17 - The Purposiveness of Taste: An Essay on the Role of Zweckmässigkeit in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment

Summary

The main concern of Kant's aesthetics in the third Critique can be summed up in the following question: Is it in any sense possible that an aesthetic judgment, that is, one that is grounded upon a feeling of pleasure and does not involve any conceptual objectivity, be universally valid? In other words: Do we have the right to claim for a nonobjective and nonconceptual judgment the status of an a priori valid judgment for every judging subject? Given that only the judgment of taste puts forward claims to this sort of nonobjective universality, the problem of the possibility of such an unlikely universality—characterized by Kant elsewhere as a “non-demonstrable” one—is the problem of beauty.

This problem is briefly presented in the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment in terms of an antinomy. The thesis of the Antinomy of Taste affirms that “the judgment of taste is not based on concepts; for otherwise it would be possible to dispute about it (decide by means of proofs).” And the antithesis affirms: “The judgment of taste is based on concepts, for otherwise, despite its variety, it would not even be possible to argue about it (to lay claim to the necessary consent of others to this judgment)” (Judgment, 5:338–39).

The cryptic solution furnished by the Dialectic cannot be grasped without an examination of the solution proposed both in the Analytic and in the Deduction of Judgments of Taste.