La funzione mediatrice del simbolo nella "Critica del Giudizio estetico"

In his Introduction to the Kritik der Urteilskraft Kant repeatedly insists on the necessity of the existence of an intermediary member (or "middle term": Mittelglied) and a transition (Übergang) between the domains of nature and freedom. As is known, this role of "bridge" is held by the faculty of judgment. However, since the validity of reflective judgment is not objective and is intended solely for the subjective needs of man, it can be said that this Introduction contains the basis for understanding the subjectively mediating function which will be attributed to natural and artistic beauty as an indirect symbol of good at the end of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. An important role for the definition of symbol is also played by analogy, which is unable to establish an objective relationship between the phenomenal and the noumenal world, but seems useful to satisfy, from a subjective point of view, the human need for harmony and unity, and is thus linked to the concept of heautonomy of the faculty of judgment, by which the constructivism of Kant's theoretical philosophy and ethics also extends to his aesthetics. The theory of symbol, which is concentrated mainly in §§ 49 and 59 of the Critique of Judgment, allows Kant to implement the program set out in the general Introduction to the work and recover, bending to the demands of transcendental philosophy, the traditional logical-metaphysical concepts: as symbolization does not transmit knowledge, but aesthetic delight (or satisfaction), and suggests the existence of an ethical destination, pulchrum arises as a Mittelglied between verum and bonum.