Abstract for the Kant in Asia
International Conference
at Hong Kong Baptist
University
20-23 May 2009
Bart Vandenabeele,
“Common Sense and Communality in Kant's Theory of Taste”
My paper will focus on the social aspect of Kant's aesthetics of the beautiful, i.e. on the relation between person and community. The fourth moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful is concerned with the modality of the pure judgement of taste: we ‘solicit' the assent of all to our aesthetic judgement. I examine how this demand for universal communicability can be joined together in the idea of an aesthetic ‘common sense'. What kind of claim can a judgement make that has been analysed as disinterested and based on the form of a representation? What kind of person has to be presupposed to be able to ground the universal validity of such a judgement? What is the bearing of such a judgement on a community of judging persons? And on what idea of communality can such a claim be based?