kantian arguments 

against ascribing aesthetic merit to theories, proofs or explanations.3  

I believe that this popular contrast between the Platonic ideal and its Kantian critique is 

mistaken in significant respects. Most importantly, it obscures the positive alternative that 

emerges from Kant’s engagement with the vision so aptly described by Poincaré. On this 

alternative conception, aesthetic judgments do not themselves provide cognitive access to the 

truth, and determinate scientific claims do not on their own ground aesthetic pleasure. By 

contrast, science can be the object of aesthetic judgment if it allows for free reflection and an 

intimation of that which lies beyond what is strictly represented. Sensible representations as well 

as theories and explanations can elicit such reflection if they are the products of creative 

intellectual activity. On the Kantian account, it is these intellectual activities, broadly construed 

as a creative and open-ended pursuit, that make possible a distinctive aesthetic experience in 

science.  



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My aim in this paper is to spell out and develop this alternative conception of the beauty of 

science. To do so, I begin by considering the views of Kant’s immediate rationalist 

contemporaries, followers of Leibniz and Christian Wolff, who were themselves treading in 

Plato’s footsteps. I focus, specifically, on Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, famous for giving 

aesthetics its name, and his student Georg Friedrich Meier, a prolific writer, set on developing 

his teacher’s ideas (§2).4 I concentrate on the two because they were particularly concerned to 

elaborate a rationalist aesthetics, and because Kant was familiar with key writings of theirs and 

used their theory of aesthetics as a foil for his own account.5 In the subsequent section I examine 

why for Kant, by contrast with the rationalists, the determinate claims of science are essentially 

distinct from the reflective judgments of beauty (§3). As usual, examining the details of the 

historical contrast reveals that the arguments are more complex and the ideas more intertwined 

than the popular sketch suggests. The comparison brings to light, in particular, that Kant’s casual 

dismissal of the beauty of science in the Critique of Judgment is crucially limited. In part 

disclaiming, in part advancing rationalist insights, Kant’s account stands in a mixed relationship 

to that of his contemporaries. As I argue in the following two sections, his theory provides the 

resources for an aesthetics of science, broadly construed as a creative intellectual activity. More 

specifically, his position implies a conception of the aesthetics of scientific representations (§4), 

and it offers the basis for a more general account including the aesthetics of scientific theories 

and explanations (§5).  

I argue that this alternative conception can answer the challenge that science is too 

intellectual, and too conceptually determinate, to allow for the free reflection that grounds 

aesthetic pleasure on Kant’s account. In fact, I suggest, the account exposes the close links 

between Kant’s aesthetics and his theory of cognition, and thereby sheds light on the sensible 



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dimension of the scientific search for truth. To be sure, Kant does not explicitly develop this 

account himself. But it is one we can construct from the theoretical resources he lays out. Nor 

does the proposed conception account for all judgments of beauty ever made about science. But 

it makes sense of a species of pleasure widely recognized as the appreciation of scientific beauty. 

The Kantian account I propose thus offers a powerful contender to the Platonic ideal by 

developing a conception of the beauty of science that is independent of the science of beauty 

(§6). 

 

 

2. Rationalist connections 

 

How could the perception of beauty give us access to reality? It could if it were itself a form of 

the cognition of reality. This, in brief, is the idea behind Baumgarten’s and Meier’s aesthetics. 

Following Leibniz and Wolff, they construe the perception of beauty in an object as the 

cognition of the object’s perfection, that is, of the internal unity and harmony of the parts within 

the object as a whole.6 More specifically, on their account, to perceive the beauty of an object is 

to have sensible cognition of its perfection; beauty is, in Baumgarten’s words, “the perfection of 

an appearance” and ugliness its “imperfection.”7 

Baumgarten and Meier stay within the Leibnizian-Wolffian framework in characterizing 

sensible cognition as a clear but confused representation of things, in contrast with clear and 

distinct rational cognition.8 As a form of sensible cognition, the perception of beauty thus 

consists in recognizing the object’s perfection, without achieving the distinct insight that only 

rational cognition makes possible. In appreciating the beauty of a mountain landscape, for 



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example, I am aware of the unity and harmony of my perspective on the mountain range, the lake 

it encloses and the clear sky above, but I do not, thereby, prize apart the distinguishing features 

of shapes and colors, light and shadow, and perhaps smells and sounds, that make the landscape 

stand out. 

According to Baumgarten and Meier, it is the way in which clear and confused cognitions 

are achieved, furthermore, that accounts for the special phenomenal character of aesthetic 

experiences. In perceiving perfection through the senses, they argue, the lower cognitive powers 

are brought into harmony with one another, which is accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. The 

perception of beauty is thus a form of objective cognition which speaks to our passions and 

makes rational insight emotionally accessible. In Meier’s words, it gives “flesh and blood” to the 

mere “skeleton” of the distinct insights of reason.9 

This, in broad strokes, is Baumgarten’s and Meier’s cognitivist conception of beauty. One 

may object to this conception that not all sensible cognition of perfection is equally aesthetically 

pleasing. Different attempts to represent the same mountain range—Gerhard Richter’s black and 

white painting, “Gebirge,” compared with my own sketches, fondly but amateurishly 

remembering the scenery of a holiday hike—clearly have different aesthetic value. Baumgarten 

and Meier account for this thought by arguing that sensible cognition can itself be more or less 

perfect. What can be perfected is that feature which distinguishes sensible from rational 

cognition, its confused rather than distinct character. While distinctness is achieved by isolating 

the marks contained in a concept, the confused character of cognition increases as more and 

more marks are combined in a single representation.10 The perfection of rational cognition thus 

aims for abstraction, while aesthetic perfection is achieved by focusing on the specific and by 

illustration and exemplification. Sensible representation is the more beautiful, on this conception, 



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the more lively and truthful to the particularity of the object it represents the object’s 

perfection.11  

This contrast between the more and less aesthetically perfect character of cognition 

accounts for the difference between Gerhard Richter’s art and my own attempts at drawing. It 

also explains, for example, the aesthetic difference between Descartes’s dry and studied treatise 

on astronomy in his Principes de la philosophie, whose sensible stimulation is limited to a few 

diagrams, and the literary presentation of the same theoretical content in Bernard Fontenelle’s 

Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes habités.12 Instead of principles and proofs, set out in 

quasi-mathematical style, Fontenelle explains the heliocentric model of the universe in the 

setting of a nocturnal dialogue between a philosopher and a marquise who wonder about the 

marquise’s garden gazing at the stars. Fontenelle’s popular account of astronomical insights is 

detailed and illustrated by examples. On Baumgarten and Meier’s account, it is for this reason 

that Fontenelle’s novel, while communicating the same scientific content as Principes de la 

philosophie, is more beautiful than the less extensively clear diagrammatic representations of 

Descartes. As Meier puts it, it is the richer and more “lively” cognition that “exercises the 

powers of the mind and thereby touches on the soul.”13 

Baumgarten and Meier thus regard judgments of beauty and cognitive insights as 

intimately connected. On their account, the experience of beauty is a form of cognition that, just 

like the more abstract insights of reason, lays bare the structure of reality, while at the same time, 

and unlike cognition from rational principles, giving rise to aesthetic pleasure. Moreover, 

according to them, cognition can be perfected aesthetically as well as logically. It may be more 

or less beautiful just as it may be more or less conceptually distinct.14 It is this cognitive 

conception of aesthetics, which grounds the tight connection between aesthetics and science. On 



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the one hand, we can have principles of beauty and, hence, a science of aesthetics. For we can 

determinately specify the features that ground aesthetic judgments, features of the object as well 

as of its representation.15 On the other hand, the cognitive insights of science can themselves be 

beautiful. Achieved in the right way, namely, through the extensively clear representations of the 

senses, objective cognition is a source of aesthetic pleasure. As Meier puts it, the beautiful 

sciences  

 

are not bound to any specific object of our cognition; rather they can be concerned 

with theological, philosophical, mathematical, juridical and medical matters etc. … 

they are concerned with the special way and manner of cognizing some thing.16 

 

 Baumgarten’s and Meier’s account thus makes room for the science of beauty as well as 

the beauty of science. The cognition of beauty is the subject of the science of aesthetics, while 

the insights of the sciences can be the objects of aesthetic judgments. 

