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Judgment of taste
The aesthetic judgment “this is beautiful”: its determining ground is subjective — a feeling — and yet it claims everyone's assent.
Judgments of taste are, for Kant, aesthetic: their determining ground “cannot be other than subjective” — the feeling of pleasure in an object, not a concept of it. That is why they cannot be proved; no one can be compelled by arguments to find something beautiful.
And yet they are more than private taste: whoever judges “this is beautiful” imputes the pleasure to everyone — speaking with a “universal voice”. This is possible because the judgment rests not on contingent charms but on the free play of the cognitive powers that all human beings share.
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Where it appears
- Aesthetics — The judgment of taste
- Critique of Judgment — Structure & core ideas
Source: Wikipedia: Judgment of taste