Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten is a very significant figure in the philosophy of aesthetics, as he invented the word aesthetic as we know it in the modern day. Baumgarten defined aesthetics ‘…(as the theory of liberal arts, as inferior cognition, as the art of beautiful thinking and as the art of thinking analogous to reason) [and] is the science of sensual cognition’ (Hammermeister, 2002: 7), thus creating a science of taste. Initially, in his first Critique, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant rejected Baumgarten’s account that aesthetic judgement is a form of taste.

The Germans are the only people who at present use this word to indicate what others call the critique of taste. At the foundation of this term lies the disappointed hope, which the eminent analyst, Baumgarten, conceived, of subjecting the criticism of the beautiful to principles of reason, and so of elevating its rules into a science. But his endeavours were vain. For the said rules or criteria are… merely empirical, consequently never can serve as determinate laws a priori, by which our judgement in matters of taste is to be directed.

However, in the Critique of Judgement (1790), it is evident that Kant changed his mind, as it can be seen in his third critique that he indeed was influenced by Baumgarten, as he says that aesthetic judgement is a judgement of taste. This essay will begin by looking into a general account of Kant’s view on aesthetics, which will lead to examining his third critique – the Critique of Judgement – looking at the first book: Analytic of the Beautiful, of the first section: Analytic of Aesthetic Judgement, of Part I: Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. This will then lead to what Kant describes as the four moments of aesthetic judgement – disinterestedness, universality, necessity and purposiveness. The essay will then discuss Kant’s notion of the sublime, looking at the main difference between beauty and the sublime and the types of sublime. This will then lead to the relationship between the sublime and the beautiful according to Kant and then will conclude by examining some criticisms of Kant’s aesthetic judgement.

Although, Kant’s Critique of Judgement (CoJ) is the main source of his view on aesthetics, he also published another work on the topic in 1764 – Observations on Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, however, this is considered to be more interested in psychology rather than aesthetics (Kelly, 1998: 27). Douglas Burnham states in his book An Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgement (2000: 11), that an aesthetic judgement is ‘…the pleasure (or pain) felt in the presence (or absence) of the beautiful or sublime.’ The aesthetic judgement is the focal point in Kant’s third critique. It can be found that he began looking at judgement in the Critique of Pure Reason, although it is a very general overview of it (Kemp, 1968: 97). ‘The Critique of Judgement explores what a priori ‘principles’ might lie in our ability to judge things…’ (Burnham, 2000: 26). Aesthetic judgements are essentially judgements of taste according to Kant. ‘The judgement of taste is aesthetic’ (Kant, 1790 in Cahn and Meskin, 2008: 131). When he says judgements of taste, he does not mean taste in sense of eating, but taste in the sense of whether someone has good or bad taste in something. There are four aspects of taste, which are as follows: quality, quantity, relation of the purpose and satisfaction of the object (http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~jdhatley/KANT.htm). These four aspects through which Kant expresses his aesthetic judgments are known as his ‘Four Moments’, which are most commonly known as:

1. Disinterest

Article name: What Kant Understands By Relationship Sublime And Beautiful Philosophy essay, research paper, dissertation

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