On The Universal Validity Of Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment

This article illuminates and analyzes the traditional arguments on the universal validity of aesthetic judgment. On the one hand, the universal validity of aesthetic judgment comes from the universal communicability of the mental state of the free play between imagination and understanding; on the other hand, this universality is based on the universality of common sense and it is given a imperative demand by the analogy between morality and beauty. However, whether epistemological argument or moral argument could not solve the problem of the possibility of the universal validity of aesthetic judgment. In my opinion, we should stand on the point of reflective judgment, use the principle of purposiveness of the forms of nature as a the transcendental principle in order to solve this problem. According to this principle, making an aesthetic judgment is based on the harmony of the cognitive faculties. Therefore, the universal validity of aesthetic judgment is ensured via the whole process, i.e. the free play of imagination and understanding, pleasure and the claim made by aesthetic subject.