The conception of aesthetic politics in kant's "critique of judgment"

The Conception of Aesthetic Politics in Kant's "Critique of Judgment" Due to the decline of universal belief in natural law, modern democratic societies are characterized as being highly pluralistic. In absence of such a law, these societies meet a challenge of making a just political judgment - how does one rightly adjudicate among various different beliefs, without succumbing either to absolute moral universalism on the one hand, or radical subjectivism on the other? An inquiry into Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Judgment” might suggest us an answer, as Kant supposed aesthetic judgment to be subjectively universal. However, Kant himself only intended aesthetic judgments to be applicable to the sphere of arts. Hannah Arendt was the first one to look at Kant’s aesthetic judgment as a political one as well. In this paper it is argued that such attempt of Arendt is unsound, because Kant’s aesthetic judgment is formal and autonomous of concept, whereas political judgment is always related to an interest of some sort. In order to substantiate this claim, this paper reconstructs and compares theory of Kant’s aesthetic judgment with Arendt’s political judgment one. This comparison is done by looking into the usage of concepts of “sensus communis” and “aesthetic idea” in Arendt’s theory of political judgment. The analysis revealed that Arendt imports moral content into Kantian formal “sensus communis”. However, morality in Kant’s theory is understood as dependent on the a priori concept, while aesthetic judgment must be free of any determinate concept. Therefore, the moral content that Arendt brings back to “sensus communis” is not the objectively moral one that Kant spoke of, but refers to a morality that is relative to a specific community. Furthermore, as aesthetic judgment cannot be dependent on a concept, a general agreement on just political judgment cannot be reached by logical argumentation. For this reason, Arendt speaks of rhetorical ways of reaching an agreement and the standard for such an agreement is not an argumentation, but “exemplary validity”. The concept of “aesthetic idea” is understood not so much as a definite concept like a logical or moral one, but rather as indefinitely expanding concept, which encompasses new political events and conforms to plurality of political world. Various culturally accepted examples are used by one to build up narratives which should attract the consent of other community members. The just political judgment, therefore, is not the one that would coincide with an a priori moral law of any kind, but the one which expands a concept in such a way, which best meets the current socio-political reality of a particular society. However, such understanding of political judgment implies an interest in embedding a certain narrative as universally right, which means that it does not escape consideration of ends. Therefore, this study confirms the claim that Kant’s theory of judgment cannot be applied to politics - the sphere of politics cannot escape inclusion of interest. For this reason, it is suggested that one should rather look for a basis of politics in Kant’s moral theory, which does not deny judgment’s dependence on a priori law and, in a way, affirms freedom as well