Beauty and Duty in Kant's Critique of Judgement

Abstract

At the end of §40 of the Critique of Judgement, after a discussion of the sensus communis and its connection with taste, Kant writes:If we could assume that the mere universal communicability as such of our feeling must already carry with it an interest for us (something we are, however, not justified in inferring from the character of a merely reflective power of judgment), then we could explain how it is that we require from everyone as a duty, as it were (gleichsam), the feeling in a judgment of taste. (5: 296; 162)