definitely will not suffice for an actual evaluation, because
'beauty' is not derivable from determinations of the object, nor
is it itself a determinate concept or is there a real rule
involved in its application, as we have already seen.22 So we must
establish two things: first we must find out whether such
determinate concepts fill in the subject concept in every
judgement attributing aesthetic excellence. Secondly, we must
explain the role these concepts play within the experience that
founds the predicate concept.
Now it is well known that Kant took natural beauties to be pure,
not dependent. However, here, as with the complex works of art, it
will surely make a difference to the aesthetic evaluation of a
tree if we admire it because of its shades of colour rather than
because of certain shapes of its bark or of its trunk. Moreover,
it appears that, without a concept no representation whatsoever
will be formed, as counterfactually our mind would be confronted
with an unsynthesized heap of sense data: at least the categories
of understanding will have to be involved. This does not mean that
the beauty of a natural object could (or should not) be derived
from its measure of perfection, as there exist no concepts of the
goals of natural objects, no literal ones at least. So the threat
of felling a confused judgement of the goodness of a natural
object seems to be absent. However, this does not preclude our
grasp of the natural world of being involved in the relevant
aesthetic experience, and this grasp will of course embrace
specific determinations. (I shall have more to say about this in
considering Kant's notion of aesthetic ideas, in section iv.)
Again, of the (natural) object thus determined within a judgement
of taste we predicate something which cannot be described with
determinate concepts, to wit an aesthetic value, for example
beauty, or excellence. It seems inappropriate, though, to ascribe
aesthetic 'excellence' to natural objects, as there evidently is
no intentionality at stake in nature, with regard to which there
would be excellence. Beauty of nature, taken as excellence then,
seems a metaphorical analogue of artistic excellence. However, to
rightly understand the seeming involvement of the perfection of
intentionality, and to understand the possible metaphoricity of
this analogy cannot be investigated head on here, even though what
is argued here will have its bearing on this problem.
In general then, if we ascribe aesthetic excellence to some
particular thing this will be related somehow to the involved
empirical concepts, though not through the involved measure of
perfection with regard to that concept or to the goals this
concept involves, or else the judgement of taste would merely be a
confused kind of judgement of the good. Instead we use the notion
of aesthetic excellence to utter our being satisfied with the way
in which in the relevant case our concepts seem to fit the sense
material though not to the measure of providing descriptions of
