Kant"s Theory of Taste

A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment

Henry E. Allison

This book constitutes one of the most important contributions to recent Kant scholarship. In it, one of the pre-eminent interpreters of Kant, Henry Allison, offers a comprehensive, systematic, and philosophically astute account of all aspects of Kant’s views on aesthetics. The first part of the book analyses Kant’s conception of reflective judgment and its connections with both empirical knowledge and judgments of taste. The second and third parts treat two questions that Allison insists must be kept distinct: the normativity of pure judgments of taste, and the moral and systematic significance of taste. The fourth part considers two important topics often neglected in the study of Kant’s aesthetics: his conceptions of fine art, and the sublime.

Contents

Acknowledgments; Note on sources and key to abbreviations and translations; Introduction; Part I. Kant’s Conception of Reflective Judgment: 1. Reflective judgment and the purposiveness of nature; 2. Reflection and taste in the introductions; Part II. Te Quid Facti and the Quid Juris in the Domain of Taste: 3. The analytic of the beautiful and the quid facti: an overview; 4. The disinterestedness of the pure judgment of taste; 5. Subjective universality, the universal voice, and the harmony of the faculties; 6. Beauty, purposiveness, and form; 7. The modality of taste and the sensus communis; 8. The deduction of pure judgments of taste; Part III. The Moral and Systematic Significance of Taste: 9. Reflective judgment and the transition from nature to freedom; 10. Beauty, duty, and interest: the moral significance of natural beauty; 11. The antinomy of taste and beauty as a symbol of morality; Part IV. Parerga to the Theory of Taste: 12. Fine art and genius; 13. The sublime; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

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