ABSTRACT
Aesthetics is a privileged method of philosophy if the logic that describes how art is possible makes explicit the background conditions implicit in sense experience as such. The emphatic insistence that taste is normative is the distinctive contribution of Kantian aesthetics, and this position is radical on a second front. The measure of philosophical import shifts from the validity of the answers to the compellingness of the questions, the meaning and significance of which changes over time. When philosophy and its history are taken as a manner of inquiry, the task of the history of philosophy is to evaluate the significance of a body of questions as they emerge, modulate, and recede in the textual record. Immanuel Kant's "aesthetics" of beauty and art represents a sustained investigation into the "aesthetics" of sense perception. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
