Satisfaction of the a priori principle(s) of the faculty of judgment by a representation is the means for achieving the faculty’s interest. In concept application and formation, this interest is the harmony of imagination and understanding. Since the application of available concepts is not accompanied by pleasure, such ‘unfree harmony’ must be distinguished from the ‘free harmony’ in concept formation and taste. The imagination apprehends a manifold and is here free because it is not guided by a concept; in concept formation, however, it is still bound to the empirically given manifold, while in taste it is ‘productively free’, it invents its own forms. When such freely invented forms agree with the given forms of conceptualized objects, we register this in the pleasure of taste. This revised view of the ‘free play’ of the faculties leads to a novel interpretation both of the ‘deduction of judgments of taste’, and of the relation of the two versions of the principle of judgment.

Chapter 5 treats Kant’s notions of genius and aesthetic ideas. It argues that his discussion of genius forms a kind of deduction for the possibility of producing and then judging objects that exceed our own capacities. In this, it focuses on Kant’s descriptions of spirit as what nature gives both to the genius and thereby also to the work of beautiful art, thus allowing it to enliven our minds. This playful enlivening through spirit is what makes it possible for the human mind to present, in art, what otherwise exceeds it, namely aesthetic ideas. Here, we find that human beings belong to a nature that is much more expansive than the one ruled by the understanding in the first Critique; nature here is the source of spirit and liveliness. The chapter concludes by highlighting Kant’s repeated observations that nature is expressing itself through genius, and links this to the communicability that underlies the judgment of taste more generally.

Chapter 2 describes Kant’s developing views of free beauty and of “form,” a term widely used throughout all phases of his aesthetics. If Kant is a formalist of some kind, which kind is he? The chapter argues that there are strong, moderate, and weak formalisms in Kant’s aesthetic theory, both early and late.

Chapter 8 shows that Kant’s thoughts on humor can be viewed as part of his wider aesthetic theory. Kant’s view of laughter at humor can be interpreted in terms of his theory of a harmonious free play of the faculties. What are the sources of his account of humor, and how did his thoughts about humor develop? Kant combines elements of incongruity, superiority, and release theories of humor. While responding to authors such as Moses Mendelssohn, Thomas Hobbes, and the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Kant adds his own, more original, thoughts about humor by appealing to his theory of a free play between the imagination and understanding. Once Kant begins to understand aesthetic responses in terms of a harmonious free play, it puts him in a position to connect humor to his aesthetic theory.

Chapter 5 examines Kant’s modern theory of the fine arts with reference to his predecessors, in particular, Charles Batteux and Christian Wolff. Kant experiments with different classificatory themes over the years. Starting in the mid-1770s, Kant conceives of aesthetic experiences of fine art as evoking a free play between the imagination and understanding, distinguishes fine art from handicraft, and views the fine arts as products of genius (and spirit) that express or exhibit aesthetic ideas.

This chapter is centered upon the section of the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” that Kant calls the “key” to the critique of taste and in which he elaborates the judgment of taste in terms that are striking yet scant, familiar yet elusive: a “state of mind” of “free play” of the cognitive powers, in which they are in “harmony” or “attunement” and are mutually “animated,” and in which their “subjective relation” corresponds to a “subjective condition” of cognition. I propose that a key to Kant’s thought is to be found in the notion of “universal communicability,” which this section introduces. The sense of “communication” on which it depends is, I argue, to be understood robustly, as having to do with the imparting of something to someone. I then argue that the judgment of taste turns on an experience of wanting to render communicable, or explore and articulate, one’s encounter with the extra-factual aesthetic character of the object. My interpretation reorients the role and significance of pleasure, and of feeling more generally, in the judgment of taste. The pleasure of the judgment of taste is in the object and in one’s state of mind, which the object is felt to awaken.