 

 

3. Kantian divisions 

 

A difficulty with the rationalist account of beauty is that it seems overly intellectualist. 

Construing the experience of beauty as a form of cognition, whether sensible or non-sensible, 

does not appear to capture what is so special about aesthetic appreciation, namely, its peculiar 

relation to the subject and her feeling of pleasure and displeasure. This, in brief, is the objection 

Kant raises against Baumgarten’s and Meier’s identification of aesthetic judgment with the 



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cognition of perfection. Although the exact details of Kant’s relation to the aesthetic theory of his 

rationalist predecessors are a matter of some controversy, two points of disagreement are clear.17 

First, Kant rejects the rationalists’ view that we can have access to the fundamental structures of 

reality either (distinctly) through reason or (confusedly) through the senses. On Kant’s 

transcendental idealist account, cognition requires both intellect and sensibility, and it can give 

us insight only into appearances and not into the nature of things in themselves.18 Second, Kant 

denies that aesthetic judgment can be identified with the cognition of perfection, even once we 

have construed cognition along transcendental idealist lines. As he declares in the Critique of 

Judgment, 

 

[t]o grasp a regular, purposive structure [Gebäude] with one’s faculty of cognition 

(whether the manner of representation be distinct or confused) is something entirely 

different from being conscious of this representation with the sensation of 

satisfaction.19  

 

Aesthetic judgments differ from ordinary cognition, Kant argues, since they relate the 

representation of an object to the subject’s capacity of feeling. As he puts it, through aesthetic 

judgments the subject “feels itself as it is affected by the representation.”20 Of course, on Kant’s 

account, not any feeling of pleasure gives rise to aesthetic experience. A judgment is properly 

aesthetic only if the subject has reason to claim that others ought to feel the same. She makes a 

genuine aesthetic judgment only if she can impute the legitimacy of her feeling to everyone else.  

In the third Critique, Kant proposes to account for the peculiar nature of aesthetic 

judgments and their difference from ordinary cognition by his theory of the free play of the 



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faculties. What is important about the intellectual activity involved in judgments of the beautiful, 

he argues, is that it conforms to the general conditions of cognitive judgment without in fact 

constituting determinate cognition. Successful cognition depends on the work of the imagination, 

the capacity to combine the sensory manifold and to be aware of the resulting combination as a 

unity. It furthermore relies on the faculty of understanding, the conceptual capacity by means of 

which we make sense of the combined manifold as a unity of a specific sort. Cognition consists 

in determinate judgments about sensory objects.21 

Aesthetic judgments significantly differ from determinate cognition thus construed. They 

are not constituted by the recognition that the object has such and such properties, but by a non-

determining reflection in which we are aware of the object as suitable for understanding without, 

however, construing it as suitable to be understood in any one particular way.22 By reflecting on 

the imaginative synthesis in a manner that could in principle be brought under concepts, the 

judgment conforms with the general conditions of cognition while remaining conceptually 

indeterminate.23 It is this harmonious yet conceptually indeterminate interaction of imagination 

and understanding and the associated awareness of the object as fitting with our cognitive 

capacities that grounds aesthetic pleasure. 

Kant characterizes the suitedness of the object for our intellectual faculties as a 

“purposiveness without a purpose,” that is, a purposiveness whose purpose is conceptually 

indeterminate.24 The objects of aesthetic appreciation are purposive, on Kant’s account, not 

because they are conducive to realizing the subject’s particular end, for instance, that of finding 

the solution to an intellectual problem. Instead, beautiful objects are purposive since, by 

reflecting on the form of such objects, our cognitive faculties are “unintentionally brought into 

accord with one another.”25 More specifically, since we do not become conscious of this fit by 



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subsuming the object under determinate concepts, but through a feeling of pleasure, aesthetic 

judgment has a distinctive subjective character. Moreover, since this pleasure is related to a 

harmony of capacities common to all, and not dependent on the satisfaction of any particular 

idiosyncratic desires, aesthetic pleasure can be imputed to all. This is why Kant maintains that 

the free play of imagination and understanding is associated with a feeling that has universal 

validity. 

By contrast with Baumgarten’s and Meier’s aesthetics, on Kant’s account, the experience 

of beauty is thus importantly unlike determinate cognition of the objective structures of 

reality.Kant draws an important conclusion from this. “There is neither a science of the beautiful, 

only a critique, nor beautiful science, only beautiful art,” he maintains.26 The first half of this 

assertion follows directly from Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment. There can be no science of 

the beautiful, since there are no rules to specify the features that make something beautiful, 

neither rules pertaining to the perfection of the object itself nor to its representation.27 Aesthetics 

therefore cannot be a science but only a critique. It can investigate the cognitive faculties 

involved in aesthetic judgments, but not the features of an object that constitute its beauty.  

 Moreover, Kant repudiates not only the conception of aesthetics as a science of beauty but 

also the possibility of a beautiful science. He claims that “if one were to ask in [such a science] 

for reasons and proofs one would be brushed aside with tasteful expressions (Bonmots).”28 He 

suggests, in other words, that if there were a beautiful science, scientists would answer the quest 

for truth by an appeal to beauty. One might wonder, however, why scientists should not be able 

to give reasons and proofs that would also leave room for the free reflection of aesthetic 

judgment. Why should it be impossible, as Kant seems to suggest, to answer the quest for truth in 

a way that has aesthetic merit? 



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 In response one might suggest that for Kant a beautiful science is an “Unding”—an 

absurdity, or literally a non-entity—since something can be an object of aesthetic appreciation 

only if it is sensory.29 According to this suggestion, Kant’s position entails that the purely 

reflective judgment which grounds the experience of beauty can have as its object only sensory 

manifolds but no conceptual claims. On this proposal, the synthesizing activity of the 

imagination would have to be directed at the bare sensory material, not at concepts, judgments or 

ideas. One might think, furthermore, that abstracting from all concepts in the case of theories or 

proofs would leave no manifold to be reflected upon, and would thus eradicate all possible 

candidates for aesthetic appreciation.  

A difficulty with this response, however, is that Kant is more than happy to promote other 

entities as key examples of beauty that, just like scientific theories, deal with concepts and ideas. 

Such entities include works of poetry and literature; and, indeed, he regards poetry as the highest 

form of beautiful art.30 Kant can claim as much because he makes room for a second, related, 

conception of beauty according to which aesthetic judgments consist in reflections on particular 

representations of concepts and ideas. Aesthetic judgments about poetry and literature, for 

example, rely on the free and harmonious interaction of the faculties. They do so, however, in 

engaging not with the bare sensory manifold but with conceptual representations. In 

contemplating poetry or literature, the imagination is thus free to reflect on an inexhaustible 

wealth of thoughts associated with the concepts and ideas expressed by the artwork, while being 

unconstrained by any particular conceptual interpretation.31  

Goethe’s Erlkönig, for example, takes the form of a ballad that conveys the simple story of 

a father riding home with his sick son who hallucinates being assailed by the ‘erl-king’. The 

poem tells a simple story whose representation procures imaginative associations of supernatural 



