Abstract:
Kant suggests reflective judgment (imagination) as the aesthetics taste. When imagination, independent of understanding and reason, abstracts pure forms of objects on the basis of subjective purposiveness, then “free beauty” is produced. On the other hand, when it combines these forms with the concept of the perfection of an object (objective inner purposiveness), then it develops “dependent beauty”. Kant considers such a combination in dependent beauty to be a combination of good and beautiful. This point has caused a great ambiguity in Kant’s idea about beauty, so much so that some interpreters do not deem dependent beauty as a genuine beauty, but a product of reason.
This article argues for the falsity of this interpretation by explaining Kant’s understanding of free and dependent beauty, and his emphasis on the independence of aesthetic judgment.