Review by Choice Review
Kant's Critique of Judgment takes for granted a fundamental distinction between claims concerning the beautiful and claims concerning the agreeable. Though both kinds of claim are grounded in subjective feeling, only claims about the beautiful are genuine judgments, involving objective standards. In this intricate and provocative book, Berger undertakes a deep, wide-ranging investigation of the nature of this distinction. Far from being intuitive or commonsensical, the distinction, Berger argues, is highly problematic and inextricably entangled in Kant's transcendental idealism. In the course of the argument, Berger touches not only on some of the central themes of aesthetics, such as the nature of taste, the notion of disinterestedness, and the debate about formalism, but also on issues in the philosophy of mind, such as the idea of nonconceptual content; in metaphysics and epistemology, such as the characterization of secondary qualities; and in value theory, such as the varieties of normativity. The book is also intended as a contribution to Kantian scholarship, and Berger addresses interpretive differences between his work and that of Paul Guyer and Hannah Ginsborg. Summing Up: Recommended. Academic libraries supporting graduate students and faculty/researchers in philosophy. R. Bonzon Augustana College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
