Reflection: Its Structure and Meaning in Kant's Judgements of Taste

When Kant announces in a letter to Reinhold that he has discovered a new domain of a priori principles, he situates these principles in a faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure (Zammito 1992: 47). And it is indeed in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, named in this letter the Critique of Taste, that we find his elucidation of the relation of the principle of purposiveness to the feeling of pleasure. The kinds of judgements in which our feelings are evaluated in accordance with a principle are what Kant names reflective judgements. And while reflective judgements emerge in the third Critique to include not only judgements of taste, but also judgements of the sublime and teleological judgements of nature, in this paper I will focus on the first, as the question of the relatedness of reflection to pleasure is most pronounced in this context. There is no consensus in Kant scholarship as to what the structure of reflective judgements is, as evidenced by the widely disparate views of those such as Guyer, Allison, Pippin, Ginsborg, Lyotard, and others.

Reflection: Its Structure and Meaning in Kant's Judgements of Taste Academic Article