Kantian Aesthetics is no longer thought of as an objective dimension of the world, but as a mental, subjective dimension. This means that the reflection on aesthetics is focused on the conditions of receptivity to the subject's pleasure, also called mental state or knowledge in general.
Knowledge in general because, although in its Transcendental Aesthetics (Critique of Pure Reason), which determines the forms of receptivity of sensations (space and time), this refers only to specific knowledge or particular, related to the way the subject is affected subjectively, it is not able to exhaust the problem of pleasure (feeling) that accompanies the intuition.
This pleasure, for Kant, has nothing to do with the knowledge that that faculty (of knowing) determines and that is why it was treated separately. This pleasure refers to the subject, his sensitivity or receptivity when experiencing it and is expressed in the predicate Beauty. For example, when observing the starry sky above us, we have the objective sensation (we see something), studied in the faculty of knowing (science) and we also have a feeling of pleasure. (subjective) when seeing the Beauty of the sky (objective), contemplating its harmony, its order, as if it had been made by God, the artist of nature, studied in the faculty of judging aesthetics.
However, based on the empirical data, this sensation is disinterested in the object (that is, it does not refer to it, but to the feeling of the subject linked to this experience), in an attempt at pure contemplation (this is because Kant is the philosopher of possibility and postulates such a conception), of pure pleasure. And Kant goes even further: he assumes that such a state of mind is related to communicability, intending the character of universality. If men put themselves in the same state of receptivity (that is, put themselves in the other's shoes), they will experience the same pleasure. However, in a subjective universality, because there is no intuition applied to a concept.
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In this way, the construction of the Kantian system of a unity of reason, a harmonic unity can be seen, as the faculty of judging aesthetics provides principles a priori for the faculties of knowledge and desire, maintaining itself as the orderer of the clash between these two faculties (the famous free game of faculties). Thus, knowing and acting objectively depends on how we have been affected and subjectively conceive the beauty of the world, providing a state of consciousness always in conflict between the faculties, but with the possibility of balance between they. The free play between the faculties, by itself, is pleasurable, that is, the feeling informs the harmony and balance between these cognitive functions and this can be assumed in all men.
Therefore, according to Kant, taste is universal, and man (to be between the animal and God) must, through the education of instincts, improve your receptivity to true pleasure, intellectual, understood as knowledge and action increasingly universals. Improving feelings means improving reason and, therefore, man himself.
By João Francisco P. Cabral
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Philosophy from the Federal University of Uberlândia - UFU
Master's student in Philosophy at the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP