relations–that is, is able to know some of them–it does not follow that all
subjects are able to know the same causal relations or further the same
things in general. The empirical claim that we can know the same things–
can communicate our cognitions–seems dubitable.
Second, premise (6) likewise seems to be an empirical claim that is dubi-
table. Why should the subjective conditions that underlie cognition–that is,
the states and interrelations of the cognitive faculties through which a
cognitive judgment is constructed–be the very same as the subjective
conditions that sometimes occur when the cognitive faculties are in harmo-
nious free play? Here it seems either that all objects should be beautiful,
since we would feel pleasure in the harmonious working of the cognitive
faculties in the construction of any cognition whatsoever, or that there is
something special about the cognitive faculties in harmoniousfreeplay–that
a special pleasure attaches to that. But if so, then why should this pleasure–
achieved independently of the activity of knowing–occur with regard to the
same objects in everyone? As Guyer summarizes the objection,“possession of
the subjective conditions of knowledge in general, or what might be regarded
as theminimalconditions for knowledge [viz. an imagination and understand-
ing that work properly to construct cognitions], does not entail the capacity
to become conscious, through pleasure, of the synthesis of manifoldsapart
from concepts,”^61 let alone that this latter capacity is the same in everyone.
Against this reconstruction and criticism of the argument, Salim Kemal
suggests a number of interesting moves that increase the plausibility of some
of its premises and that point toward rich accounts of the roles of art and its
criticism in culture.
First Kemal denies that the subjective conditions of the power of judgment
(“die subjektiven Bedingungen der Urteilskraft”) are properly understood as
psychological states of the subject that are causally effective for the construc-
tion of a cognition. Rather, Kemal argues that these subjective conditions are
best construed as the unity of apperception–the ability to become aware of
any act of judgmentasone’s own act of judgment–that must be part of the
formal structure of the consciousness of any judging subject. As Kemal puts
it,“the‘I think’embodies the act of judging, and [it] is the subjective formal
condition for all judgments [either cognitive or reflective through estimation]
(^61) Ibid., p. 321; emphasis added.
Identifying and evaluating art 191