Judgments of Taste - Transcedental Experience or Neuropsychological Process

The problematic relation between the judging and the pleasure presented in §9 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment (CPJ) is announced by Kant as the key to the critique of taste, but it is also the key to the question of whether or not can Kant’s aesthetic theory be subjected to empirical investigation. The latter question separated Kant scholars into two camps: (1) scholars who advocate empirical interpretation of the CPJ and claim that Kantian aesthetics can be amenable to scientific investigation and (2) scholars who advocate transcendental interpretation of the CPJ and claim that Kantian aesthetics cannot be grasped by empirical sciences. In this paper I shall present two distinct reading of the §9 – one-act and two-act reading. In accordance to these readings, I shall examine which interpretation – empirical or transcendental – is doing more justice to Kant’s theory as presented in the third Critique