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powers, of fear and vulnerability, and of abuse and rape. On Kant’s account, representations such 

as these make possible an inexhaustible wealth of thoughts that is not fully determined by the 

concepts underlying the story itself but nevertheless adequate as an expression of these 

concepts.32 As Kant puts it, artworks “expand… the mind by setting the imagination free” and by 

connecting the representation of a concept with “a fullness of thought to which no linguistic 

expression is fully adequate.”33 

Works of art can thus represent concepts while allowing for conceptually unconstrained 

and inexhaustible reflection. They can do so, Kant claims, because they are the product of 

genius, the original and exemplary capacity to create artistic expressions that go beyond the 

content of the concepts they represent, while nevertheless being adequate as expression of those 

concepts. As Kant puts it,  

 

genius really consists in the happy relation, which no science can teach and no 

diligence learn, of finding ideas for a given concept on the one hand and on the other 

hitting upon the expression for these, through which the subjective disposition of the 

mind that is thereby produced, as an accompaniment of a concept, can be 

communicated to others.34  

 

It is the representations of this original and exemplary capacity that, despite being the product of 

intention, leave room for judgments in which the harmony of our cognitive faculties can be 

appreciated, in Kant’s earlier words, as “unintentional.”35 The expressions of concepts and 

judgments brought about by the capacity of genius leave room for the free play of the faculties 

and, hence, for aesthetic pleasure. Kant thus accounts for judgments of beauty that involve 



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reflection on conceptual representations. Why, then, does he nevertheless maintain that there can 

be no beautiful science? And why does he add the further claim that genius is possible only in art 

but not “in the scientific sphere”?36  

 

 

4. Scientific representations and aesthetic perfection 

 

In order to understand why Kant proclaims that there can be no beautiful science, we must be 

clear about what the statement entails. I believe Kant’s claim is much more limited than is 

commonly understood. Kant’s statement is focused on science “as such,” that is, science in the 

strict sense as a “system of cognition,” consisting in systematically unified determinate 

judgments.37 There is no indication that Kant is concerned with the scientific enterprise more 

widely construed, encompassing not only scientific claims such as theories and explanations but 

also scientific practices such as calculating and experimenting, modeling, representing and 

visualizing of data and, more broadly, theorizing. This suggests that, when Kant maintains there 

can be no beautiful science, he makes the narrow claim that determinate cognitions cannot 

ground aesthetic pleasure. He does not thereby imply that aesthetic judgment has no place in our 

scientific endeavors more widely conceived.  

In accordance with this narrow reading, Kant’s rejection of beautiful science follows 

straightforwardly from his repudiation of the other rationalist conviction, the principle that 

aesthetic judgment is a form of determinate cognition. Since determinate judgments cannot 

ground aesthetic pleasure, on Kant’s account, and since science in the strict sense consists in a 

system of determinate cognitions, science itself cannot ground aesthetic pleasure. Kant’s 



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contentious assertion that there is no beautiful science is thus a simple reformulation of his 

widely acknowledged view that aesthetic judgments are distinct from ordinary cognition. Once 

Kant’s rejection of beauty in science is interpreted in this strict sense, moreover, we can refocus 

the questions I raised in the previous section. Even if the determinate cognitions of science do 

not themselves ground aesthetic pleasure, could aesthetic judgments not be a part of science 

more widely construed as a human activity? Could we not find beauty, for example, in a science 

that includes the representations and practices of scientists?  

Kant addresses the aesthetic dimension of cognition in his lectures on logic and 

anthropology. He is concerned there with Baumgarten’s and Meier’s distinction between the 

aesthetic and logical perfections of cognition. Since Kant’s logic lectures are oriented along 

Meier’s logic textbook, Auszüge aus der Vernunftlehre, it is not surprising that Kant discusses 

Meier’s distinction there.38 What is more surprising is that, having rejected the rationalist claim 

that cognitive judgments can ground aesthetic pleasure, Kant holds on to the rationalist 

distinction and claims that the representations of cognition can be more or less aesthetically 

valuable.  

 In the lectures, Kant associates the distinction between the aesthetic and the logical 

perfection of cognition with that between sensibility and understanding, and their 

representations, intuitions and concepts. One might therefore think that, for Kant, the aesthetic 

perfection of cognition has nothing to do with beauty but, following the terminology of the 

Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason, with sensory representation in general. 

On this reading, cognition can be perfected either with the aim of illustrating our concepts 

through sensory representations (versinnlichen), that is, in accordance with the first Critique 

notion of aesthetics (henceforth, ‘aestheticsC1’), or with the aim of gaining conceptual insight, 



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that is logically.39 While logical perfection aims at the complete clarification of concepts and 

conceptual relations, the goal of aestheticC1 perfection is “comprehensibility” (Faßlichkeit), that 

is, the capacity of the significance of concepts to be grasped in concrete cases.40 AestheticC1 

perfection is achieved, for instance, through the use of examples and illustrations as in the work 

of Fontenelle.41 It concerns the “ease” and “liveliness” with which cognition is attained.42  

Construed in this way, maintaining Baumgarten’s and Meier’s distinction between two 

types of perfection is unproblematic for Kant, since it does not concern his conception of beauty 

at all. By contrast with the rationalists, Kant holds that cognition requires connection with 

sensibility, just as it requires conceptual recognition of the sensible. Kant can thus coherently 

hold that both types of representation, intuitive and conceptual, or aestheticC1 and logical, are 

necessary for cognition. On this reading, what Kant spells out by elaborating on the aestheticC1 

perfection of cognition, are the empirical conditions of how sensible representation is achieved 

for creatures like us.43 Both logical and aestheticC1 perfections can be regarded as perfections 

some instantiation of which is necessary for cognition. 

And yet this is not the end of the story. For, in other parts of the lectures, Kant qualifies his 

conception of aestheticC1 perfection along the lines of his theory of beauty, and thus moves on to 

the third Critique notion of aesthetics (henceforth, in this section, ‘aestheticsC3’). He suggests 

that we “can think of an aesthetic perfection that contains the ground of a subjectively universal 

pleasure” where, as he puts it bluntly, “this is beauty.”44 What Kant calls ‘aesthetic perfection of 

cognition’ is thus concerned not only with the way in which a claim is presented to the senses, 

i.e. aestheticallyC1, but also with whether it is presented in a way that is universally pleasing, i.e. 

aestheticallyC3. More specifically, Kant seems to think of the two notions as closely connected 

and, in particular, of the third Critique notion as dependent on the first. Strictly speaking, Kant 



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claims, judgments of beauty are not about cognition as such but about its sensory expression. As 

he puts it, “there is really no beautiful cognition…, but only the exhibition [of cognition] can be 

beautiful.”45 ‘Aesthetic perfection of cognition’ is thus concerned, not with the aestheticC3 

features of abstract propositions that form part of an inferential structure, but with the 

aestheticsC3 of their sensory expression.  

AestheticC3 reflection can thus be directed at determinate judgments, on Kant’s account, if 

these judgments are given the right sensible representation. And, as we know from the Critique 

of Judgment, the right sensible representation is one that leaves room for the free play of the 

faculties, a representation that suitably expresses the judgment represented, while giving the 

imagination free reign to run through an indeterminate plethora of associated thoughts. 

Moreover, as we also know from the third Critique, aestheticC3 representations that involve 

concepts and ideas are the product of the original and exemplary capacity Kant calls “genius.” It 

is this capacity which can produce representations that are suitable for expressing the relevant 

concepts or ideas, without being wholly determined by those concepts or ideas. It is this capacity, 

too, which therefore allows us to represent logically distinct cognition in ways that are 

aestheticallyC3 pleasing. This is how we can understand Kant’s suggestion in the lectures that it is 

the capacity of genius to bring about the combination of aestheticC3 with logical perfection: 

 

It is in the greatest possible unification of logical with aesthetic perfection in general, 

in respect to those cognitions that are both to instruct and to entertain, that the 

character and the art of genius actually shows itself.46 

 



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Represented in the right way, a determinate judgment of cognition may thus be appreciated 

aestheticallyC3 just as it can be understood conceptually. I argue that there is no reason, on Kant’s 

account, to limit such representations to fine art, or to exclude representations of scientific 

cognition. Goethe’s Erlkönig may lead us to understand the conception of vulnerability and 

violence expressed by the poem, while inspiring us to associations about nature’s power over 

man, or the weight of parental responsibility. In the same way, I suggest, a representation of the 

evolutionary lineage of finch species may lead us to grasp Darwin’s theory of evolution, while 

inspiring us to think through implications of the theory we had not previously considered, or 

draw connections with other natural phenomena we had not previously seen. In both examples, 

there is room for the free play of the faculties. In both art and science, Kant’s theory can thus 

account for aestheticC3 pleasure as grounded in the awareness of an indeterminate fit of the 

object of appreciation with our intellectual capacities.  

