ABSTRACT
Immanuel Kant’s seminal work, the Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft), published in 1790 (Kant 1951 [1790]), is generally regarded as the foundational treatise in modern philosophical aesthetics. Plato’s Ion and Republic, along with Aristotle’s Poetics, were the major writings of the ancients; and there were earlier eighteenth-century writings both on the European continent (Leibnitz, Baumgarten) and in England (such as Shaftesbury, Addison, Burke and Hume). But no integration of aesthetic theory into a complete philosophical system predates Kant’s third Critique, and its importance and influence is as evident today as in the decades following its publication.
