the intentionality of judgments of taste in kant's critique of judgment

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JOSEPH CANNON The Intentionality of Judgments of Taste in Kant’s Critique of Judgment Immanuel Kant’s account of judgments of taste— the judgment one makes when one finds some- thing to be beautiful—is famously based on a re- lationship between the state of one’s mental facul- ties in reflecting on an object or performance and the feeling of pleasure or displeasure occasioned by, or perhaps identical to, that state. 1 For Kant, when one reflects on a beautiful object or perfor- mance, one’s imagination and understanding are brought into harmony with one another. This elic- its what he calls a disinterested feeling of pleasure, disinterested because what we feel is pleasure in our own mental activity that is not connected to any desire we have for the object or for what the object may represent. 2 There has been considerable debate about how properly to interpret Kant’s account of the rela- tionship between feelings of pleasure or displea- sure and the harmony or disharmony of the oper- ation of the faculties in a judgment of taste. Much of this debate has centered on what, exactly, Kant means by feeling and pleasure in the context of judgment. Until relatively recently the claim that, for Kant, instances of pleasure are phenomenolog- ically identical to one another went largely unchal- lenged. From the standpoint of such an interpre- tation, a judgment of taste can only be a judgment about what produces the pleasure or displeasure one feels when encountering an object. Since the feeling itself is phenomenologically opaque, plea- sure could be evidence that we are reflecting upon a beautiful object, but it just as easily could be ev- idence that we have encountered an object that is agreeable to our senses or witnessed a morally good act. This is often taken to be L. W. Beck’s view, and it figures prominently in Paul Guyer’s Kant and the Claims of Taste, where he develops it into a “two reflection” account of judgments of taste. 3 Claims of Taste is one of the works primarily responsible for the resurgence of interest in Kant’s aesthetics during the past few decades, in part because Guyer is meticulous in his scholarship and unafraid to probe deeply the relationship between aesthetics and the rest of Kant’s critical philosophy. His inter- pretation of feeling in judgments of taste is among those aspects of his account that dominated sub- sequent interpretations of Kantian aesthetics. He takes a strong line on Kant’s oft-repeated claim that feeling has no object and cannot be an element in a cognition. 4 He claims that, for Kant, feeling is entirely nonintentional, a “raw feel,” and that all we can say on the basis of feeling alone is whether it is pleasurable or displeasurable and, perhaps, its intensity. Thus he claims that in a judgment of taste one examines the history and context of a feeling of pleasure in order to determine whether or not it was produced by reflection upon the mere form of an object apart from any interest in its existence. Guyer ambiguously treats the initial reflection in which the feeling is produced, sometimes as an au- tomatic function—it is an “unintentional” “activ- ity of reflection”—and sometimes as an exercisethe “pleasure-producing exercise of the faculty of judgment.” In either case, however, the activity or exercise that he calls “simple reflection” is not a judgmental act. 5 The judgment proper is the act in which one considers the “history and context” of the pleasure, and it is only in this act that one takes the object in question to be beautiful. In his recent commentary on Kant’s theory of taste, Henry Allison criticizes these aspects of Guyer’s account. 6 He argues that Guyer turns judgments of taste into cognitive judgments about The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66:1 Winter 2008 c 2008 The American Society for Aesthetics

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Page 1: The Intentionality of Judgments of Taste in Kant's Critique of Judgment

JOSEPH CANNON

The Intentionality of Judgments of Taste in Kant’sCritique of Judgment

Immanuel Kant’s account of judgments of taste—the judgment one makes when one finds some-thing to be beautiful—is famously based on a re-lationship between the state of one’s mental facul-ties in reflecting on an object or performance andthe feeling of pleasure or displeasure occasionedby, or perhaps identical to, that state.1 For Kant,when one reflects on a beautiful object or perfor-mance, one’s imagination and understanding arebrought into harmony with one another. This elic-its what he calls a disinterested feeling of pleasure,disinterested because what we feel is pleasure inour own mental activity that is not connected toany desire we have for the object or for what theobject may represent.2

There has been considerable debate about howproperly to interpret Kant’s account of the rela-tionship between feelings of pleasure or displea-sure and the harmony or disharmony of the oper-ation of the faculties in a judgment of taste. Muchof this debate has centered on what, exactly, Kantmeans by feeling and pleasure in the context ofjudgment. Until relatively recently the claim that,for Kant, instances of pleasure are phenomenolog-ically identical to one another went largely unchal-lenged. From the standpoint of such an interpre-tation, a judgment of taste can only be a judgmentabout what produces the pleasure or displeasureone feels when encountering an object. Since thefeeling itself is phenomenologically opaque, plea-sure could be evidence that we are reflecting upona beautiful object, but it just as easily could be ev-idence that we have encountered an object thatis agreeable to our senses or witnessed a morallygood act.

This is often taken to be L. W. Beck’s view, and itfigures prominently in Paul Guyer’s Kant and the

Claims of Taste, where he develops it into a “tworeflection” account of judgments of taste.3 Claimsof Taste is one of the works primarily responsiblefor the resurgence of interest in Kant’s aestheticsduring the past few decades, in part because Guyeris meticulous in his scholarship and unafraid toprobe deeply the relationship between aestheticsand the rest of Kant’s critical philosophy. His inter-pretation of feeling in judgments of taste is amongthose aspects of his account that dominated sub-sequent interpretations of Kantian aesthetics. Hetakes a strong line on Kant’s oft-repeated claimthat feeling has no object and cannot be an elementin a cognition.4 He claims that, for Kant, feeling isentirely nonintentional, a “raw feel,” and that allwe can say on the basis of feeling alone is whetherit is pleasurable or displeasurable and, perhaps, itsintensity. Thus he claims that in a judgment of tasteone examines the history and context of a feelingof pleasure in order to determine whether or not itwas produced by reflection upon the mere form ofan object apart from any interest in its existence.Guyer ambiguously treats the initial reflection inwhich the feeling is produced, sometimes as an au-tomatic function—it is an “unintentional” “activ-ity of reflection”—and sometimes as an exercise—the “pleasure-producing exercise of the faculty ofjudgment.” In either case, however, the activity orexercise that he calls “simple reflection” is not ajudgmental act.5 The judgment proper is the act inwhich one considers the “history and context” ofthe pleasure, and it is only in this act that one takesthe object in question to be beautiful.

