HUME TO HEGEL In his third critique, the Critique of Judgement, Kant sought to apply to aesthetic notions such as beauty and sublimity the kind of analysis that in the earlier critiques he had applied to scientiWc and ethical concepts Judgements of aesthetic taste rest on feeling, and yet they claim universal validity But it is a mistake to think that they concern some objective universal, Kant argues: what can be universally shared is rather the particular internal relationship between the imagination and the understanding which is characteristic of a contemplative judgement of taste In the 1890s, with his critical philosophy Wrmly established, Kant ventured into areas that were not just philosophically adventurous In 1793 he published a semi-theological work, entitled Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, which oVered a reinterpretation of several Christian doctrines, and in 1795, in the midst of the French revolutionary wars, he wrote a pamphlet On Perpetual Peace The Wrst of these works gave oVence to the new King of Prussia, Frederick II, who saw it as an unjustiWed attack on the authority of the Bible Kant refused to recant his views, but agreed not to write or lecture further on religious topics He kept this promise until 1798, after the king’s death, when he published The ConXict of the Faculties on the relationship between theology and philosophy In 1797 he ampliWed his moral system in The Metaphysic of Morals This was divided into two parts, one treating of individual virtue and the other of legal theory It was a more substantial but much less inXuential treatise than the earlier Groundwork Kant died in 1804 On his tombstone was inscribed a sentence from the conclusion of his Critique of Practical Reason ‘Two things Wll the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reXect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.’ Fichte and Schelling Until his last days Kant was working on an ambitious philosophical project that was published only after his death (the Opus Postumum) This shows that in his last days he had begun to have some misgivings about some aspects of the system of the Wrst Critique These were occasioned by criticisms aired by some of his own most devoted admirers and pupils Foremost among these 108