The Concept of the Aesthetical in Critique of Judgement

Abstract

This article elaborates a widening of the concept of the aesthetical in Kant’s third Critique which added to the objective sensibility of the sense of the subjective feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Although the latter has an a priori foundation, it has no function of knowledge. Also constitutive of this widening is an answer to the question regarding the possibility of knowing the particularity of the particular, its irreducible singularity. The problem of the mere subjective sensibility of sense and the problem of the knowledge of the singular that resists all knowledge are two issues brought together in the concept of the power of reflective judgment taken as an autonomous cognitive power. It is precisely this knotting of these three elements – sensibility of sense, singularity that resists knowledge, and the power of reflective judgement – that allows for a radical transformation of the constitution of reality through knowledge.