In his recent commentary on Kant’s theory oftaste, Henry Allison criticizes these aspects ofGuyer’s account.6 He argues that Guyer turnsjudgments of taste into cognitive judgments about

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66:1 Winter 2008c© 2008 The American Society for Aesthetics

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feeling, as opposed to aesthetic judgments theground of which is feeling. Allison rejects the ideathat pleasures are phenomenologically indistin-guishable from one another and claims that aes-thetic pleasure is what makes us aware of har-mony in our mental activity when we apprehenda beautiful object. He takes Guyer’s opacity the-sis to spring from a misreading of a passage in theCritique of Practical Reason that fails to distin-guish between pleasure understood phenomeno-logically as a feeling and pleasure understood asthe determining ground of the will.7

Allison also rejects the claim that pleasure inthe beautiful arises from an automatic reaction ormere “activation” of our faculties. He argues thatit arises when we encounter the object while ourfaculties are in a state of “free play,” a state of mindin which we approach an object without discursiveintent (that is, we are not trying to judge what it isor what it ought to be). According to Allison, wemust distinguish the free play of the faculties fromthe “harmony” of the faculties of which aestheticpleasure makes us aware. When we encounter abeautiful object while in a state of free play, ourfaculties are brought into harmony and this elicitsa feeling of pleasure.8

He takes this feeling to have an intentional ob-ject; it is an awareness of something and not sim-ply something of which one can be aware. It is anawareness of the harmony of the faculties; one’sharmonious “state of mind” is the intentional ob-ject of feeling. I will argue that this view is bothcloser to Kant’s text and makes better sense ofclaims about judgments of taste to which he is com-mitted. But I will also argue that Allison’s versionof such a view does not sufficiently account for howthe initial response to an object we experience asbeautiful is a judging. According to Allison, freeplay is a generalized mental state in which we mayapproach any object; when we approach an objectin a state of free play it either becomes or fails tobecome a state of harmony, depending on the for-mal features of the object. He writes that “it is es-sential to distinguish between the harmony of thefaculties and their free play. . . . [F]ree play refers tothe relation between the imagination and under-standing in an act of ‘mere reflection,’ that is the‘free’ reflection operative in a judgment of taste.”9

In a later exchange, he describes it as an “aes-thetic stance or mode of reflection (an aestheticattitude, if you will),” and that Kant’s disinterest-edness thesis commits him to such a characteriza-

tion of aesthetic judgment.10 This is incompatiblewith an account of judgments of taste as singularjudgments of unique objects insofar as it impliesthat we approach different aesthetic objects in thesame way. For Kant it is critically important thatobjects of beauty are unique and singular. This fea-ture of beauty is stressed both in his description ofbeautiful objects as “always new to us” and in hisaccount of the “originality” of the products of ge-nius as a necessary (but not sufficient) conditionfor artistic beauty.11 The “free play” of the facul-ties is harmonious; our faculties are freed when weencounter certain unique objects that never ceaseto invite reflection, while consistently exceedingour ability to determine them.

Thus while we should, with Allison, interpretthe feeling of pleasure in aesthetic judgment asintentional, as an awareness of harmony in one’smental state, we must also interpret pleasure in thebeautiful as a feeling that arises only in a judgmen-tal act. We do not experience pleasure and thenjudge whether or not that pleasure is due to anobject’s beauty. Pleasure in the beautiful is a plea-sure in judging, a pleasure in a mental act keyed tothe particularity of a compelling object or perfor-mance, and not one simply occasioned by mentalactivity undertaken independently of the particu-lar features of an object or a performance.

This is in part what Kant is after when he de-scribes judgments of taste as reflective. He writes:“If only the particular is given and judgment has tofind the universal for it, then this power is merely[bloß] reflective.”12 And, “Reflective judgment . . .

is obliged to [die Obliegenheit hat] ascend from theparticular in nature to the universal.”13 We musttake seriously his claim that all reflection has acognitive aim: to find a concept for a particular.Judgments of taste are reflective judgments, andthus have the same imperative; they are elicitedby the same situation—a particular for which thereis no universal at hand—and are therefore underthe same “obligation”—to “ascend . . . to the uni-versal.” The cognitive aim of reflective judgmentssuggests that they are singular encounters betweena thinking and perceiving being and an object, andthey must have something to do with the particu-lars of the object or performance upon which onereflects. To grasp this, I will argue, we must in-terpret judgments of taste as intentionally com-plex acts in which a felt state is compared withan object or a performance in intuition. Allison’saccount of free play as an “autonomous mode of

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reflection” cannot grasp this characteristic of judg-ments of taste. To do so we must stress the cognitiveaim of reflective judgment.14

Guyer and Allison both deny that aestheticjudgment is animated by the cognitive aim of re-flective judgment. Their accounts are guided byan apparent problem about reflectivity in judg-ments of taste: In the third Critique Kant claimsthat (1) all reflective judgments have the cognitiveaim of seeking a universal for a particular, (2) judg-ments of taste are reflective, and (3) judgments oftaste must not be governed by (determinate) con-cepts. Both Guyer and Allison attempt to harmo-nize these three seemingly incompatible claims,but they lose the reflective character—the seekingcharacter—of judgments of taste in the process. Iwill argue that the intentional account of feeling injudgment that I offer here can retain the cognitiveaim of reflective judgment in judgments of tastewithout having to interpret them as governed byconcepts.

The importance of the intentionality and inde-terminacy of judgments of taste comes into viewstrikingly if we consider them in light of the roleKant claims they must play in art production. Care-ful consideration of this role can provide us witha new argument in support of the intentionality offeeling in aesthetic judgment by showing first of allthat it is consistent with Kant’s view, and secondlythat it can resolve the problem of reflectivity andconceptual content. Though this involves rejectingGuyer’s opacity thesis, we will find that some ele-ments of the two-reflection account of judgmentsof taste he builds upon it, when applied to an in-tentional theory of judgments of taste, avoid prob-lems in Allison’s version of such an account. If weinterpret Guyer’s two acts as two valences of asingle intentionally complex judgmental act, onedirected toward the object in intuition, the othertoward one’s own mental activity in reflecting onthe object, we can account for aesthetic judgmentas a singular encounter between an object or aperformance and its audience (or author).

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No interpretation of pleasure in the beautiful asphenomenologically opaque can adequately ac-count for the role Kant outlines (sketchily to besure) for judgments of taste in an artist’s activity.Such a view can only interpret judgments of taste

as evaluative judgments of objects that alreadyexist, judgments that can only consider an ob-ject as a completed work or work in progress andcannot enter into the moment of the artist’s per-formance.15 They can tell an artist nothing abouthow to improve a performance in order to achievebeauty, and cannot therefore be part of what onemight call the active phase of producing a work ofartistic beauty. (By ‘active phase’ I mean when thepen is to the paper, the brush to the canvas, or thebow to the strings. I define ‘performance’ broadlyto cover all of these. It is not restricted to the per-forming arts.) This is not consistent with Kant’s ex-plicit claim that judgments of taste are necessaryfor the successful production of fine art, a claimthat is crucial to his attack on the proto-romanticschool of unschooled genius, and the analogy hedraws between morality and beauty. Furthermore,it cannot consider a work as a work in progress,with an editorial eye. It can only give a verdict onwhether or not beauty has been achieved, not whatmust be done to achieve beauty.

