The main thesis of kantian Critique of Judgment’s Aesthetics sustains that judgments of taste, which are subjective, based on a disinterested pleasure and not grounded on concepts of understanding or ideas of reason, are universally valid. "Aesthetic universality" is the key-concept by means of which the third Critique, having already disenfranchised aesthetic rationalism with the theory of the non-conceptuality of taste, disparage at the other front the aesthetic skepticism from defenders of the incommunicability of the beautiful. The universality-issue is discussed in the second "moment" of the Analytic of the Beautiful, leading to the conclusion that "the beautiful is that which, apart from a concept, pleases universally". Kant draws this conclusion after having established in chapter 8 the distinction between the universality of the aesthetic response and that of determinant judgments of theoretical and practical knowledge. The former is termed "aesthetic universality" (ästhetische Allgemeinheit), "general validity" (Gemingültigkeit), and "subjective universal validity" (subjektive Allgemeingültigkeit), whereas the latter is designated by the presumably equivalent titles of "logical universality" (logische Allgemeinheit) and "objective universal validity" (objektive Allgemeingültigkeit). In this paper, I shall argue that three levels of ambiguity concerning the use of these concepts compromise the distinctness of the notion of aesthetic universality. Firstly, I shall analyze a set of difficulties in Kant’s presentation of the concepts of "universality" (Allgemeinheit) and "universal validity" (Allgemeingültigkeit). Secondly, I shall discuss the damages brought about by the conflation in Kant’s treatment of the notions of "aesthetic universality" and "subjective universal validity". Finally, I shall propose the distinction between objective and logical universality in order to respond to the question: regarding their quantity, judgments of taste are more properly defined in contrast to judgments which are universally valid because they are determinant - given the role of the concept or idea in their determining ground? Or against judgments which are universal insofar their truth-value remain determinable when their subject-concept is universally quantified? More succinctly: the universality of the beautiful is anti-conceptual or only anti-logical?
judgment of taste; aesthetic universality; logical universality; universal validity