Kant’s Aesthetics

Abstract

Kant transforms Mendelssohn’s theory of mental activities in aesthetic experience into his own central idea of the free play of imagination and understanding, and builds his analysis of aesthetic experience and judgments of taste on this basis. Kant organizes his theory of fine art around the concept of genius, which incorporates some elements of Mendelssohn’s account of human artistry and Charles Batteux’s theory of artistic expression, and tacitly accepts Mendelssohn’s distinction between our response to the merits of an artistic representation and to those of what it represents.