Without taste, an artist is incapable of produc-ing a beautiful work. A work of mere genius isgeistreich (spirited), possessed of the originality ofgenius, the kernel of an artistic presentation Kantcalls an aesthetic idea, but it is not schon (beau-tiful); it is incapable of communicating this ideawidely and cannot be approached by all.16 “Taste,like the power of judgment in general, consistsin disciplining (or training genius). . . . It intro-duces clarity and order into a wealth of thought,and hence makes the ideas durable.”17 Kant claimshere and at several other points in the third Cri-tique that taste is necessary for the production offine (schone) art, though he does relatively little toexplore the consequences of that claim for his the-ory. Allison, among others, follows Kant’s neglectin this regard—describing Kant’s theory as a “re-ception” aesthetic with a productive “parergon.”18

Kant’s contention that judgments of taste arenecessary for fine art means that a successfulfine artist cannot work haphazardly or simply beguided by the force of genius. The artist must insome way or another set out to make a beautifulobject or achieve a beautiful performance, evenif this intention may not be expressed in so manywords. One might object that this claim is tauto-logical: of course the goal of the schone Kunstler isSchonheit. However, to say that a schone Kunstleraims to produce etwas schone, and to say that he orshe intends Schonheit are to say different things.

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Someone is a schone Kunstler insofar as, and onlyinsofar as, he or she successfully creates a workof beauty. But this actually involves two achieve-ments: (1) successfully intending to create beauty,and (2) successfully achieving that aim.

It is an achievement to simply form the inten-tion to create beauty because beauty is a uniquelyproblematic intentional object. In terms of Kant’sdivision of aesthetic practice into taste, genius, andskill, taste is involved in the first of these achieve-ments, while taste, genius, and skill are all involvedin the second.19 For an artist to “intend beauty”means two things: first, to form the intentional ob-ject “this beauty” (or “this beautiful picture, poem,etc.”) and second, to aim to bring something thatembodies that beauty into being. One might arguethat in a successful work of art all of this must beaccomplished at once, that properly forming theintention and achieving it are identical. The stressKant lays on taste in his polemic against partisansof unschooled genius might suggest such a read-ing, but there are good reasons to resist it, even ifKant himself would not. For one, it would severelylimit the ability of his theory to account for manyforms of art.

To intend to make something beautiful is notonly to intend to make something that does notyet exist; it is also—due to the singularity of judg-ments of taste—to direct one’s attention towardsomething that cannot be represented apart fromreflection upon a beautiful object in intuition.Judgments of taste are singular because they aresubjective judgments based on feeling. This meansthat one only actually judges the beauty of some-thing in the moment in which he or she experi-ences it as beautiful. Subsequent claims that use“beauty” as a predicate in an assertion (“An-gelus Novus is beautiful”) are reports about anexperience.

It is commonly recognized that for Kant the sin-gularity of judgments of taste implies that one can-not prove or discursively argue for the beauty of anobject and that the only possible proof of beauty isone’s own experience of the object: “Since I musthold the object directly up to my feeling of plea-sure and displeasure, but without using concepts,these judgments cannot have the quantity thatjudgments with objective general validity have.”20

It is less frequently noted that this requirementalso means that one’s ability to acquire the con-cept “beauty” is severely constrained if one hasnever had actual reflective congress with beauti-

ful objects. The “concept” of beauty is the expe-rience of, or memory of the experience of, actualcongress with beautiful objects or performances.(Apart from such congress our only concept ofbeauty would be a myth-of-Jones style theoreti-cal object based on our observation of behaviorsthat correspond to utterances of the word ‘beauti-ful.’) Thus, to actually form the intention to createsomething beautiful and have that intention notbe empty—or not be something oddly institutionallike aiming to make an object that makes peopleact the way they act when they utter words like‘beauty’—it must be formed against a backgroundof direct experience with beauty. To have an oper-able concept of beauty one must have made judg-ments of taste for oneself.21

Intending to make something beautiful is there-fore not like intending, for example, to win amarathon. No matter how difficult it is to win amarathon, to intend to win one is to form a concep-tually determinate intention. I could explain whatthe accomplishment of such a goal entails to some-one unfamiliar with the practice of “marathoning”or even the concept “foot race.” Now, one may en-tertain such a goal without having a clear idea ofwhat is required to complete—much less win—amarathon, but this just means that the intentionis not fully formed. To win a marathon is a goalexceedingly difficult to accomplish, but it is a goalthat may be grasped in determinate concepts. Bycontrast, as Kant puts it in a maddening variety ofways, judgments of taste are conceptually indeter-minate.

Guyer and Allison both discuss the conceptualindeterminacy of judgments of taste. Starting fromdifferent premises, they end up with similar inter-pretations: “conceptually indeterminate” is equiv-alent to “nonconceptual.” For Guyer, the feelingof pleasure that stands as the problematic predi-cate of a judgment of taste is the product of a “sim-ple reflection” that we must interpret after the fact.It is conceptually indeterminate because the feel-ing of pleasure that functions as a predicate standsin place of a concept, but it is not one. It must beevaluated in the context of the entire experience inorder to be declared either interested and thus notoccasioned by an object’s beauty or disinterestedand thus occasioned by beauty. For Allison, thepleasure arises in the midst of “free play,” which isa noncognitive contemplative “aesthetic” attitudetoward an object. We feel the harmony of our fac-ulties if they are in free play in the presence of an

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object of the form that can sustain and reinforcethis free reflection. The resulting “enlivenment”(Belebung) of our faculties is for Allison the “mereform” of a judgment, and the indeterminate con-cept of the beautiful is thus not a concept but theform of a concept.

The conceptual indeterminacy of beauty is a dif-ferent and more interesting problem than this. Un-like both Allison and Guyer, I take judgments oftaste to start (but not end) with a cognitive inter-est in the object: our cognitive capacities are en-livened because they are engaged. We approachthe object by trying to determine what it is ormeans. The enlivenment of our faculties is a resultof the way certain objects invite judgment but ex-ceed our every attempt to determine them, whichmakes them compelling and “always new” to us.Now, one might object that Kant’s claim that wemust “hold the object [in intuition] up to our feel-ing but without using concepts” militates againstsuch an account and supports Allison’s “free play”interpretation. But what does it mean to hold anintuition up to one’s feeling? We are faced imme-diately with the problem of a beautiful object’sintentionality. It is an object in intuition and infeeling (in the form of our “state” as we reflect onit), and there is no concept to govern any accountof the relation between feeling and intuition—indeed there cannot be one, which means that theobject is problematic both for feeling and for intu-ition. The subjective experience of such an object iswhat Kant attempts to capture with the claim thatit is always new to us, and the claim that beautyexpresses aesthetic ideas, which are intuitions thatno concept can adequately grasp, “a presentationof the imagination which prompts much thought,but to which no determinate thought whatsoever,i.e. no concept can be adequate.”22

Guyer does sometimes describe the judgmentof taste as “intentional.” For example, “the dec-laration that an object is beautiful rests on twoconceptually distinct acts of the faculty of reflec-tive judgment: one, the ‘unintentional’ reflectionwhich produces the pleasure of aesthetic response;the other, that further and quite possibly inten-tional exercise of reflective judgment which leadsto an actual judgment of taste.”23 This second re-flection is what he calls the judgment of taste“proper.” It is intentional in the sense of an in-tentional act instead of an automatic function oractivation. Guyer’s thesis that pleasures are phe-nomenologically indistinguishable from one an-

other has as its consequence that there must be aninitial “unintentional” reflection logically prior tothe judgment one makes about the pleasure pro-duced by such a reflection.

