Abstract

As the title of her book indicates, Zuckert’s approach to Kant’s Critique of Judgment differs somewhat from that taken by many recent commentators. Rather than focusing narrowly on aspects of the CJ that are directly relevant to a particular philosophical issue, Zuckert offers an interpretation of the work as a whole that is aimed at vindicating Kant’s claim concerning its unity. According to her interpretation, the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” and the “Critique of Teleological Judgment” are parts of an extended argument for a temporal and teleological conception of human subjectivity that differs significantly from the conception of subjectivity Kant develops in his other works. In Zuckert’s view, this new conception of the judging subject provides the unifying theme of the two main parts of the CJ, but it also marks a problematic transition within Kant’s critical philosophy. The CJ moves beyond the formal structures characteristic of transcendental subjectivity in its concern with the contingent, particular materials of human experience, history, and culture. Even as he offers his own formal idealism in support of a generally Leibnizean way of