One may object against my proposal that there is an important disanalogy between art and 

science. One may argue that Kant’s transcendental and metaphysical principles, developed in the 

Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, ensure that our 

scientific concepts have determinate application to the phenomena, and hence that any 

representation of those concepts would leave no room for free play. Scientific concepts denote 

natural kinds or empirical laws that govern natural processes. They can be defined in terms of 

more familiar concepts, explicated in relation to other theoretical principles, and illustrated by 

means of examples. Art, by contrast, is usually concerned with moral, political or theological 

ideas, and hence with indeterminate ideas that transcend experience.47 In order to give sensible 

expression to these super-sensible concepts, they must be represented indirectly and by means of 

symbols.48 It is because of this disanalogy, one might therefore argue, that art requires indirect, 



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symbolic representations, which “occasion… much thinking,” while the concepts and principles 

of science stand in a determinate relation to natural phenomena and can be illustrated directly 

and without the use of symbols.49 Newton’s gravitational law, for example, can be illustrated by 

its application to particular cases. But, according to the present objection, such illustration would 

leave no room for the free play of the faculties, nor therefore for aestheticC3 appreciation. 

 In response to this objection it is important to note, however, that on Kant’s account 

expressing the relation between scientific ideas and the objects they represent is more complex 

than the above contrast between art and science may lead one to assume. According to Kant, 

science is not simply in the business of describing states of affairs but of formulating universal 

principles and discovering necessary laws whose universal and necessary status is not easily 

exemplified by individual empirical cases. Most importantly, science aims at a unified 

conception of reality, ordered according to a system of concepts and principles. I argue that it is 

because the systematic unity of all cognitions is a necessary goal of science, for Kant, that 

scientific representations may demand the imagination to go beyond what is directly expressed 

by sensory particulars and thus allow for aestheticC3 reflection.50  

 Let me spell out this suggestion in some more detail. Kant holds that we cannot cognize the 

world as a determinate and fully unified whole. This cognitive limitation notwithstanding, he 

also argues that we are necessarily guided by the indeterminate idea of unity in all our scientific 

investigations. More specifically, in science we must presuppose that all cognition of local 

phenomena is always part of a larger whole and that it can be systematically related to other parts 

within that whole.51 Moreover, we have to assume that the objects of those cognitions are such 

that they can be cognized in this way, and that particular phenomena are systematically related 



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and governed by universal laws.52 The idea of unity thus guides scientific enquiry and informs 

scientific cognition.  

 As a concept of reason, however, the idea of unity cannot be represented directly in 

sensibility. Its sensory representation requires the original and exemplary employment of our 

imaginative and conceptual faculties. In order to sensibly represent the conception of unity that 

scientific cognition presupposes we therefore need to use indirect, symbolic representations. We 

have to employ a particular that stands in for the unified whole, and that expresses more than is 

strictly determined by what we have cognized.53 I argue that it is representations of this kind that 

require the original and exemplary activity of genius and can be the object of aestheticC3 

appreciation. Scientific representations are thus beautiful, on this conception, when they succeed 

in expressing a scientific concept or principle while also giving us a glimpse of the unity of 

nature at which our science aims. 

Kant does not give examples, let alone scientific ones, in his lectures (and one may bemoan 

that his writing falls foul of his own standards of aestheticC3 perfection). If my suggestion is 

right, however, his account allows for such cases of science in the arts as Fontenelle’s popular 

writings. Moreover, and more importantly, examples may also include the work of scientists 

themselves such as geometrical diagrams, physical models, chemical experiments, or biological 

exemplars that represent in an instance the universal conception implied by the theory. Louis 

Pasteur’s separation of mirror-image molecular forms of tartaric acid, for example, is often 

regarded as one of the most beautiful experiments in the history of chemistry.54 Pasteur’s 

conceptually simple experiment shows, in a carefully executed way, that chiral molecules—

molecules with a right- or left-handed orientation—are optically active. They rotate polarized 

light, unless there are mirror-image molecular groupings in the mix which cancel the effect. 



 20 

Pasteur’s experiment reveals clearly and unambiguously this important truth in chemistry. The 

beauty of the experiment lies in its capacity to show in one glimpse a universal chemical 

principle, underlying a whole range of phenomena. At the same time, it leaves indefinite room 

for the imagination to contemplate the implications of this principle and to run through an 

inexhaustible string of associated representations. It expresses a universal idea by stimulating 

thought beyond the particular case represented and by procuring images of the whole of nature 

for which the principle holds.55 On the Kantian account I suggest, we can appreciate Pasteur’s 

experiment as beautiful because it presents a scientific idea in a way that leaves room for the free 

play of the faculties. 

On the Kantian conception, I argue, representations of scientific concepts and principles 

can thus be the object of aestheticC3 appreciation. As the example of Pasteur’s experiment shows, 

moreover, this account makes good sense of some actual instances of aestheticC3 judgments in 

science. To be clear, Kant does not spell out this conception of the aestheticsC3 of scientific 

representations explicitly. But, as I have argued in this section, his theory provides the necessary 

resources for it. Once we recognize that Kant’s express rejection of the beauty of science has 

limited scope, we can thus see that, on his account, representations of scientific insights can be 

the object of aestheticC3 appreciation. 

 

 

5. Scientific theories and reflective judgment 

 

The previous section shows that the Kantian conception can account for the aesthetics of sensible 

representations in science. One may worry, however, that sensible representations are only a 



 21 

marginal part of the enterprise of science. They may be important in formulating, testing, 

communicating and understanding scientific claims. But they are neither the only nor the central 

aspect commonly associated with the aesthetic dimension of science. We may, for example, find 

beauty in Einstein’s explanations of the large-scale structure of the universe entirely 

independently of any particular representation. From the foregoing discussion it is unclear how 

to account for such a case. Does Kant’s rejection of the science of beauty commit him, after all, 

to significantly restricting the scope of the beauty of science, even if he does not rule it out 

entirely? 

A positive answer to this question would, I think, be mistaken. For, if we follow the 

argument of the last section through, we see that the results present a particular instance of a 

more general Kantian insight. This is the recognition that it is not science in the strict sense, but 

the scientific enterprise broadly construed, that can be the object of aesthetic appreciation. I thus 

suggest that the insight of the previous section holds not only for sensible representations but 

also for scientific theories and explanations broadly conceived as the product of spontaneous, 

creative activity.  

Once again, this suggestion may be received with scepticism. For, once again, science may 

seem unsuitably determinate to allow for the free reflection that grounds aesthetic appreciation. 

What, one might ask, is more crucial to Kant’s defense of the objectivity of science than his 

claim that our knowledge of nature is conceptually guided and grounded in the fundamental a 

priori principles of the understanding? As we know from the first Critique and the Metaphysical 

Foundations, the transcendental and metaphysical laws of nature govern the formulation of 

particular scientific concepts and principles. Theorizing about the phenomena is essentially 

structured by a priori rules and importantly different from the free reflection associated with 



 22 

artistic processes. In support of this objection, one might further point to Kant’s famous—or, 

perhaps, infamous—claims about Newton. Newton may have been a great thinker, Kant 

maintains, but his work lacked the originality of real genius that can only be found in art:  

 

Everything that Newton expounded in his immortal work on the principles of natural 

philosophy, no matter how great a mind it took to invent it, can still be learned; but 

one cannot learn to write inspired poetry, however exhaustive all the rules for the art 

of poetry and however excellent the models for it may be.56  

 

On Kant’s account, the principles of natural philosophy can be taught and learnt. According to 

the objection, scientific cognition is therefore essentially conceptually determined and, hence, 

leaves no room for the free reflection required for judgments of beauty. 

