Kant, Critique Of Judgment
PHIL 150, Introduction to philosophy, Fall 2026
Selection outline
- Primary focus
- §§6–9: Universality of aesthetic judgment
- §§33–34: Non-objectivity of aesthetic judgment
- §56–57: The antinomy of taste
Selection outline
- Secondary focus
- §32: The autonomy of taste
- §40: The sensus communis
The basic idea
- Rationalists: Beauty as sensible perfection
- Kant: Beauty is not knowledge
- Empiricists: Beauty as agreeableness
- Kant: Beauty is not idiosyncractic
- Kant: Judgments of beauty are universal but not objective
Overview of Kantian critical philosophy
- Critique: Asks what a power of the mind is entitled to claim, and on what authority
- Analytic: Asks what a power of the mind is
- Deduction: Asks what authority that power of the mind has to make the sorts of claims it does
- Deduction: Shows what contradictions a power of the mind is led into, and how to correct against that
Situating our excerpts
- §§6–9: Universality of aesthetic judgment (Analytic of the Beautiful)
- §§33–34 (§32, 40): Non-objectivity of aesthetic judgment (Deduction of Aesthetic Judgment)
- §56–57: The antinomy of taste (Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment)
§§6–9
- The beautiful is universal
§7
What’s the difference between saying I like this or that wine (which Kant has no problem with) and saying this or that is beautiful “to me” (which Kant thinks is absurd)?
§8
What’s the difference between logical (general) universality and the universality of judgments of taste?
§9
Which comes first in a judgment of taste, the judgment or the pleasure? and why?
§33
Read the paragraph beginning “Second” on p. 148. What is Kant claiming here?
§34
Kant addresses Hume here directly. What is he saying about Hume’s view?
§56
What’s the difference between disputing and quarreling about art?
§57
What are the two senses of “concept,” and which sense makes each side of the antinomy (contradiction) true?