Kantian Meta-Aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative

Abstract

In this article, firstly, I begin by articulating four logically different positions Kant has been argued to hold concerning the nature and meaning of ‘aesthetic judgement’ so that, secondly, I may endorse the alternative that has been almost entirely neglected: that is, aesthetic judgement should be understood to be both ‘internalist’ in that the pleasure of taste is a constitutive element of the judgement itself (rather than its external effect or prior referent) and ‘objective’ insofar as the pleasure of taste not only reflects the mental state of the judging subject but discriminates features or properties of the object judged. Ultimately I believe that this ‘internal objectivism’ is a compelling meta-aesthetic position in its own right with interesting parallels to recent trends in aesthetic theory, but presently I am concerned to demonstrate that one way to get clear about how such judgements are possible and to become comfortable with their significance is to see how this position arises and is resisted in the Critique of Judgment and, accordingly, in the contemporary scholarship on Kantian aesthetics.