Abstract

The central problem of the first part of Kant's Critique of Judgment, the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" , is how judgments of taste are possible. Such judgments are both subjective and universal. Oddly, Kant seems to double the problem of taste. In the Analytic of the work, he appeals to the notion of a common sense that grounds judgments of taste. Common sense is a subjective feeling, but because it is also a requirement of cognition in general, it is a universally communicable feeling. In the Dialectic, Kant re-raises the problem of taste in the form of an antinomy, which he solves by appealing to the indeterminate concept of the supersensible. Judgments of taste are subjective because they are based on an indeterminate concept, but they are also universal because they are based on a concept. Given the first solution to the problem of taste, the second is not required. Further, it's unclear how judgments of taste could be based on the concept of the supersensible. ;I resolve these difficulties by relating the problem of taste to a second issue: the system of the powers of the mind. Kant attempts to show that the powers of the mind--cognition, feeling and desire--have a common source by showing that feeling, like cognition and desire, is grounded in the supersensible realm and that it orients us in the sensible world toward the rational ends of cognition and desire. Specifically, pure aesthetic feeling prepares the world for us so that we can cognize it as a synthetic system of experience and teaches us to love objects irrespective of our interest in them, which prepares us to love the moral law . In the first solution to the problem of taste, Kant connects feeling to cognition; in the second solution, he connects feeling to desire. Finally, I argue that Kant's two solutions are actually one solution: the supersensible is the ground of common sense, not an independent basis of judgments of taste