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Does Wine Have a Place in Kant's Theory of Taste?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2016

RACHEL CRISTY
RACHEL CRISTY*
Affiliation:
PRINCETON [email protected]
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Abstract:

Kant claims in the third Critique that one can make about wine the merely subjective judgment that it is agreeable but never the universally valid judgment that it is beautiful. This follows from his views that judgments of beauty can be made only about the formal (spatiotemporal) features of a representation and that aromas and flavors consist of formless sensory matter. However, I argue that Kant's theory permits judgments of beauty about wine because the experience displays a temporal structure: the aromas and flavors evolve over the course of a tasting from the bouquet through the palate to the finish. An analogy with music, which Kant describes as ‘a play of sensations in time’, illuminates how wine qualifies as an object of pure judgments of taste: the ‘structure’ of a wine can be compared to harmonic structure, and its development throughout the taste can be compared to the unfolding of melody and harmonic progression.

Keywords

Kantaestheticsthird Critiquewine
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , Spring 2016 , pp. 36 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2016 

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