stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

they allow the understanding to expand, the imagination to free itself” (KCP 55). In this sense,
the understanding becomes the faculty of “enlarged, limitless, indeterminate” (KCP 60)
concepts. “For example, we do not merely relate colour to a concept of the understanding which
would directly apply to it, we also relate it to a quite different concept which does not have an
object of intuition on its own account, but which resembles the concept of the understanding
because it posits its object by analogy with the object of intuition” (KCP 54). Deleuze’s favourite
example is white lily. “Thus white lily is not merely related to the concepts of colour and of
flower, but also awakens the Idea of pure innocence, whose object is merely a (reflexive)
analogue of the white in the lily of flower” (KCP 54). But that is not the whole point. Not every
white lily awakens the Idea of pure innocence. In other words, we only judge singular objects to
be beautiful. “But the pure representation of the beautiful object is particular: the objectivity of
the aesthetic judgment is therefore without a concept or (which amounts to the same thing) its
necessity and universality are subjective” (KCP 48). It is never ‘all lilies are beautiful’, but only
‘this lily or that lily is beautiful:’ “aesthetic judgment is…only always particular, of the type ‘this
rose is beautiful’ (the proposition ‘roses in general are beautiful’ implying a logical comparison
and judgment” (KCP 47). For this reason, the understanding as indeterminate does not play an
objective, but rather a subjective role in the judgment ‘this is beautiful.’ In fact, the most that it
does is communicate the feeling produced by the encounter with nature that is with reason. When
we judge things to be beautiful we feel pleasure. “In aesthetic judgment the reflected
representation of the form causes the higher pleasure of the beautiful” (KCP 47). The
understanding as indeterminate, that is, “the understanding in its non-specified legality”
communicates this feeling of pleasure. “We suppose that our pleasure is by rights communicable
to or valid for everyone; we assume that everyone must experience this…However, this
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