There is no way to derive what counts as beauty in the human figure from mere concepts or by any mechanical process.

This means that the ideal of beauty is a species of adherent rather than free beauty. Kant then argues that there are two elements in such an ideal, namely a uniquely valuable purpose or end and a uniquely appropriate aesthetic expression of this purpose or end. “The human being alone is capable of an ideal of beauty,” Kant then argues, because “the humanity in his person, as intelligence, is alone among all the objects in the world capable of the ideal of perfection” (ibid., 5:233). That is, a