The singularity of aesthetic judgments of reflec-tion and the conceptual indeterminacy of the ob-ject of such judgments sets them apart from cog-nitive judgments in a way that Guyer’s interpre-tation cannot capture. In the passage above, “thatfurther and quite possibly intentional” reflectionlooks less like an aesthetic evaluation and morelike an evidentiary proceeding, or an attempt todetermine the disease indicated by a symptom:one examines the history and context of a feelingof pleasure in order to evaluate it vis-a-vis the ob-ject that occasions it and determine the reason forthe pleasure. Such a judgment is not an aestheticjudgment in the sense of proceeding via feeling; itis a determinative judgment about the etiology ofa feeling. For Kant, aesthetic judgments are acts ofmind purposefully directed toward an indetermi-nate object—or in the case of art production, to-ward the creation of such an object. Beauty as theend or aim of art production is thus complicatedby its complexity as an intentional object.24

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The interpretation I offer here runs into two se-rious objections: (1) To make a feeling the inten-tional object of a judgmental act offends againstKant’s repeated claim that feeling is purely sub-jective. (2) To take a feeling of pleasure to be anawareness—the deliverance of a judgmental act,rather than simply something about which onejudges—offends against Kant’s related claim thatfeeling cannot be an element in a cognition andtherefore cannot be a source of knowledge.25

The second of these objections is the most diffi-cult for my account—less so for Allison’s versionof an intentional account, since he denies that thejudgment of taste begins with a cognitive interest. Itake seriously Kant’s description of judgments oftaste as reflective judgments; we cannot explainaway the indelible connection between reflectivejudgment and the goal of determination by makingaesthetic judgment the mere “form of judgment.”To do so loses much of what is richest in Kant’stheory and also leads to an account of aestheticjudgment that cannot comprehend the role Kantclaims for it in artistic activity.

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Thus we must stress the complexity of the in-tentional object of a judgment of taste: in such ajudgment one’s attention must be directed in intu-ition toward a phenomenal object or performanceduration and in feeling toward one’s own men-tal (and perhaps physical) activity, which is felt asone’s “state of mind” (Gemutszustand).26 This at-tention is in the service of a reflective judgment,which, as we noted, has a goal or “obligation” builtinto it, namely, finding a concept for a particular.Judgments of taste are a unique kind of reflectivejudgment not because of how they begin, but howthey end up; they fail to result in determinativejudgments.27

Reflection aims at the determination of a uni-versal for an intuited object upon which we reflect.In a judgment of taste this aim is never achieved,yet reflection is rewardingly sustained. The way inwhich reflection is rewardingly sustained is what,pace Allison, Kant calls the free play of the fac-ulties. According to Allison, the free play of thefaculties is a frame of mind or an attitude we enterin order to judge aesthetically, and the harmony ofthe faculties in their free play is what results whenwe so judge a beautiful object. Unlike Guyer, Al-lison claims that one’s initial response to an objectis not automatic, but an act of mind. However,like Guyer, Allison introduces a troubling opacityinto the judgment of taste. For Allison it is not theopacity of feeling, but conceptual opacity.

It is important for Kant that beauty has a re-lationship to the cognitive aim of reflective judg-ment, even though this relationship is oblique. Ina judgment of taste we begin with a cognitive in-terest in the object—we are trying to figure outwhat it is, or what it means. Without this initialaim, judgment would not arise at all. But does thisoffend against disinterest? Guyer argues convinc-ingly that it does not. Kant writes: “The attainmentof every intention is connected with the feeling ofpleasure,” and “achieving any intention [Absicht]. . . is accompanied by a liking.”28 Guyer glossesthis last passage thusly: here, Kant “finally con-nects pleasure to the faculty of reflective judgmentby the theory that all pleasure results from the ful-fillment of some aim of the subject,” and he arguesthat this is compatible with disinterest: “we mustdifferentiate between a broad notion of objectivesand the ordinary concept of desires, and allowKant the view that the faculty of desire is not in-volved in every one of our objectives.”29 Pleasurein the beautiful can be “interested” in the sense

that it bears a relation to the ingrained aims ofour cognitive capacities—the sense in which Kantwrites in the second Critique, “to every faculty ofmind an interest may be ascribed”—but not in asense that would offend against the disinterest ofjudgments of taste.30 The sense of interest in whichjudgments of taste must be disinterested is actuallyrather narrow: (1) “interest” cannot be “the ba-sis that determines approval” of the object judgedand (2) the judgment cannot ride on taking plea-sure in the “existence” of an object or what it rep-resents, and hence is not a function of the facultyof desire.31

Guyer continues: “The successful employmentof the faculty of reflective judgment must also beseen as the occasion of a pleasure which is in-dependent of the practical aims of the faculty ofdesire.”32 This agrees with the distinction Kant of-ten draws between pleasure and the determina-tion of the will, for example in the Metaphysicsof Morals: “[D]esire or aversion always has plea-sure or displeasure connected with it. . . . But theconverse does not always hold, for there can bepleasure that is not connected to any desire foran object.”33 The question that remains to ask iswhat constitutes the successful employment of re-flective judgment. Guyer seems to claim that itis determination or something like determination.The aim of reflective judgment is to license a deter-minate judgment, to find a universal for a partic-ular; but this does not happen in a pure judgmentof taste qua pure judgment of taste (although de-terminate judgments may accompany a judgmentof taste). We therefore need a different account of“successful employment” in the case of beauty. Ihave suggested that it is the discovery or creationof something about an object or a performancethat cannot be determined: in the midst of reflec-tion we discover that our reflection on the objectnever ends. There is always something new in ourexperience of the object. The goal of reflectivejudgment to find a concept for the particular fails,but in a way that we find pleasurable and whichelicits further reflection without frustration.

