use–and we feel pleasure. Sometimes it goes less well, and we do not feel
pleasure that sustains our imaginative attention. The estimation or
Beurtheilungoftheobjectisattendingtoitinordertoseewhetherornot
this happens. If it does, then our cognitive faculties are said to be in
harmonious free play, and the work is beautiful (artistically successful or
well formed). If it does not, then it is not.
When one makes an erroneous judgment of taste (“ein irriges Geschmack-
surteil”^57 ), then what has happened is that one has misassessed and misre-
ported the causal history of a pleasure one has felt. One has come to“offend
against”^58 the conditions for making a judgment (Urteil) of taste. Specifically,
one has attended to the work in an interested way, with some conceptual-
ization in mind, rather than estimating it freely. One has felt pleasure–it is
impossible to be mistaken about that; and there are no phenomenal“marks
in consciousness”of different kinds of pleasure–butnotpleasure that is due
to the harmonious free play of the cognitive faculties, for one has not freely
estimated the work at all. Perhaps one has responded with pleasure because
it is a play written by one’s child, in the success of whose performances one
has an interest; perhaps it is a quartet by a wealthy patron whose favor one
courts. In any case, one can feel pleasure and be mistaken about its cause.
One can surmise and report that it is a pleasure that occurs through free
estimating and yet be wrong. In this way, one comes to make a mistake not
by reference to an independent standard, but in relation, as it were, to
oneself.
The question then naturally arises whether, if and when we do freely
estimate a work, we necessarily feel the same pleasure in genuinely estimat-
ing the same objects. If we do, then judgments of taste, even though based on
individual felt response to a work, are“intersubjectively valid”–true or false
for everyone; if not, then they are not. The transcendental deduction of the
intersubjective validity of judgments of taste is Kant’s argument that neces-
sarily all human subjects do feel the same pleasures (or indifferences) in
estimating the same objects (if and when they genuinely estimate them
freely and do not“offend against”the conditions for making a judgment of
(^57) Kant,Kritik der Urteilskraft(Frankfurt-on-Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), §8, p. 131; emphasis
added.
(^58) Kant,Critique of the Power of Judgment, §8, p. 101.
Identifying and evaluating art 189