Kant's Critique of Judgment

Kant’s Critique of Judgment articulates a view of beauty as ultimately disinterested, an entirely universal and external characteristic isolated from subjective preferences. If we are disinterested, we are free from the shackles of these preferences and can enjoy “free play” of the senses, which in turn guarantees freedom and leads to the sublime.

Obviously, Kant believes in a universal sense of the world; “everyone” has access to it and can experience it. It’s not through particular training or education – though we must train ourselves to recognize disinterestedness. Rather, beauty is entirely removed from the individual and thus not something we achieve ourselves. Thus, he seems to value the outside world. Given the time at which he was writing this, reason and rationality had caused too many problems; and though he clearly recognizes the importance of reason (ie an objective, universal, disinterested response) in conferring beauty, he argues that we cannot experience it through cognition or concepts. We perceive beauty through the imagination. However, understanding is a small part of the process, since there are objective qualities within an object that can create aesthetic experiences. At stake for him, then, is restoring a sense of unmitigated sensate experience (Baumgarten, anyone?) to demonstrate that reason has taken over.

I’m wondering about the difference between “aesthetic experiences” and the experience of the universal beauty. Also, I’m wondering how Kant believes we can train ourselves to make pure judgments of taste. Is this like David Hume’s idea that we become connoisseurs (i.e. being sensitive to detail)? Or, is it a response to Hume’s idea that a standard of taste can, in fact, exist? It seems that Kant is more of a relativist; though he argues that there is a universal experience of beauty/taste, we can all access it. Does he really mean “everyone”?

Related to this, what “good” does it do to have a universal sense of beauty or taste, especially since Kant takes pains to delineate the good from the beautiful? Given the historical and social contexts, what is he hoping for by doing so?

Finally, if a person can claim an intersubjective experience in a judgment of taste, because we all share these faculties, does this mean that beauty and taste have significant ramifications for cultural unity or freedom? What about difference? It seems that Kant wants to elide differences in favor of harmony and freedom, but couldn’t we argue that differences are what make us able to experience freedom in the first place?

How does Kant relate to invention and pleasure from invention/learning? Desire to learn?