There have been three different approaches to the interpretation of Kant's concept of adherent beauty. In one, an object's satisfaction of constraints imposed on its form by its intended function is just a necessary condition for our pleasure in its beauty, but makes no direct contribution to our pleasure in it. In the second, our pleasures in an object's function and in its form are thought to be separate pleasures that combine into a compound pleasure greater than either of its parts. In the third, our pleasure in adherent beauty is thought to be a special pleasure in the interaction between an object's function and its form. I argue that each of these interpretations has a basis in Kant's statements, and properly so, because they represent three different ways in which form and function can actually relate in our experience and appreciation of objects that do have intended functions.

Kant opens §16 of the “Analytic of the Beautiful” in the Critique of the Power of Judgment with his famous distinction between “free” and “adherent” beauty: