Art and Experience, Utrecht, © 1996. All rights reserved

Ideal of beauty. According to Kant an ideal is the sensuous presentation of an idea. Since beauty is not amenable to objective purposivity--notwithstanding those who claim that it is a case of perfection--it is not determinable by concepts of what the object should be like (IV:3), and the production of beauty follows no determinate rule. (IV:2). Since an ideal follows the determinations inherent in the idea it presents, there cannot be an ideal of the beauty of things determinable by concepts which specify their conformity to external goals. There can only be an ideal of the beauty of an entity which produces its own purposes from within. Only man in being moral creates his own moral purposes and expresses this in the way he looks and acts. (V:2)
Kant also distinguishes between regulative and constitutive ideas, or ideals. Constitutive ideals "seek to bring the existence of appearances under rules a priori" As such they constitute these appearances. (CPR A179, B221). Regulative ideals offer 'rules' "according to which a unity of experience may arise from perception" (CPR A180, B223). When regulative ideals are used constitutively they cause illusions, but if they are used regulatively as they should, they merely guide the mind. I have argued (in IV:6) that aesthetic experience is the regulative ideal of aesthetic evaluation and of aesthetic discussion: it merely guides the argument. Cf. aesthetic properties, tertiary qualities.