Abstract

The aim of this paper is to elucidate what Kant describes as the "free lawfulness of the imagination" in judgments of beauty in aesthetic terms, as called for by the distinctive nature of beauty. I argue that the aesthetic activity of the imagination differs from the theoretical activity of the imagination, and that the difference between the two has an aesthetic ground in terms of the special form of beautiful objects and the special value of beauty. In contrast to the theoretical activity of the imagination, the aesthetic activity of the imagination must be free of concepts and laws but nonetheless lawful otherwise it would not be able to unify the forms of beautiful objects, to attribute necessity to them, and by so doing to be adequate to the value of those objects as beautiful objects. On that basis, I aim to show that Kant's theory is not committed to the absurd view that some scholars have attributed to him: the view that everything we judge must be judged to be beautiful.