Abstrakt
In the notorious paragraph 9 of Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment, the author asks, rhetorically, whether when we perform a pure judgment of taste, taking pleasure in a beautiful object comes first and only then does any aesthetic judgment follow or if it is the other way around. While elaborating this question by way of other parts of the third Critique, namely, the hierarchization of various types of art, the possibilities of cultivation of taste, and the unnecessity of the actual presence of an object for aesthetic evaluation, I would like to emphasize and strengthen the political intimations which are otherwise more emphatic in Kant's other texts.
In the second part, these traits will be related to the concept of an object of art as understood by Walter Benjamin and how it relates to emancipation, which was an important concern for both thinkers.