In response to this challenge, however, it is important to read Kant’s bold assertions about 

Newton with care. Kant contrasts rules for writing inspired poetry with the principles of natural 

philosophy, and he argues that while the first are unavailable, the second can be taught and 

learnt. To be precise, Kant opposes rules for writing poetry with scientific principles themselves 

and not with the rules for doing science or formulating theories. As before, Kant’s explicit focus 

is on the fundamental difference between the determinate judgments of science, strictly 

construed as a system of cognitions, and the indeterminate reflective judgments of aesthetics. But 

this contrast, by itself, does not rule out the possibility that creative and original reflection plays 

a role in scientific practice and, hence, that there is beauty in science in the broad sense. The 

implications of Kant’s critical claims about the genius of Newton may thus be more limited than 

is commonly thought.  



 23 

To begin seeing this, it is important to recognize the diversity of scientific practice. Much 

of science follows entirely mechanical procedures. Data gathering, hypothesis testing, and the 

fine-tuning of experiments in response to experimental results are carried out according to more 

or less standard routines. And yet it is far from obvious that we can spell out determinate rules 

for all aspects of scientific practice including, in particular, the formulation of new scientific 

concepts and principles. By contrast, scientific ideas seem often to be discovered in unobvious 

and roundabout ways. Their discovery may involve visual aids, analogical thinking, and more 

creative sources of inspiration. Some original and exemplary thought processes are needed in 

order to develop ideas that promise new solutions to scientific problems. 

Kant incorporates this thought in his account of reflective judgment. He argues that the a 

priori determination of cognition by means of the constitutive principles of the understanding is 

not by itself sufficient for scientific research. The transcendental and metaphysical laws of the 

first Critique and the Metaphysical Foundations determine the fundamental structure of nature as 

such, but they leave under-determined the specific character of particular natural phenomena and 

the specific empirical instantiation of the universal laws that govern those phenomena. As Kant 

puts it in the introduction to the Critique of Judgment, even according to the a priori “universal 

laws, without which the form of an experiential cognition in general would not obtain at all,” 

natural phenomena may still remain incomprehensible to us. They could appear so diverse that it 

would be impossible for us “to make an interconnected experience out of material that is for us 

so confused.”57 Scientific understanding of particular natural phenomena is not guaranteed, Kant 

argues, by a simple application of the a priori laws to empirical data. 

The activities of science thus rely on a further capacity in addition to that of determining 

judgment. Scientific practice requires the work of reflecting judgment, the ability to search for 



 24 

unity among the manifold of particular cognitions.58 Kant recognizes that this capacity consists 

in comparing and contrasting particular phenomena, following methods of induction and 

analogy, and that such empirical research is guided by the regulative principle “that what is 

contingent for human insight in the particular (empirical) laws of nature nevertheless contains a 

lawful unity.”59 Scientific reflection thus presupposes the idea that the empirical data presented 

to us can be understood according to unifying concepts and principles whose content is yet to be 

determined. It relies on the guiding idea that the empirical given is suitable, in an as yet 

undetermined way, to our unifying ambitions. 

It follows, on Kant’s account, that scientific discoveries are not the result of a completely 

explicable mechanism, even if the concepts and principles thereby discovered can be fully spelt 

out. Although scientific theorizing aims at concepts and principles that are empirically adequate 

and, ultimately, provide a true account of the phenomena, it does so by reflecting on how the 

phenomena form part of a systematic unity of nature as a whole. It requires reflecting on an idea 

of reason that goes beyond any scientific concepts and principles strictly construed. It thus 

consists in imaginatively engaging with how this idea may be expressed in, and partially 

instantiated by, the narrowly scientific concepts and principles that determine the phenomena. I 

argue, moreover, that this reflective and imaginative capacity is continuous with the original and 

exemplary ability with which we are familiar from Kant’s discussion of art. It consists in 

searching for conceptual representations that are not fully determined by the principles and ideas 

already available, and yet nevertheless give adequate expression to these principles and ideas. 

Scientific theories and explanations thus construed result from the attempt of finding 

instantiations of the universal laws of the understanding that give a partial, and as yet 

indeterminate, representation of the idea of systematic unity. It is this aspect of scientific 



 25 

reasoning, I suggest, which accounts for its continuity with the reflective activity involved in the 

creation of art and which may therefore be called an activity of ‘genius’.60 

On the Kantian account, the formulation of a particular scientific theory or explanation, 

just as the sensible representation of scientific ideas considered in the previous section, thus 

relies on a free and creative intellectual activity. Scientific theories and explanations that are the 

result of this creative activity can, moreover, leave room for the unconstrained reflection that 

grounds aesthetic pleasure. Theories and explanations may prompt us to run through unobserved 

implication, think about instantiations under novel conditions, and draw out as yet undiscovered 

connections with other parts of science. They may thereby leave indefinite room to contemplate 

a wealth of representations, suitably associated with the idea of the unity of nature. I argue that it 

is this free and imaginative reflection, afforded by theories that are the result of a creative 

intellectual process, that makes possible the free play of the faculties and thereby grounds 

aesthetic pleasure.  

Kant does not offer any examples of the aesthetic appreciation of theories and 

explanations. But we may conceive of it as the pleasure, sometimes described by scientists, of 

seeing the connection between things, of experiencing the parts fall into place, and of having the 

whole world in view.61 We may associate it with the aesthetic experience, in contemplating a 

theory, of getting a glimpse of that which lies beyond what is strictly determined by the theory, 

and with the feeling that our minds are in harmony with the world as a whole. It is this 

experience of being in tune with the world around us, I believe, that is captured by the Kantian 

account.  

Once again, Kant does not make this account of the aesthetics of theories and explanations 

explicit. And, in his statements about Newton, he even seems to proclaim views to the contrary 



 26 

when he maintains that “[i]n the scientific sphere… the greatest discoverer differs only in degree 

from the most hardworking imitator and apprentice.” 62 As I have suggested in this section, 

however, the denial of scientific genius does not sit well with the implications of Kant’s own 

aesthetic theory. Moreover, Kant comes close to endorsing these implications when he argues in 

the Critique of Judgment that the successful unification of diverse phenomena is recognized with 

a feeling of pleasure, while disunity is experienced as displeasing. As he puts it,  

 

the discovered unifiability of two or more empirically heterogeneous laws of nature 

under a principle that comprehends them both is the ground of a very noticeable 

pleasure, often indeed of admiration, even of one which does not cease though one is 

already sufficiently familiar with its object.63  

 

On the reading I have suggested, what is considered as pleasing are not any particular properties 

of the scientific principle. What elicits in us a sense of pleasure, or admiration, is rather the 

awareness of fit, grounded in the free reflection on the principle that provides us with unified 

explanations of the phenomena, while leaving room for free reflection on the unity of nature as a 

whole. 

One might object, at this point, that my reading confuses the aesthetic appreciation of 

science with a form of “intellectual” pleasure.64 In support of this objection, one could point to 

Kant’s further claim that our pleasure in “the comprehensibility of nature and the unity of its 

division into genera and species” fades over time.65 One might thus argue that the pleasure 

associated with unification does not last, because it is connected with the satisfaction of our 

desire to increase understanding, and therefore subsides once this desire has been met. The 



 27 

pleasure we experience in the unification of scientific principles would thus differ from the 

“enduring” character of aesthetic pleasure.66  

In response it is fair to acknowledge that Kant does not use the term ‘aesthetic’ in this 

context. Nevertheless there is no reason to rule out the possibility of genuine aesthetic pleasure. 

