In their logical quantity, all judgements of taste are singular judgements.For, since I must present the object immediately to my feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and that, too, without the aid of concepts, such judgements cannot have the quantity of judgements with objective general validity.Yet by taking the singular representation of the object of the judgement of taste, and by comparison converting it into a concept according to the conditions determining that judgement, we can arrive at a logically universal judgement.For instance, by a judgement of the taste I describe the rose at which I am looking as beautiful.The judgement, on the other hand, resulting from the comparison of a number of singular representations: "Roses in general are beautiful," is no longer pronounced as a purely aesthetic judgement, but as a logical judgement founded on one that is aesthetic.Now the judgement, "The rose is agreeable" (to smell) is also, no doubt, an aesthetic and singular judgement, but then it is not one of taste but of sense.For it has this point of difference from a judgement of taste, that the latter imports an aesthetic quantity of universality, i.e., of validity for everyone which is not to be met with in a judgement upon the agreeable.It is only judgements upon the good which, while also determining the delight in an object, possess logical and not mere aesthetic universality; for it is as involving a cognition of the object that "they are valid of it, and on that account valid for everyone.
In forming an estimate of objects merely from concepts, all representation of beauty goes by the board.There can, therefore, be no rule according to which any one is to be compelled to recognize anything as beautiful.Whether a dress, a house, or a flower is beautiful is a matter upon which one declines to allow one's judgement to be swayed by any reasons or principles.We want to get a look at the object with our own eyes, just as if our delight depended on sensation.And yet, if upon so doing, we call the object beautiful, we believe ourselves to be speaking with a universal voice, and lay claim to the concurrence of everyone, whereas no private sensation would be decisive except for the observer alone and his liking.
Here, now, we may perceive that nothing is postulated in the judgement of taste but such a universal voice in respect of delight that it is not mediated by concepts; consequently, only the possibility of an aesthetic judgement capable of being at the same time deemed valid for everyone.The judgement of taste itself does not postulate the agreement of everyone (for it is only competent for a logically universal judgement to do this, in that it is able to bring forward reasons); it only imputes this agreement to everyone, as an instance of the rule in respect of which it looks for confirmation, not from concepts, but from the concurrence of others.The universal voice is, therefore, only an idea -resting upon grounds the investigation of which is here postponed.It may be a matter of uncertainty whether a person who thinks he is laying down a judgement of taste is, in fact, judging in conformity with that idea; but that this idea is what is contemplated in his judgement, and that, consequently, it is meant to be a judgement of taste, is proclaimed by his use of the expression "beauty." For himself he can be certain on the point from his mere consciousness of the separation of everything belonging to the agreeable and the good from the delight remaining to him; and this is all for which be promises himself the agreement of everyone-a claim which, under these conditions, he would also be warranted in making, were it not that he frequently sinned against them, and thus passed an erroneous judgement of taste.
SS 9.Investigation of the question of the relative priority in a judgement of taste of the feeling of pleasure and the estimating of the object.
The solution of this problem is the key to the Critique of taste, and so is worthy of all attention.
Were the pleasure in a given object to be the antecedent, and were the universal communicability of this pleasure to be all that the judgement of taste is meant to allow to the representation of the object, such a sequence would be self-contradictory.For a pleasure of that kind would be nothing but the feeling of mere agreeableness to the senses, and so, from its very nature, would possess no more than private validity, seeing that it would be immediately dependent on the representation through which the object is given.
Hence it is the universal capacity for being communicated incident to the mental state in the given representation which, as the subjective condition of the judgement of taste, must be, fundamental, with the pleasure in the object as its consequent.
Nothing, however, is capable of being universally communicated but cognition and representation so far as appurtenant to cognition.For it is only as thus appurtenant that the representation is objective, and it is this alone that gives it a universal point of reference with which the power of representation of every one is obliged to harmonize.If, then, the determining ground of the judgement as to this universal communicability of the representation is to be merely subjective, that is to say, to be conceived independently of any concept of the object, it can be nothing else than the mental state that presents itself in the mutual relation of the powers of representation so far as they refer a given representation to cognition in general.
