Henry Allison's "Kant's Theory of Taste"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Henry Allison's critique of Kant's theory of rational judgment and then highlights and explains the difficulties Allison has with Kant's theory. Specifically, this paper explains Allison's view that, in contrast with Kant, one cannot have a "disinterested liking" toward the object being judged.

From the Paper:

"The aesthetics of taste and the merits of rational judgment are often posited as binary opposites. Yet rationalism did not lead Kant to exclude taste from his system of philosophy. Instead, taste figures prominently in Kant's analytic, notes scholar Henry Allison in his text on Kant's Theory of Taste. (2) The theory of disinterested taste advanced in Kant's Analytic of the Beautiful is explicitly in dialogue with his German philosophic contemporaries. It attempts to define a pure judgment of taste, which Kant believes must be devoid of all interest. "Everyone has to admit that if a judgment about beauty is mingled with the least interest than it is very partial and not a pure judgment of taste."

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