AESTHETICS sensual pleasure, it claims universal validity If I like the taste of Madeira, I don’t go on to claim that everyone else should like it too; but if I think a poem, a building, or a symphony beautiful, I impute to others an obligation to agree with me Judgements of taste are singular in form (‘This rose is beautiful’) but universal in import; they are, as Kant puts it, expressions of ‘a universal voice’ Yet, because a judgement of taste does not bring its object under a concept, no reason can be given for it and no argument can constrain agreement to it Judgements of value are related to purpose If I want to know whether an X is a good X, I need to know what Xs are for—that is how I tell what makes a good knife, or a good plumber, and so on Judgements of perfection are similar: I cannot know what is a perfect X without knowing what is the function of an X Judgements of beauty, however, cannot be quite like this, since they not bring their objects under any concept X However, Kant maintains that beautiful objects exhibit ‘purposiveness without purpose’ By this he means perhaps that while beauty has no point, yet it invites us to linger over its contemplation This obscure thesis becomes clearer when Kant makes a distinction between types of beauty There are two kinds of beauty: free beauty ( pulchritudo vaga) and derivative beauty ( pulchritudo adhaerens) The first presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be; the second does presuppose such a concept, and the perfection of the object in accordance therewith The first is called the self-subsistent beauty of this or that thing; the second, as dependent upon a concept (conditioned beauty), is ascribed to objects with a particular purpose A judgement of beauty without reference to any purpose that an object is to serve is a pure judgement of taste A flower is Kant’s regular paradigm of a free natural beauty As for the other kind of beauty: ‘Human beauty (i.e of a man, a woman, or a child), the beauty of a horse, or a building (be it church, palace, arsenal or summer house), presupposes a concept of the purpose which determines what the thing is to be, and consequently a concept of its perfection; it is therefore derivative beauty’ (M 66) It is clear from this passage that Kant’s aesthetic is much more at home with natural beauty than with the beauty of artefacts But the problem he is mainly concerned with arises in both contexts How can a judgement of beauty, a judgement that is not based on reason, claim universal validity? When I make such a judgement, I not claim that everyone will agree with me, but I 252