ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contextualize the third Critique's discussion of beauty and teleology against the background of Hutcheson's Inquiry and, in particular, against Hutcheson's claim that natural beauty yields an argument for a wise and benevolent God's existence. More specifically, Hutcheson maintains that experiences of uniformity amidst variety naturally produce ideas of absolute or original beauty in human minds, while cases of imitation naturally produce ideas of relative or comparative beauty in human minds. Moreover, Kant would regard Hutcheson's comparison of the natural world to God's intentions as a judgment of perfection, rather than as a judgment of taste. Hutcheson's treatise is one of the first major works of modern aesthetics and provides a paradigmatic example of the ways in which eighteenth-century authors related aesthetics and teleology to one another.
