Kant and the Cognitive Significance of Taste

ABSTRACT According to Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, taste, or the aesthetic power of judgment, does not contribute to the cognition of its object. Nonetheless, elements within his philosophical enterprise suggest a deep cognitive significance of taste. Drawing on Kant’s discussions of concept formation in the Jäsche Logic and the “law of affinity” in the Critique of Pure Reason, this article argues that taste discerns an indeterminate systematicity or “family” in a beautiful form, even though its exact “family members” are not all given. It posits that the diverse elements of a form can be unified based on their affinity—namely, their capacity to transition through intermediate elements with overlapping similarities or “family resemblances.” While taste does not contribute to cognition in the sense of constituting a cognitive judgment, it does drive further reflection on an object and thereby indirectly promotes cognition.