Critique of Judgment (book, Immanuel Kant)

Summary:

Pure reason is the means by which we build an axiomatic model of the universe, meaning a model that takes as its sole foundation a set of axioms. Building principles upon those axioms requires pure reason.

However, if we wish to understand the way people think, we cannot focus purely on pure reason, which is in fact a rarely employed mode of human thought. So, we must consider "reason" in its practical sense, the means by which we navigate the world, built not on axioms but on experience, pleasure, displeasure, and desire. Because this practical form of reason is not built on axioms, it can inevitably only be used to form an approximate logic, a vague and shifting set of boundaries and principles for understanding the world that is both incomplete and all we have.

The inadequacies of the understandings gathered through practical reason are most prominent when we try to understand art and the beautiful things in nature. This is why it's so important that we examine aesthetic judgments if we want to understand practical reason as distinguished from pure reason--aesthetic judgments are as far from pure reason as you can get.

When we say that we like or dislike a work, that it pleases or displeases us, this judgment has no basis in reason and should not be judged by the standards of pure reason. But when we judge art according to its cultural value, then we should insist on rigorous reasoning. Because of the aforementioned inadequacies of practical reason, we can't be as rigorous as we would with pure reason, but we'll do our best.