ABSTRACT
Aesthetics is often thought of as one branch of philosophy, sometimes, indeed, a secondary branch of little significance for the broad reaches of philosophic thought. This is somewhat odd, since Kant, who is generally regarded as a founding figure in modern philosophy, put the aesthetic in his epistemological foundation and then developed a theory of the aesthetic as the systematic unifier of knowledge and morality. Because of Kant’s enormous historical importance, however, it may be more difficult to reconsider his dominant influence on the discipline of aesthetics. Yet that is precisely what I should like to propose here. For what could be more in keeping with both the critical tradition of philosophical thought and the openness of aesthetic perception than to re-think the foundations of the discipline.
