Calling an object beautiful asserts that the pleasure taken in the object should be felt by anyone who properly responds to the object under ideal or optimal circumstances.

Starting from the claim that Francis Hutcheson had made in 1725 and Mendelssohn reintroduced in 1785, Kant begins his analysis of the judgment of taste, that is, our claim that a particular object is beautiful, from the premise that our pleasure in a beautiful object occurs independently of any interest in the existence of the object as physiologically agreeable (CPJ, §3, 5:205–7) or as good for some purpose expressed by a determinate concept of utility or morality (CPJ, §4, 5:207–9). But neithe