Kant's Common Sense and the Strategy for a Deduction

Extract

Kant's notion of a “common sense” has been the object of strong criticism given its apparent insistence on the universalizability of human feeling and the unanimity achievable in judgments of taste. This opens him up to the charge that his aesthetic theory illegitimately universalizes a certain set of tastes and feelings and thereby suppresses alternate aesthetic responses.¹ Alexander Nehamas has called this Kantian ideal a “nightmare,” insisting that “a world where everyone likes, or loves, the same things” would be “a desolate, desperate world.”² And yet even Nehamas, quoting Peter Schjeldahl, admits that the experience of beauty as he understands it is “far from being solipsistic”: “An experience of beauty entirely specific to one person probably indicates that the person is insane.”³

Given the controversial nature of Kant's appeal to the common sense, it is surprising that the precise role it plays in his theory remains obscure. In this article I would like to clarify Kant's use of the concept in the third Critique and dispel certain difficulties that have occupied scholars for some time.⁴ These difficulties arise given the challenge of determining the relationship between the Fourth Moment (CPJ, §21, in particular) and the Deduction of judgments of taste (CPJ, §38). I propose to clarify this relationship by giving not only a persuasive interpretation of the distinct but consistent functions of these two important passages but also a convincing account of the relationship between the “common sense” (sensus communis), introduced in the Fourth Moment, and the power of reflective judgment, introduced in the Deduction. Paul Guyer has argued that the two passages are not consistent with one another given that, on his reading, Kant's treatment of the common sense in §21 is a failed attempt at a deduction.⁵ Henry Allison, in contrast, maintains their consistency only by interpreting Kant's discussion of the common sense in §21 as a digression from the main argument.⁶ I argue that the consistency of these passages can be preserved without sacrificing a strong argumentative function for §21.