Robert Clewis and the Origins of Kant’s Conception of Aesthetics

Abstract Robert Clewis focuses on a number of different themes in Kant’s precritical and critical aesthetics in The Origins of Kant’s Aesthetics. Clewis carefully documents where Kant’s views on these themes are the same, where they are different, and why; yet his approach might give readers the impression that Kant lacks a unified conception of aesthetics. I show, on the contrary, that the method and sources Clewis employs also reveal the frameworks within which Kant addresses the themes that Clewis discusses in Origins; the consistencies in Kant’s precritical and critical conceptions of aesthetics; and the changes in his conception of aesthetics that we find in the third Critique.