Allison criticizes Guyer’s account of Kant’s con-nection between attainment and pleasure as in-compatible with disinterest. (Oddly, he does notmention Guyer’s own argument for its compat-ibility with disinterest.) Allison claims that thepassage cited above where Kant makes this con-nection explicit is merely transitional and shouldnot be read as a statement of his account of

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pleasure. But Kant reiterates this claim in the“General Comment” and makes clear that it iscentral to his theory. “Achieving any aim, even aproblematic one, is accompanied by a liking.”34

Nevertheless, Allison is right to question Guyer’ssuggestion that these passages describe a neces-sary as well as sufficient condition of pleasure andthus a general theory of pleasure. Guyer interpretsthe connection between pleasure and attainmenttoo strictly: “All pleasure results from the fulfill-ment of some aim” implies that no pleasure canarise absent the fulfillment of an aim. (The ‘all’is inclusive; the statement is not a conditional.)But none of Kant’s claims about pleasure and at-tainment imply that all pleasure results from thefulfillment of an aim. As Peter Fenves notes inLate Kant, Guyer’s strong interpretation of thispassage cannot be squared with instances of plea-sure that involve the play of tension and release,such as the joke Kant discusses briefly at the end ofthe aesthetic portion of the third Critique, wherea cognitive failure is the reason for a feeling ofpleasure.35

Feelings of pleasure are, for Kant, alwayspresent upon achieving an end (even a question-able one). Nonetheless, the attainment of an endis not a necessary condition for feeling pleasure.Judgments of taste involve pleasure that would notbe felt absent a failure to achieve the aim of re-flective judgment. Kant’s language of conceptualindeterminacy describes the (delightful) failure toachieve the goal of reflective judgment in our in-tuition of beautiful objects. In an encounter withbeauty, reflection is experienced as potentially un-ending because insofar as the object actually isbeautiful—actually possesses a form that can sus-tain reflection indefinitely—no determinate uni-versal will be disclosed that is adequate to it. This istherefore a failure we experience as a pleasure, anda pleasure distinctly keyed to that object: we fail todetermine it because there is something about itthat exceeds determination. In failing to find a de-termination we have actually discovered—or as anartist, created—a unique and uniquely compellingobject or performance. In such a judgment the twointentional moments in a judgment of taste cometogether, the feeling that is indelibly connected tobut cannot be identified with ends or aims and theobject in intuition that in the case of art produc-tion is or represents an aim and which exceeds ourability to determine it conceptually. This makes abeautiful object or performance, understood as an

artistic aim, unique and uniquely complex. It is theaim to make something that exceeds any attemptto determine it completely. It is to make some-thing that even the artist him- or herself would failto completely account for or explain, but whichcan yet be approached by all.36

But this account of judgments of taste still seemsto run up against Kant’s emphatic claims that feel-ing can impart no knowledge. However, Kant de-fines knowledge narrowly, indicating discursiveknowledge alone. Judgments of taste do not pro-duce discursive knowledge—the structure of thejudgment is such that all pronouncements onemight make on its basis are necessarily problem-atic. Kant expresses this explicitly: the demandthat others agree with a judgment of taste is alwaysand necessarily provisional.37 Thus the artist’s ex-ercise of a peculiar kind of “know-how” on thebasis of a judgment of taste is also provisional.(The “know” part of his or her know-how is al-ways open to question.) The interpretation I offerprovides this provisionality with a definite shape:the claim implied in any assertion that an objectis beautiful is “there is something about this ob-ject (performance, and so forth) that will outstripany attempt to determine it.” But such a claim cannever be made with any certainty—one can havetrue belief, but no account. An assertion that some-thing is beautiful is a claim about future possibilitythat is not grounded in present necessity. Even ifit is true that there is something about the objectthat exceeds my ability to determine it, it does notfollow that no one will ever be able to do so. Thusknowledge is not a problem for the place of feelingin judgments of taste. (The problem is: what do wedo with a judgment that can deliver no knowledge?This, I suggest, is what makes judgments of tasteand the beautiful such important topics for Kant.Beauty creates unique milieus for interaction andcommunication between finite rational beings. Allclaims that something is beautiful are necessarilyprovisional; thus the conversation about them isin principle unending.)

As for the problem of feeling having an in-tentional object at all, we note that there areseveral places where Kant gives feeling an ob-ject in the nondiscursive sense of making oneaware of or conscious of something, or being aboutsomething, namely one’s subjective “mental state”(Gemutszustand). For example, in the first sectionof the third Critique, where he initially claims thatfeeling has no object, he writes that in a feeling

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of pleasure or displeasure “the subject feels him-self, [namely] how he is affected by the representa-tion.”38 This is elaborated upon in the next para-graph: in a judgment of taste the representationone has in reflecting upon the object is “referred”to one’s subject and is compared to the “entireVorstellungsvermogen [power of representation],of which the mind becomes conscious when it feelsits own state.”39 He ends the section by noting thata judgment is aesthetic, “to the extent that, thesubject referred [the representation], in his judg-ment, solely to himself (to his feeling).”40 Thus, infeeling, one is aware of one’s own state while rep-resenting an object in intuition and reflecting onit. This is what Kant means by the judgment being“referred” not to the object, but to oneself, and italso means that “oneself” here, one’s mental state,is an intentional object of feeling, though it is not anobject in a cognitive sense, nor is it the object uponwhich one reflects in intuition. Indeed a primaryproblem of aesthetic judgment is how to relate thisfeeling to the object upon which one reflects in in-tuition. The necessarily problematic character ofthis relationship is what stands behind the provi-sionality of any claim about an object’s beauty.

iii

A theory of pleasure in judgments of taste must beable to account for artistic intention understood asthe intention to apply judgments of taste to one’sproductive activity as well as the complex inten-tionality involved in forming and acting on thatintention. An artist must be able to track changesin his or her presentation as approaching or failingto approach beauty. (Though he or she may choosenot to, and just “try something” to be judged afterthe fact.) The feeling of pleasure or displeasureand its connection to the presentation upon whichthe artist is working are both intentional objects ofthe artist’s judgment. Where reflective judgmentin a cognitive context manifests in seeking a uni-versal under which to subsume a particular, thereflective character of the judgment in artistic ac-tivity manifests in seeking the movements or ges-tures (physical, rhetorical, or both) that produce,or are, a beautiful presentation.

But doesn’t this account of an activity guidedby judgments of taste contravene Kant’s claimthat judgments of taste cannot be productive, anddoesn’t this throw us straight back into the prob-

lem of the disinterest of judgments of taste? No.Judgments of taste need not be productive unlessone wishes to interpret them as sufficient condi-tions for artistic production. I am exploring theconsequences of his claim that they are necessaryconditions of artistic production. All that is re-quired in order to remain consistent with Kant’saccount of disinterest is that judgments of tastenot be based on a moral or pathological interest inthe object or act judged, but rather on our reflec-tion upon it in intuition, which, as we have seen, iscompatible with the “interest” of reflective judg-ment. Interest in the object’s existence simply can-not be “the basis that determines approval.” Simi-larly with productiveness: Kant repeatedly claimsthat taste is insufficient for creating beauty. Geniusis also required.

Genius, and not taste, is for Kant the productiveaspect of the creation of artistic beauty. It is whatproduces the aesthetic idea, the “unexpoundablepresentation of the imagination,” the “intuition (ofthe imagination) for which an adequate conceptcan never be found.”41 The role of taste is to disci-pline the artist’s presentation of the aesthetic ideasuch that it can become universally communica-ble, so that it becomes “durable” and can be ap-proached by all. Taste is by no means a sufficientcondition for artistic beauty, but judgments of tastemust be capable of being applied during the activephase of artistic creation. Judgments of taste arepart of the discipline, the practice of art, and mustbe able to be embodied in its performance.