As Kant puts it, we may no longer “notice” the pleasure associated with the unification of 

empirical laws “only because… it [has] gradually become mixed up with mere cognition.”67 In 

other words, in the case of principles or theories that we employ in much of ordinary reasoning, 

we may no no be longer “attentive” to the kind of free reflection that these principles or theories 

afford, but only focus on the determinate judgments they strictly entail. We may pay attention 

only to their content narrowly construed, as we do, for example, in making predictions or testing 

hypotheses.68 However, such—admittedly important—focus on the determinate content of 

scientific claims does not exclude the possibility of also aesthetically appreciating principles and 

theories broadly construed as the product of a creative intellectual process. Considering the 

empirical adequacy and truth of a theory no more rules out the possibility of also making 

aesthetic judgments about the theory, than studying a play as an historical source detracts from 

its aesthetic value.  

I suggest that we can thus find in Kant the resources for a general conception of the 

aesthetics of science of which the more limited account of the aesthetic perfection of cognition, 

discussed in the previous section, presents one particular instance. On this account, scientific 

representations as well as theories—including Einstein’s theory of general relativity—are 

beautiful, if they are the product of a free and creative reflective activity associated with the 

capacity of genius. Just as beautiful representations, scientific theories can be considered as 

indeterminately expressing an idea that goes beyond the determinate concepts and principles they 



 28 

strictly entail. They leave room for the free play of the faculties, and for a special aesthetic 

appreciation of beauty in science. Kant’s famous claim against the ingenuity of Newton should 

therefore not be read as Kant’s only—or even, perhaps, most important—word about the 

possibility of a beautiful science. It is more plausibly taken as a call for caution against those 

who mistake determinate cognition with the reflective judgments that ground aesthetic 

pleasure.69 Kant’s negative claims about Newton thus stand alongside the more significant 

insight that science in the broad sense, as a creative and intellectual endeavor, can be the object 

of an indeterminate and inexhaustible reflection that grounds aesthetic pleasure. 

 

 

6. Conclusion 

 

On the Kantian account I have proposed in this paper, the science of beauty and the beauty of 

science do not stand or fall together. We can hold on to the latter while letting go of the former. 

Kant’s philosophy thus offers the resources for a positive alternative to the Platonic ideal that is 

expressed and developed by such rationalist philosophers as Baumgarten and Meier. On the 

account we can construct from these Kantian resources, science can be aesthetically pleasing, not 

because the claims of science have determinately specifiable aesthetic features, but because the 

claims and representations of science leave room for the free use of the imagination in reflecting 

on the inexhaustible richness associated with the systematic unity of nature. On this Kantian 

conception, there are no aesthetic principles to form part of a science of beauty, but there can be 

genuine aesthetic appreciation of the claims and representations of science. 



 29 

 This Kantian conception may not account for all aesthetic judgments ever made or ever to 

be made about science. Scientists and science students may use aesthetic statements in a host of 

different ways. Nor does the Kantian conception answer all questions about scientific beauty. For 

example, it remains quiet, so far, about the heuristic role aesthetic judgments may play in 

science.70 Despite these limitations, however, the account I have proposed captures an important 

dimension of the aesthetics of science. It thereby shows that Kantian aesthetics does not support 

skepticism about scientific beauty. Furthermore, there are even grounds for thinking that the 

Kantian conception may turn out specifically suited to accounting for the role of aesthetics in the 

search for truth. The conception of scientific beauty I have proposed is directly linked to Kant’s 

theory of cognition. It is tied up with his claim that cognition requires sensibility as much as it 

requires understanding. And it is intimately connected with his conception of science as 

essentially incomplete and open-ended.71 I believe it is an important implication of this close link 

that, on the Kantian account, the aesthetics of science plays a central role in our cognitive 

endeavors. While I cannot give a definitive defense of this further claim here, I shall end by 

pointing out a surprising disanalogy between my Kantian proposal and the rationalist position 

that is relevant to such a defense. 

As we have seen, for Baumgarten and Meier, aesthetic judgments are a particular species 

of cognition, offering sensible access to scientific truths. On this conception, aesthetically 

perfected cognition can provide a first approximation to, and perhaps a way of raising interest in, 

the more abstract rational insights of science. However, on their account, the aesthetic perfection 

of cognition pulls in the opposite direction from its logical perfection, since aesthetic judgments 

do not themselves contribute to the type of clarity demanded of scientific cognition. Baumgarten 

and Meier may promise a more intimate relationship between science and beauty. They argue, 



 30 

for example, that the “most perfect” cognition is achieved only by a “beautiful spirit” who, like 

Fontenelle, manages to realize the combined goals of sensible and rational cognition.72 But this 

highest perfection can be no more than a compromise. Beautiful cognition may satisfy a need of 

our passions, but this need is only peripheral to the search for truth.  

On the Kantian account, by contrast, aesthetic judgments offer no alternative access to 

scientific truth. Far from contrasting with the requirements of cognition, the intellectual activities 

that make possible aesthetic pleasure are central to the scientific enterprise itself. They lie at the 

heart of the activities involved in discovering, understanding, and presenting scientific insights. 

On the Kantian account, the experience of beauty in science provides no direct link to truth. But 

it may thus offer a sensible sign of the intellectual processes required for the search for truth.73 

 



 31 

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Zangwill, N. “Beauty.” In Oxford Companion to Aesthetics, edited by Jerrold Levinson, 325-343. 

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1 The literature on this controversy in philosophy of science is vast and diverse. See e.g. Duhem, 

Aim and Structure of Physical Theory; Kuhn, “Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice”; 

Sigman and van Fraassen, “Interpretation in Science and in the Arts”; McAllister, Beauty and 

Revolution in Science and Aesthetics of Science; Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation; 

Bangu, “Pythagorean Heuristic in Physics.” The literature in aesthetics is less extensive. See e.g. 

Zangwill, The Metaphysics of Beauty; Todd, “Unmasking the Truth Beneath the Beauty”; and 

the older and less critical discussion in Kivy, “Science and Aesthetic Appreciation.” 

2 Poincaré, Science and Method, 24. See also Chandrasekhar, Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and 

Motivations in Science and Zee, Fearful Symmetry. 

3 See Zangwill, The Metaphysics of Beauty and “Beauty”; also Rueger, “Kant and the Aesthetics 

of Nature” and Wenzel, “Beauty, Genius, and Mathematics: Why Did Kant Change his Mind?”. I 

have developed a first objection to this view in Breitenbach, “Aesthetics in Science: A Kantian 

Proposal” and “Beauty in Proofs: Kant on Aesthetics in Mathematics.” Similarly, in her “Kant on 



 37 

                                                                                                                                                             

Beauty in Science: The Aesthetic Dimension of Cognition”, Cohen argues that science can be 

beautiful on Kant’s account. 

4 Baumgarten first introduced the term “aesthetics” in his 1735 Meditationes philosophicae de 

nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (henceforth Med.), translated as Reflections on Poetry. He 

developed related reflections on beauty in his Metaphysica (henceforth Met.) of 1739. 

Baumgarten’s more detailed Aesthetica (henceforth Aesth.) followed in 1750 (vol. I) and 1758 

(vol. II) but remained incomplete by the time of his death in 1762. All references are to 

Baumgarten, Reflections on Poetry: Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's Meditationes 

philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus, Metaphysics, and Aesthetica/Ästhetik. 

Meier’s publications on aesthetics are extensive, including the three-volume Anfangsgünde aller 

schönen Wissenschaften (1748–50) and many shorter writings from the early 1750ies, collected 

as Frühe Schriften zur Erziehung der Deutschen (1999–2002). His Auszüge aus der 

Vernunftlehre (1752, henceforth Vern.) set out a summary account of the relation between 

cognition and aesthetics. For the purposes of this paper, I shall focus only on what Baumgarten 

and Meier have in common and set aside their differences.  

