Mit jelentene ma ízlés kérdésében kantiánusnak lenni?

This paper presents a variety of philosophical positions that have drawn implications from Kant’s philosophy of the nature and function of aesthetic judgement for their understanding of the crucial exemplary role of aesthetic judgement in contemporary pluralistic society. Rather than simply presenting divergent interpretations of Kant, of which there are obviously many, I will outline four distinctly different positions, each of which I will present through an influential representative. All of these theories recognise that the sensus communis, the assumed or required community, is the main focus of Kantian criticism, and thus its existence or status is discussed as the basis for aesthetic reflective judgements. This presupposed community makes it clear that the issue at stake in the third Kantian critique is whether or not there can be a philosophical foundation for the unity of culture. In setting out the different positions, then, I will examine the ways in which their understanding of the nature and operation of aesthetic judgements is bound up with their understanding of the operation of society and culture. The first position, of which I take Arthur C. Danto to be representative, regards Kantian analysis as absolutely untenable. But I argue that Danto understands Kant simply as a conservative critic and not as a transcendental philosopher. The second position, represented by Richard Schusterman, is that of contemporary pragmatist aesthetics, a position, which, in my interpretation, understands the apriority of the sensus communis as a malleable normativity elaborated and mediated by the discursive community. The third position is that of Hannah Arendt, who seeks to use Kant’s notion of sensus communis for political thought at the cost of detranscendentalising it. Jean-François Lyotard, who understands sensus communis as an idea and removes its interpretation from the field where it could serve as the basis for any possible empirical community, represents the fourth position. In his interpretation, the mental state of pleasure that accompanies certain representations is pre-cognitive and pre-subjective and cannot serve as the basis for any empirical community. From the way in which the above arguments are presented and critiqued, I hope to develop what I consider to be a valid interpretation, and in the concluding part of the paper I use this to formulate the pillars upon which a contemporary Kantian theory of taste might be built.