As we learn in Philosophy 101 Kant's critical philosophy is fundamental to the development of both knowledge, Romanticism and modernity. In the three Critiques, he distinguishes between the object spheres of knowledge, justice and taste, splitting philosophical enquiry into the three branches of epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. It is the aesthetics that drop away in Philosophy 101, rarely to reappear.

What we learn in Philosophy 101 is that between the first two spheres (epistemology and ethics), Kant draws a division that cannot be crossed: he argues that knowledge is bound by the "limits of experience" which cannot be transcended without falling into error, and so makes room for an ethical realm in which human freedom rests upon a "categorical imperative" whose basis lies in an idea of reason that allows no sensible presentation. This separation of knowledge and justice provides the basis of modernity for many.

What then of aesthetics? Whewre does it lie in the architonic of modernity? In Philosophy 202 we are taught that The third Critique, the Critique of Judgement, in which Kant discusses aesthetics and natural teleology, sets out explicitly to form a bridge between the two spheres of epistemology and ethics. The third Critique aims to bring together the realms of epistemology and ethics, reconciling them in a system that will make possible a coherent account of the subject's place in the world.

Now, one of the key questions at stake in many of the debates surrounding modern aesthetics is the success or failure of Kant's bridging enterprise and the status of aesthetic judgement in philosophical thought. I'm more interested in the latter than the former.

What kant bequeaths to us are some central concepts ---- aesthetic reflective judgement, genius, sensus communis, the sublime .