5 Kant relies on Met. in his metaphysics lectures and on Vern. in his logic lectures throughout his 

career. See section 4 below. All references to Kant are to the volume and page numbers of the 

Akademie edition (Kant 1900 ff.), except in case of the Critique of Pure Reason (henceforth 

CPR), which is cited by reference to the A and B pagination of the original 1781 and 1787 

editions. Translations are from Kant, Lectures on Logic, Practical Philosophy, Critique of Pure 

Reason and Critique of the Power of Judgment, unless indicated otherwise. 



 38 

                                                                                                                                                             

6 See Met., §94 and Vern., §22. On Leibniz’ conception of beauty as the feeling of perfection, see 

his “On Wisdom” of c. 1690 in his Philosophical Papers and Letters, 425–428. On Wolff’s 

related notion, see his German Metaphysics, §404 ff. 

7 Met., §662. 

8 See Med., §§13-14 and Vern., §115 and §137. Cf. Leibniz’s “Meditations on Knowledge, Truth 

and Ideas” from 1684 in his Philosophical Essays, 23–27, and Wolff, German Metaphysics, 

§277. 

9 Meier, “Gedanken von dem Werthe der freyen Künste und schönen Wissenschaften in Absicht 

auf die obern Kräfte der Seele,” in his Frühe Schriften, vol. I, 62 (my translation). See also Met., 

§655. 

10 Baumgarten and Meier describe this difference as an increase in “extensive” as opposed to 

“intensive” clarity. See Med., §16; Met., §531 and §634; Vern., §135. 

11 In line with this, Baumgarten presents beauty in his later Aesthetica as the perfection of 

sensible cognition itself, and no longer, as he had done in his earlier Metaphysica, as the sensible 

cognition of perfection. See Aesth., §14. Cf. Meier, “Betrachtungen über den ersten Grundsatz 

aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften,” in his Frühe Schriften, vol. III, 192-3. One might be 

tempted to regard this later notion as essentially distinct from Baumgarten’s earlier conception of 

beauty, since, according to the later notion, beauty seems to inhere in the representation and not 

in the cognition of perfection represented. However, the two notions are not independent. 

Beauty, on the first conception, requires some instantiation of the second. For, whether beauty is 

primarily grounded in the perfection of the object or in that of its representation, it can only be 

cognized in the extensively clear but confused manner of the senses. Furthermore, the second 



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notion of beauty also requires some instantiation of the first. For even aesthetically perfected 

representation must constitute a form of the objective cognition of perfection in order to count as 

the perception of beauty. The perfection of our sensory cognition is possible only if it “complies” 

with the cognition of the object (Baumgarten, “Handschrift,” 90). On either of the two 

characterizations of beauty, aesthetic judgments thus consist in the objective cognition of 

perfection, attained through the senses. What the second notion adds is that the same perfection 

in the object can be sensibly represented more or less perfectly and hence more or less 

beautifully. For further discussion, see Gregor, “Baumgarten’s ‘Aesthetica,’” 377) who argues 

that Baumgarten’s two definitions result from “a shift in perspective from metaphysician to 

philosopher of art.” See also Beiser, Diotima’s Children, 146. Guyer, History of Modern 

Aesthetics, vol. I, 328) furthermore points out that the second definition is no new insight in 

Aesth. but can already be found in Med. 

12 Descartes, The World and Other Writings and Fontenelle, The Plurality of Worlds. 

13 Meier, “Daß das Wesen der Dichtkunst in unserer Natur gegründet sei,” in his Frühe Schriften, 

vol. III, 162 (my translation). On Baumgarten’s reference to Fontenelle see his lectures from c. 

1750-51 in his Aesth., 90. 

14 In specifying two types of the perfection of cognition, Baumgarten’s and Meier’s accounts 

diverge from the traditional rationalist conception of sensory cognition as a merely subordinate 

insight into what can be cognized more distinctly through reason. As Baumgarten puts it, 

sensible cognition is an “analogon rationis,” an alternative species of cognition that is equally 

valuable as rational insight (Met., §640). For an account of these diverging paths see Guyer, 

History of Modern Aesthetics, vol. I, 318–340. 



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15 According to Baumgarten and Meier, the perfection of sensible cognition can be taught and 

learnt, and it is the purpose of aesthetics, the “science of sensible cognition,” to spell out the 

rules and principles (Aesth., §1, my translation). In Met., §533, Baumgarten also defines 

aesthetics as the “logic of the inferior cognitive faculties.” 

16 Meier, “Historical and Beautiful Sciences,” in his Frühe Schriften, vol. I, 141 (my translation). 

17 Kant’s aesthetics is often understood as inspired by a rejection of rationalism (e.g. Guyer, Kant 

and the Claims of Taste, 119ff., and Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste, 1ff.). Other commentators, 

by contrast, have stressed the continuities between Kant and the rationalists (e.g. Zuckert, 

“Kant’s Rationalist Aesthetics”). As I argue in this paper, Kant is strongly influenced by, but 

importantly reinterprets, key rationalist ideas including the distinction between the logical and 

aesthetic perfection of cognition (see §4 below). 

18 See e.g. CPR, A15/B29. Kant also leaves room for a priori cognition, such as mathematical or 

transcendental cognition, which has a more complex relation to sensibility than ordinary 

empirical cognition. For the purpose of this paper, I shall set aside this complication as well as 

the general question of how Kant’s transcendental idealist conception of cognition relates to 

rationalist metaphysics and epistemology. As will become clear in the following discussion, 

however, Kant’s reinterpretation of the logical and aesthetic perfection of cognition, and his 

more general account of the beauty of science, are intricately connected with this question. 

19 Critique of Judgment (henceforth CJ), 5:204.  

20 CJ, 5:204. 

21 For an outline of Kant’s account of cognition see CPR, A78/B103. 

22 On Kant’s distinction between determining and reflecting judgments, see CJ, 5:179.  



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23 The arguments I have presented so far may raise the questions of whether or not aesthetic 

judgment should be regarded as a form of cognition at all, and of whether aesthetic judgment 

should be classified as (indeterminately) conceptual or, rather, as altogether non-conceptual. See 

the exchange between Ameriks, “Kant and the Objectivity of Taste” and Interpreting Kant’s 

Critiques, and Ginsborg, The Role of Taste in Kant’s Theory of Cognition and The Normativity of 

Nature: Essays on Kant’s Critique of Judgment on these questions. For the purpose of my 

argument, I do not need to settle this debate here. Instead, it will be sufficient to show what both 

parties can agree on, namely, that on Kant’s theory the experience of beauty is necessarily linked 

to our cognitive, albeit purely reflective, engagement with the object, but it is not itself an 

instance of determinate cognition. As I argue in more detail below, the indeterminate reflection 

by means of concepts but not the determinate subsumption under concepts leaves room for the 

experience of beauty. 

24 CJ, 5:236. 

25 CJ, 5:190. On the controversial notion of form that Kant employs in his aesthetic theory, see 

the discussion in Zuckert, “The Purposiveness of Form: A Reading of Kant’s Aesthetic 

Formalism.” 

26 CJ, 5:304. 

27 Baumgarten’s and Meier’s general criteria of aesthetics are in principle unavailable for Kant, 

since judgments of beauty do not stand in any determinate relationship to the character of the 

object or its representation. Kant first makes this point in CPR, A21/B35, note, before spelling it 

out in detail in CJ, e.g. 5:284. Beiser (Diotima’s Children, 136) criticizes Kant’s “simple-

minded” portrayal of the rationalist conception of a science of beauty, expressed e.g. in Kant’s 



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claim that in such a science “it would be determined… scientifically, i.e., by means of proofs, 

whether something should be held to be beautiful or not” (CJ, 5:305). Beiser’s critique is that, 

pace Kant, rationalists such as Baumgarten never thought beauty could be inferred a priori from 

general principles, but rather presented such principles as a means of explaining aesthetic 

pleasure. Even if this is right, however, Kant’s critique nevertheless has force. On Kant’s 

account, we must reject even explanatory principles, since objects stand in no determinate 

relation to aesthetic pleasure. 

