this material.23 Someone, then, who wants to argue for some
object's aesthetic excellence should ultimately base his remarks
on his own experience which, firstly, involves the application of
background knowledge to the object. Secondly, within this
experience a concentrated, but, with regard to the conceptual:
free, contemplation must be undertaken of the determined object;
of its sensuous surface and of its semantics. And thirdly, all
this ought to lead to a pleasant awareness of the powers and
limitations of those elements of his everyday and more
specialist cognitive considerations with which he understands
this very part of the world which is appreciated aesthetically.
Thus the concepts that make up the judgement's dependence somehow
determine the subject matter of the experience which makes up its
purity. Aesthetic excellence's relation with the involved concepts
can and, I think, should be analyzed with the help of Kant's
notion of a free play of the cognitive faculties. So let us
consider this more elaborately.
Part II Why no judgement of taste can be proven
iv. The free play of the cognitive faculties
According to Kant our aesthetic acknowledgement of the common
sense is a consequence of the subjective finality of the free play
of the cognitive faculties, as is our reflective feeling of
pleasure.24 Now within the free play the understanding, though
servile to the imagination, is busy providing the concepts which
imagination 'subsequently' judges and 'denies' the application. We
acknowledge the free play by way of the feeling of pleasure that
it gives rise to. Regarding the question which aspect of aesthetic
experience decides our judgement of taste the notion of the 'free
play of the cognitive faculties' performs an ambiguous role
though. Evidently it relates to some mental activity concerning
sensuous representation, involving imagination and understanding.
However, Kant also sometimes takes the resultant emotion as
decisive and not the activities that this emotion is about, and
understands this emotion as non-representative. This may not
satisfy modern ears, adjusted to modern art as we are; moreover it
would also run counter to Kant's views on the reflective nature of
aesthetic experience, and the idea of the dependence of aesthetic
judgements that we have argued for. Now, if, instead, an activity
(or attitude) would not merely be necessary, but would be
sufficient as well, undertaking it would be the same as perceiving
beauty. For several reasons this is a conclusion we are not
willing to draw. Firstly, because we believe that doing our best
does not warrant positive aesthetic evaluation: it cannot be
enforced. Secondly, because we would have to be able to state the
rule of beauty if it were a natural property that we could detect
by merely engaging in the right activity, but we are not. So if
the free play of the cognitive faculties is to perform its special