A view of aesthetic feeling as phenomenologi-cally opaque or of aesthetic judgment as concep-tually opaque leaves us with a picture in which anartist can only work blind, unable to purposefullydirect his or her activity to achieve beauty. Sucha view inclines toward the theory of art that Kantmost vehemently rejects, in which the mysteriesof genius run the show and function best unadul-terated by discipline and conscious design. To thisit may be responded that my view of how judg-ments of taste relate to artistic activity is skewed.I contend that judgments of taste must be capableof being simultaneous with acts guided by them.One might object that even in one’s own artisticactivity judgments of taste perform merely an edi-torial function. One might argue that there are twoalternating moments to art production: the move-ments the artist makes and the point at which heor she steps back and judges the work those move-ments have produced, to determine how it must be

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edited in order to achieve a beautiful presentation.Kant’s description of the application of taste toart as “slow and painstaking” seems to imply suchan account and seems at least at first glance com-patible with the opacity thesis.42 However, asidefrom the fact that “slow and painstaking” couldjust as easily refer to rehearsal, training, or practiceprior to an actual performance, there are two sep-arate problems with any editorial account of judg-ment designed to be compatible with the opacity offeeling.

First of all, it leaves out entirely arts that have astrong performative component, like musical per-formance, dance, and acting, that is, any artistic en-deavor in which the artist does not have the luxuryof editing the final product, but must expend ef-fort prior to performance to ensure that the actualperformance will be assured and graceful. (Thiscan include, among other things, honing technicalskills, stumbling into and deciding to keep happyaccidents, with the attendant problem of figuringout how to reproduce those accidents, and study-ing the performances of others as models to em-ulate or disemulate.) Second, even in those arts,such as writing, painting, and composing, whereone does have the luxury of editing the final prod-uct, a judgment of taste based on an opaque feel-ing could only consider whether something is or isnot beautiful. It would be useless for determininghow to improve a presentation or performance,and thus could only perform an editorial functionhaphazardly.

In order to discipline one’s work on the basis ofevaluative judgments, whether in the act or the cut-ting room, the evaluative judgments must have anintentional structure. One must be able to examinethe presentation or performance in the context ofthe feelings it evokes in order to purposefully goabout creating something beautiful. At this pointone might object that an intentional account ofjudgments of taste cannot answer the question ofhow they can be applied to ongoing artistic activityany better than can one based on a phenomeno-logically opaque feeling of pleasure. Indeed, onemight argue that the singularity of judgments oftaste render them “mute” to the question of howto guide artistic practice, no matter how we inter-pret the character of the pleasure involved.43

Such an objection conflates the singularity ofjudgments of taste with a purported opacity ofjudgments of taste. The singularity and subjectivityof judgments of taste means that they are discur-

sively mute, and therefore that they cannot pro-duce determinate rules for the evaluation of art.44

This, however, does not mean that they cannotguide an individual artist in a particular case. Sim-ply because judgments of taste are not portable—they must be made anew for each object and madeanew each time one encounters even the sameobject—does not mean that in the individual casethey cannot be used by an artist as a guide towarda beautiful presentation. It is just that we cannotexplain how they do so (neither can the artist).

To claim that either the process by which judg-ments of taste operate is discursively transparentor that it is reflectively opaque is to fail to note dif-ferences between aesthetic judgments and cogni-tive judgments crucial to the Critique of AestheticJudgment. We as theorists cannot provide an ac-count of how in a particular instance a judgmentof taste will proceed. Although, according to Kant,we can discuss judgments of taste in general termsof what of our capacities are involved and how theyrelate to one another in the moment of judging, intheir particulars judgments of taste are closed tothe discursive point of view. Thus they are, to usas theorists, mute. However, in a moment whereone is confronted with an aesthetic idea and theduty or desire to express it to others, things may bedifferent. Judgments of taste are mute outside ofthat context, and we as theorists are (or should be)mute within that context. Without this dilemma Ihazard to guess that there would be no art at all.

iv

I have argued that an account of the feeling ofpleasure and displeasure in judgments of taste asopaque is incompatible with the role such judg-ments must play in artistic activity. I have alsoargued that Allison’s version of an intentional the-ory does not provide a full account of the com-plexity of the intentional object involved in judg-ments of taste that could discipline artistic activity.His account of free play as an attitude one entersprior to an engagement with an object cannot cap-ture the singularity of the judgment of taste or theway in which for Kant beautiful objects and per-formances are unique.

In Theory of Taste, Allison presents an apt state-ment of the intentional object of feeling in a judg-ment of taste: “Instead of a claim about an ob-ject, it is about the representational state of the

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subject in apprehending an object.”45 However,from such a formulation it is easy to overlook howour attention must be focused on the object as wellas on our representational state in a judgment oftaste. But an intentional account of judgments oftaste that neglects our intentional relationship tothe object is no better than an interpretation pred-icated on opacity in adumbrating how judgmentsof taste might apply to an artist’s activity.

To be sure, Allison does not ignore appre-hension of the object. Much of his discussion ofaesthetic judgment in Theory of Taste concernsthe relationship between the imagination and theunderstanding in reflecting upon the object. How-ever, in the picture that emerges the judgment issolely about the form of the representation andnot about the object in representation. Guyer’s ac-count captures this distinction better. In his “sim-ple reflection,” one’s attention is directed at theobject; in the subsequent reflection attention isdirected at the activity of one’s own faculties. Theproblem in his account is the way in which thesetwo moments are disconnected; they are separatereflections, the first of which results in a “raw feel”that is opaque to the second, which must thereforejudge whether or not it is a disinterested feelingbased on other factors. In Allison’s account thecharacter of our directedness toward the object isslighted in favor of our “feelingly apprehended”awareness of our own faculties and the “form ofthe concept” that he identifies with the enlivenedactivity of these faculties that we feel.

If we take the structure of Guyer’s two-reflection view and subtract his claims about theopacity of pleasure and the separation of the re-flections into two distinct acts or activations, weare left with an account of a complex intentionalact, a judgment of taste with two simultaneous in-tentional valences. A benefit of Allison’s inten-tional account is that it can account for how thissecond valence is possible. However, in the pro-cess, adequate discussion of the first, and conse-quently discussion of how the two relate to oneanother in judgment, is left out. This leads to theproblematic interpretation of free play and har-mony that cannot capture the judgmental contextof our encounter with a beautiful object. Here,Guyer’s second reflection, interpreted not as aseparate reflection but as a moment of a singleact, can establish the connection between our re-sponse to the object and the object itself and closethe gap between the judgment of taste and our

awareness of the object left open by Allison’saccount.46

JOSEPH CANNONDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of IdahoMoscow, Idaho 83844

internet: [email protected]

1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. WernerPluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1987), p. 30 (Akad.5:190). Note: My first references to each of Kant’s works willrefer to the relevant volume of the Prussian Academy edition(Kant’s gesammelte Schriften. 27 volumes. Ed. KoniglichePreußische Akademie der Wissenschaften) as well as the En-glish translation used. Subsequent references to that workwill be cited using the Akademie pagination only, which ispresent in all current English editions of Kant’s work.

2. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:205.3. Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge

University Press, 1979, 2nd ed. 1997), henceforth Claims ofTaste. We should note that Beck’s position on this issue is notobvious. He does not explicitly take up the intentionality offeeling as a topic, and he makes claims that at first glance ap-pear to deny that feeling has an intentional character but oncloser reading do not. For example, in his magisterial Com-mentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (Universityof Chicago Press, 1960) he writes, “There are only two ele-mentary feelings—pleasure and pain. All other feelings, suchas the feeling of the sublime, the beautiful, and respect aredefined by the accompaniments, contexts, causes, or ‘objects’of the pleasure or pain we feel” (p. 93). This at first glancesounds like a claim that feeling is opaque and can only bejudged in terms of the context of the objects or representa-tions that occasion it. And indeed, Guyer cites this passageapprovingly (Claims of Taste, p. 103). But when Beck elab-orates on it, we find that his aim is to elucidate the role offeeling in moral judgment, and not to make claims about itsintentionality or lack thereof. Thus he writes, shortly there-after, “In a hedonistic calculus, there is no place for quali-tative differences” (Commentary, p. 94). This is not to saythat there are no qualitative differences between differentinstances of pleasure or pain, just that if there are any, theyhave no role in judgments based on a “hedonistic calculus.”Whether or not I can distinguish between different instancesof pleasure or pain on the basis of subjective features is im-material to a judgment about whether one is in pleasureor pain. Immediately afterwards Beck writes, “feeling . . .

cannot be ascribed as a property to an object” (ibid.), whichmakes clearer his claim about “qualitative differences.” Feel-ings are not like the properties of objects: pleasure is not like“greenness.” Indeed, as we shall see, feeling is “about” thesubject’s state, and not directly about the discernable qual-ities of an object. (A judgment of taste, then, is about therelationship between the subject’s state and the discernablequalities of the object.) With this in mind, Beck’s descriptionof feelings of pleasure and displeasure as “the consciousnessof the causality of an idea” (Commentary, p. 93, paraphrasingCritique of Judgment, 5:220) seems to imply an intentionalobject; feeling is a “consciousness of,” and not merely aneffect of which one can become conscious.

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4. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:206.5. Both of these characterizations appear in the same

paragraph: Claims of Taste, pp. 98–99. It seems that Guyer’s“simple reflection” is something akin to what John McDow-ell calls an “activation” of conceptual capacities that is not anexercise of them. See, for example, John McDowell, “Havingthe World in View: Sellars, Kant, and Intentionality,” Journalof Philosophy, XCV (1998): 461–462.

6. Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading ofthe Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge UniversityPress, 2001), pp. 116–118. Henceforth Theory of Taste.

7. See, for example, Henry Allison, “Pleasure and Har-mony in Kant’s Theory of Taste,” in Kants Asthetik/Kant’sAesthetics/L’Esthetique de Kant, ed. Herman Parret (Berlin& New York: de Gruyter, 1998), pp. 474–475. Henceforth“Pleasure and Harmony.” The passage in question: “[T]hefeeling of pleasure always affects one and the same life forcewhich is manifested in the faculty of desire, and in this respectone determining ground can differ from any other only indegree.” Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 3rded., trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1993),p. 22 (Akad. 5:23).

8. For the purposes of this article I assume that the har-mony of the faculties designates a mode of mental activity,and not a state caused by an object of a certain sort. Thegeneral view of the relationship between the object and thestate that I think may be applied to both Guyer and Allison isthat beautiful objects are capable of eliciting and sustaininga certain kind of mental activity in a way that nonbeautifulthings cannot. In this minimal sense both Guyer and Allisonascribe to Kant an objective theory of taste, and I agree withthem: some things are beautiful and some are not. For Guyerthe activity in question can seem obscure, due to his claimthat the initial reflection is “automatic” and the feeling itresults in opaque.

9. Allison, Theory of Taste, p. 116.10. Henry Allison, “Response to the Comments of

Longuenesse and Ginsborg,” Inquiry 46 (2003): 183.11. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:243; 5:307–311. Guyer

rejects the idea that aesthetic judgment is keyed to theuniqueness of an object. He writes, “Taking pleasure in theuniqueness of an object . . . would really express a concernwith the conditions of its actual existence rather than withthe character of its representation. For instance, if we valuean original in ways in which we do not value even a per-fect copy” (Guyer, Claims of Taste, p. 178). Note that thejudgment I describe is not concerned with the uniquenessof the phenomenal object—a truly perfect copy, providedsuch a thing is possible, would elicit the same response asthe original. (This is an important consideration for film,recorded music, and other mechanically or digitally repro-duced works.) The originality of the “idea” expressed by anobject of art or even a natural object, which Kant discussesin terms of its indeterminate concept, is what is at issue ina judgment of taste. In this sense, the uniqueness of a workof art is not that of an object that is the sole member of aspecies, because the work of art is not governed by a deter-minate concept.

12. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:179.13. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:180.14. Kant describes reflective judgment in two ways: as

a judgment of a particular for which one has no concept andas a judgment about one’s own faculties in relation to an

object, rather than about qualities of the object. This secondsense has a history that goes back at least to John Locke’s“ideas of reflection” as ideas the mind forms by considera-tion of its own operation, as opposed to ideas of sense gaineddirectly from perception. This was quite influential on thetradition of British aesthetics from Joseph Addison to DavidHume that Kant knew well. Two things, however, complicateKant’s relationship to this tradition: (1) the use to which heputs reflection, the first sense of reflective judgment above,which is often downplayed in favor of the second in orderto avoid conflict with disinterest (part of my aim here is toargue that any adequate account of Kant on judgments oftaste must take both of these characterizations of reflectivejudgment into account, and that we can do so and remainconsistent with disinterest) and (2) the role the productiveimagination plays for Kant in reflection as an a priori powerof the mind. For the tradition coming from Locke, the imag-ination is merely a reproductive power. Memory and imagi-nation “mimic or copy the perceptions of the senses, but theynever can entirely reach the force and vivacity of the originalsentiment” (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning HumanUnderstanding, 2nd ed. [Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1993],p. 10). For Kant, reflection does not just consider the oper-ation of the faculties in working with ideas of sense; it setsthem in motion in regard to a problem or problematic ob-ject. This involves the imagination in its creative power, itsability to interact with our power of concepts, to schematize,and in the case of aesthetic problems symbolize, by creat-ing intuitions that present and allow one to explore novelconceptual possibilities and analogies. This is, for Kant, theunique relationship between aesthetic judgment and reflec-tive judgment, which is not present in Locke and his heirs,with the possible exception of Allison, whose main work isnearly simultaneous with the third Critique (1790).

15. ‘Performance’ here indicates any action directedpurposefully toward the production of beauty. The artist’sstated aim need not be to create something beautiful as longas we may reasonably interpret his or her act as directedtoward, or “intending,” beauty as, for example, a medievalartist whose stated aim is to “glorify God.” Performance inthis sense by no means exhausts the kinds of activities thatgo into the creation of a successful work of art, even if wedefine ‘success’ restrictively as the achievement of beauty. Itleaves out at least some kinds of editorial work, as well as theproduction of “happy accidents” (but perhaps not the repro-duction of those accidents). However, it does not leave outworks like Duchamp’s urinal or the artworks by fiat of anyof Danto’s provocateurs. The act of claiming that a foundobject is a work of art can be a performance in my sense,and perhaps must be if we wish to use the term ‘beauty’ todiscuss the success and failure of such performances.