28 CJ, 5:305. 

29 CJ, 5:305. That aesthetic objects must be sensory is often assumed in contemporary aesthetics. 

See e.g. Binkley, “Piece: Contra Aesthetics,” 268, and Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the 

Philosophy of Criticism, 31. In “The Problem of Non-Perceptual Art,” Shelley’s discussion of 

conceptual art gives a convincing argument against this view and finds historical support in the 

work of Hutcheson. In “Kant and the Problem of Strong Non-Perceptual Art” Costello probes 

Shelley’s critique further by drawing on Kant. 

30 See CJ, 5:326. 

31 In parallel with the rationalists’ two notions of beauty, Kant thus introduces a second 

conception of aesthetic judgment, specifically concerned with the beautiful representation of art 

(compare note 13). Moreover, just as the two rationalist concepts were closely related, in the 

same way Kant’s two types of aesthetic judgment have a common core. Both consist in the free 

play of the faculties and the associated awareness of fit that grounds aesthetic pleasure.  

32 Kant calls such representations “aesthetic ideas” (CJ, 5:314). For a discussion of this notion, 

see Chignell, “Kant on the Normativity of Taste: The Role of Aesthetic Ideas.” 



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33 CJ, 5:326.  

34 CJ, 5:317. 

35 CJ, 5:190. 

36 CJ, 5:309. 

37 CJ, 5:305 and CPR, A838/B866. See also CPR, A832/B860 and CJ, 5:381. Kant only rarely 

uses the term “science” in a wider sense such as, for example, in the introduction to CPR where 

he distinguishes the more or less secure paths, and the more or less thorough methods, of science 

(Axii). 

38 Similarly, Kant’s anthropology lectures make use of Baumgarten’s Met; see the translators 

introduction in Kant, Anthropology, History and Education, 228. 

39 Similar to Baumgarten and Meier, Kant understands perfection as involving “manifoldness 

and unity” and “the fitness or adequacy of a thing for all sorts of ends” (Critique of Practical 

Reason, 5:41). See also his Metaphysics of Morals, 6:386.  

40 Jäsche Logic (henceforth JL), 9:37.  

41 According to Kant, sensory representation may come in different forms. In the case of 

empirical concepts, examples can fulfill this function. In the case of pure a priori concepts, 

schemata will have to guide their application to sensory material. And, where concepts cannot be 

applied in sensibility at all, symbolic representation is required. See CJ, 5:351 ff., and the prize 

essay “Welches sind die wirklichen Fortschritte…?,” 20:279–280. 

42 Mrongovius Anthropologie Nachschriften of 1784-85 (25:1224–1228), my translation; see also 

Friedländer Anthropologie Nachschriften of 1775-76 (25:482–484).  



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43 For a brief discussion of the logical and aesthetic perfection of cognition, see Jankowiak and 

Watkins, “Meat on the Bones: Kant’s Account of Cognition in Anthropology Lectures,” 74–75. 

They argue that, “where the Critique explains the necessary, a priori structures of cognition, the 

anthropology transcripts explain the contingent, empirical modes in which the faculties operate 

in everyday cognition.”  

44 JL, 9:36–37. Kant uses similar formulations throughout the 1770s–1790s; see Blomberg Logic, 

24:43ff., Wiener Logic (henceforth WL), 24:807 and Dohna-Wundlacken Logic (henceforth DL), 

24:705. 

45 DL, 24:705. 

46 JL, 9:39; see also JL, 9:62 and WL, 24:809. 

47 On the relation of aesthetics to the expression of moral ideas, see Guyer, Kant and the 

Experience of Freedom. 

48 See e.g. CJ, 5:326. 

49 CJ, 5:314.  

50 See CPR, A832/B860. 

51 See e.g. CPR, A646/B676. 

52 Kant presents this move from the principle of the unity of cognitions to that of the unity of the 

object of cognitions as the move from a logical to a transcendental principle. See CPR, A648 

ff./B676 ff. 

53 See Kant’s discussion of symbolic representation in CJ, 5:351 ff. 

54 See e.g. Ball, Elegant Solutions: Ten Beautiful Experiments in Chemistry. 



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55 Other beautiful examples can be found in Förster’s account of Hegel’s and Goethe’s early 

biological research, in particular Goethe’s experiments with plants in his Die 25 Jahre der 

Philosophie. 

56 CJ, 5:308-9. See also Anthropologie Nachschriften, 25:1061 and 1310–11. 

57 CJ, 5:185. See also Kant’s related discussion in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic 

(CPR, A653–654/B681–682) and at JL, IX 132–133. 

58 In CPR, Kant conceives of this reflection as the capacity of seeing the universal in the 

particular, an ability Kant famously regards as a talent, or “mother wit,” which cannot be taught 

by rote but can only be gained through practice (A172/B133). 

59 CJ, 5:184–185. Kant here refers specifically to the unity of empirical laws. Under the heading 

of judgment as “the capacity to think the particular under the universal” he is equally concerned 

with the more basic unity of the sensory manifold under concepts (CJ, 5:179).  

60 Ginsborg (2015) and Zuckert (2007b) argue, in different ways, for the related claim that there 

is a common form of judging at the core of Kant’s aesthetics and his account of cognition. This 

claim is a close cousin of my proposal about the continuity between the production of art and 

science, since the same capacity is involved in producing art and in judging aesthetically. On the 

question of continuity between aesthetic and determinate conceptual judgments, see also 

Longuenesse, “Kant’s Leading Thread in the Analytic of the Beautiful,” and Makkreel, 

“Reflection, Reflective Judgment, and Aesthetic Exemplarity.” 

61 For an impressive description of this kind of aesthetic experience in science, see Heisenberg, 

“The Meaning of Beauty in the Exact Sciences,” 6–7. 

62 CJ, 5:309. 



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63 CJ, 5:187. See also CJ, 5:363. 

64 See CJ, 5:366. 

65 CJ, 5:187. 

66 See e.g. CJ, 5:319. 

67 CJ, 5:187. 

68 CJ, 5:187. 

69 This is compatible with Zammito’s claim that Kant’s views on genius were influenced by his 

rejection of the German Sturm und Drang movement, most notably Herder, whose anti-

rationalism Kant famously criticizes (The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, 41–42). In his 

“Gerard and Kant: Influence and Opposition”, Guyer has furthermore suggested that Kant’s 

views on genius were influenced by, and directed at, Alexander Gerard’s Essay on Genius. See 

also Giordanetti’s “Das Verhältnis von Genie, Künstler und Wissenschaftler in der Kantischen 

Philosophie: Entwicklungsgeschichtliche Betrachtungen” for a discussion of Kant’s change of 

mind about the notion of genius. 

70 I’ve said a bit more about this question in Breitenbach, “Aesthetics in Science: A Kantian 

Proposal.” 

71 A consequence of this is that the ideal (and in principle unattainable) complete science could 

not be an object of aesthetic appreciation on Kant’s account, since it would provide a determinate 

representation of the unity of nature and, hence, leave no room for indeterminate reflection. 

72 Baumgarten, “Handschrift,” 90 (my translation); see also Aesth., §8 and Vern., §32. 

73 Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of Western Ontario, the Central 

European University, the University of Essex, the University of Bonn, the Leuven Kant 



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Conference and Yale University. I am grateful to the audiences at these events for their helpful 

feedback. Special thanks go to John Callanan, Yoon Choi, Alix Cohen, Paul Guyer, Tiago Mata, 

Sasha Mudd, Clinton Tolley, Eric Watkins, and Nick Zangwill for stimulating discussions, and 

to the anonymous referees of this journal for reports that helped me improve the paper. Last but 

not least, I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Leverhulme Trust and CRASSH, 

Cambridge for funding my research.