Q: What is the aesthetic?
A: That whose determining ground can be no other than subjective.

Q: What is--properly speaking--aesthetic judgement?
A: Kant divides aesthetic judgements into two categories:

1) those which assert pleasantness or unpleasantness--judgements of sense;

2) those which assert the beauty of an object or of the manner of representing that object--formal judgements of taste.

Purely aesthetic judgements, what Kant calls "judgements of taste," depend on disinterested satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) in the judging of an object. Disinterested satisfaction is that which is not bound up in notions of the utility, morality, or lack thereof of an object.

Q: What is beauty?
A: Kant divides beauty into two categories:

1) free beauty--that which presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be;

2) dependent beauty--that which does presuppose a concept of what the object ought to be and judges the perfection or imperfection of the object in accordance therewith.

        Only in the judging of a free beauty is the judgement purely one of taste. Free beauty is that which has "purposiveness without purpose." The beautiful pleases without concepts of utility or morality: "no subjective purpose can lie at the basis of the judgement of taste."

Q: What is the sublime?
A: Kant divides the sublime into two categories:

1) The mathematical--that which is "not to be sought in the things of nature, but only in our ideas."

2) The dynamic--that which is felt when we observe in nature mighty objects from which we are in no danger, and regard these objects as fearful without being afraid of them.

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        The aesthetic is "that whose determining ground can be no other than subjective." The aesthetic apprehension does not depend on existential relations of the object with other objects:
"when the question is if a thing is beautiful, we do not want to know whether anything depends or can depend on the existence of the thing, either for myself or for anyone else, but how we judge it by mere observation (intuition or reflection)."
Aesthetic apprehension depends on the "representation of the object" to the observing subject. Judgements of taste depend on disinterested satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) in the judging of an object. Disinterested satisfaction is that which is not bound up in notions of the utility, morality, or lack thereof of an object:
"The judgement of taste is merely contemplative; i.e., it is a judgement which, indifferent as regards the existence of an object, compares its character with the feeling of pleasure and pain."
        Kant lists three relations of representations to the feeling of pleasure and pain: 1) The pleasant--that which gratifies a man; 2) The beautiful--that which merely pleases a man; and 3) The good--that which is esteemed of approved by a man. Of the three representations--or satisfactions--only the taste for the beautiful is a "disinterested and free satisfaction; for no interest, either of sense [the pleasant] or of reason [the good], here forces our assent."
        What the judgement of taste asserts as universally valid is not an attribute of the object (as in the case of judgements of what is pleasant and/or good), but it is rather an assumption of universality of critical judgements among various persons:
"since the person who judges feels himself quite free as regards the satisfaction which he attaches to the object, he cannot find the ground of this satisfaction in any private conditions connected with his own subject, and hence it must be regarded as grounded on what he can presuppose in every other person."
Kant later says that the judgement of taste--disinterested as regards any particular sensual/moral aspect of the object--must have "bound up with it a title to subjective universality."
        We act in such matters as if all rational minds were structured alike in their cognitive faculties. We allow that everyone has his own taste in matters of what is merely pleasant. What is good we decide upon by law and impose on others as well as ourselves. In matters of what is beautiful, a man
"supposes in others the same satisfaction; he judges not merely for himself but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things [which Kant has said earlier is a false assumption] . . . he does not count on the agreement of others . . . but he demands it of them. He blames them if they judge otherwise and he denies them taste."
The beautiful pleases without concepts of utility or morality: "no subjective purpose can lie at the basis of the judgement of taste."
        Kant divides aesthetic judgements into two categories: 1) those which assert pleasantness or unpleasantness--judgements of sense; 2) those which assert the beauty of an object or of the manner of representing that object--formal judgements of taste.
        Kant also divides beauty into two categories: 1) free beauty--that which presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be; 2) dependent beauty--that which does presuppose a concept of what the object ought to be and judges the perfection or imperfection of the object in accordance therewith.
        Only in the judging of a free beauty is the judgement purely one of taste. Free beauty is that which has "purposiveness without purpose." It therefore does not get caught up in judgements of sense (that which is merely pleasant or unpleasant) or judgements of reason (that which is good/bad, useful/not useful):
"Beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, so far as this is perceived in it without any representation of a purpose."

        From here Kant moves on to a lengthy--and complex--consideration of what he calls the sublime:
"The beautiful in nature is connected with the form of the object, which consists in having definite boundaries. The sublime, on the other hand, is to be found in a formless object, so far as in it or by occasion of it boundlessness is represented, and yet its totality is also present to thought."
        While beauty is a satisfaction in quality, the sublime is a satisfaction in quantity. In the sublime, the form may seem to violate purposiveness, even to the point of being repellant: "it is incompatible with physical charm; and . . . the mind is not merely attracted by the object, but is ever being alternately repelled."
        The sublime--properly speaking--is not to be found in objects of nature; rather, it is found in each of us, called forth by contemplation of nature or ideas. Kant divides the sublime into two categories: 1) the mathematical; 2) the dynamic. The mathematically sublime is that which is "not to be sought in the things of nature, but only in our ideas":
"the sublime is that in comparison with which everything else is small. Here we can easily see that nothing can be given in nature, however great it is judged by us to be, which could not, if considered in another relation, be reduced to the infinitely small; and converesly there is nothing so small which does not admit of extension by our imagination to the greatness of a world if compared with still smaller standards."
It is the state of mind produced in the thinking and judging subject in response to the object or its representation which is to be called the sublime.
        Of the dynamically sublime, we can say that when we observe in nature mighty objects from which we are in no danger, if we can regard these objects as fearful without being afraid of them--"if we judge of [them] is such a way that we merely think a case in wish we would wish to resist [them] and yet in which all resistance would be altogether vain"--we feel the sublime. This raises us above ourselves, elevating "the imagination to a presentation of those cases in which the mind can make felt the proper sublimity of its destination, in comparison with nature itself."
        The feeling of the sublime helps us to become "conscious that we are superior to nature within, and therefore also to nature without us"--at least in terms of the aspirations of spirit (Geist), the animating principle of the human mind.