Note † — Chapter II · The Phantom Æsthetic State

The temptation to align this tripartite division with a similar division into Will, Feeling and Thought was irresistible. “All the faculties of the Soul, or capacities, are reducible to three, which do not admit of any further derivation from a common ground: the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and the faculty of desire”† said Kant. Legislative for each of these faculties stood Understanding, Judgment and Reason respectively. “Between the faculties of knowledge and desire stands the feeling of pleasure, just as judgment is intermediate between understanding and reason.” And he went on to discuss æsthetics as appertaining to the province of judgment, the middle one of these three, the first and last having already occupied him in his two other Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason respectively. The effect was virtually to annex æsthetics to Idealism, in which fabric it has ever since continued to serve important purposes.