16. Pluhar translates geistreich as ‘inspired.’ ImmanuelKant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indi-anapolis: Hackett Press, 1987), p. 466.

17. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:319.18. Allison, Theory of Taste, pp. 271–272.19. Genius is not involved in intending beauty for two

reasons. First of all it is not for Kant something the activity ofwhich may be willed. Some people are possessed of genius,which means that they sometimes produce “aesthetic ideas,”intuitions that he describes alternately as corresponding to(and in some way or another expressing) moral ideas and aseliciting much thought, or many thoughts, none of which can

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be adequately conceptualized. Second, aesthetic ideas are notbeautiful, and neither are objects produced in accordancewith these ideas but without the guidance of taste. Works ofmere genius are, according to Kant, “original nonsense” thatcan only appeal to other geniuses. Beauty for Kant designatesan object that expresses an aesthetic idea universally. Geniusis responsible for the idea, taste for its universal expression,and taste is the only element here (apart from the exerciseof technical skill) that is deployed by the artist’s own choice.

20. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:215.21. Contrary to initial appearances, this claim does not

go against Kant’s claim about “general” aesthetic judgmentssuch as “roses are beautiful.” Kant writes: “But if I comparemany singular roses and so arrive at the judgment, Roses ingeneral are beautiful, then my judgment is no longer merelyaesthetic, but is a logical judgment based on an aestheticone” (Critique of Judgment, 5:215). I take this to be a prob-lematic passage: it appears to simply contradict his claimthat judgments of taste are provisional. But this is besidethe point: even in this formulation, the logical judgment canonly be formed for a subject on the basis of prior aestheticjudgments. The concept of beauty cannot be constructed outof other concepts or on an analogy with other concepts.

22. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:314. The discipline oftaste renders this indeterminacy accessible to all, allowingthe artist to express “adequately . . . [an] idea that even theconcept cannot reach.” (Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:355).

23. Guyer, Claims of Taste, p. 97.24. My account could appear to allege that there is only

one way of going about doing art and leave out things like“found” art and aleatoric composition. It seems clear thatKant himself probably could not recognize Duchamp’s uri-nal or John Cage’s manner of composition as art, but thisdoes not mean that he should not. It is possible that theact of bringing a found object into view as an artwork isan aesthetic act, a performance in my sense. It is, after all,possible for this act to fail and the act of placing a foundobject on view as art to be in a particular case uncompelling.My interpretation of Kant thus does not imply that aestheticproduction happens or ought to happen in only one way. I ar-gue that an adequate account of judgments of taste must beable to acknowledge performance in a relatively traditionalsense, such as in the distinction between a musical instrumentplayed well and played beautifully, as embodying aestheticjudgments. But this means neither that fine (schone) art is theonly kind of art with aesthetic value nor that performancesin this traditional sense are the only performances that gointo a successful work of fine art.

25. One answer to this objection (suggested by ananonymous referee) is an appeal to Hume’s sense in whichfeeling or sentiment is itself judgmental. This inclines to theview I defend insofar as it ties feeling to the judgmental act.However, we must add to it something more than the mereclaim that feeling is itself evaluative. Judgment by means offeeling in the Humean sense is aesthetic but not reflective.But for Kant, judgments of taste are aesthetic and reflective.One way to account for judgments of taste as pure reflectivejudgments is to try to interpret them as about the feelingof pleasure. I encounter an object with pleasure, but cannotfind a ready explanation for that pleasure in my interests,aims, or sensory makeup. So I “reflect” in a quasi-Lockeansense: I think upon my state of mind in viewing the object,“reflecting on its own operations within itself,” as Locke puts

it (John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975], Book II, chap. 1, para. 4).Here a Humean would attack, and with right, because thisdescribes not a judgment by sentiment, but about sentiment.It is reflective, but not aesthetic. For Hume, such an accountis unhelpful—explanation in terms of one’s state of minddoes not do the work of justifying the judgment. For Hume,justification must lie in an appeal to the feeling itself, or to aclass of recognized critics or judges who establish a standard.But we cannot stop there, because for Kant the feeling can-not simply indicate a judgment or embody an evaluation. Itmust also be able to act as a guide and interact with the par-ticulars of the object in intuition. The connection betweenfeeling and intuition for a theorist is an “I know not what,”but it cannot be so for the artist or critic. This can be ob-scure, however, because as soon as the artist or critic leavesthe work and tries to speak generally, he or she becomes atheorist and “knows not what.”

26. Gemut is most often translated ‘mind,’ but this canbe misleading. Gemut includes not only one’s cognitive fac-ulties, but also one’s “life”—which for Kant is one’s capacityto act according to purposes. In other words Gemut includeswhat Aristotle called the “animal” part of the soul, as wellas the rational.

27. They also fail to result in distinct strategies forthe production of determinate judgments about the natu-ral world, which distinguishes them from teleological judg-ments that are reflective but have a determinate form. Wecan produce an account of what it means to be objectivelypurposive, which is what guides teleological judgments, butwe cannot know whether or not nature is actually objectivelypurposive.

28. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:187; 5:242.29. Guyer, Claims of Taste, p. 71.30. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:119.31. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:210.32. Guyer, Claims of Taste, p. 71.33. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans.

James W. Ellington, in Ethical Philosophy (Indianapolis:Hackett Press, 1983), p. 9; Akad. 6:211, cf. Akad. 5:9fn.

34. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:242.35. Peter Fenves, Late Kant: Toward Another Law of

the Earth (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 177 n11.36. A consequence of this is that an artist is not a privi-

leged audience for his or her own work, which is well in linewith Kant’s attack on unschooled genius and his rejectionof the Schwarmerisch idea that artistic genius implies thepossession of privileged access to metaphysical knowledge.

37. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:214–215.38. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:204.39. Ibid.40. Ibid.41. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:342.42. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:312.43. The characterization of the singularity of judgments

of taste as rendering them “mute” comes from RebeccaKukla’s comments on portions of this article I presentedat the Central Division APA annual meeting, April 2003,though I end up using the term in a different way. I mustalso thank her for several of the objections I confront in thepresent article.

44. From this perspective, an art critic does not enun-ciate and apply rules of art, but aims to influence the

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perspective from which his or her readers approach the art-works in question, such that they will be able to experi-ence the beauty of the work more fully when they return toit.

45. Allison, Theory of Taste, p. 51.46. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers at

JAAC for generous and penetrating criticism that has donemuch to help me clarify my thinking about several aspects ofthis article, especially the details and aims of Guyer’s inter-pretation of the third Critique and the applicability of Kant’stheory to contemporary modes of art that Kant himself couldnot have envisioned.