Immanuel Kant as the Inspirer of Lazarus Bendavid’s Critique of Taste

Abstract

The article examines the influence of Immanuel Kant’s aesthetics on Lazarus Bendavid’s Beiträge zur Kritik des Geschmacks (1797), authored by one of the most significant figures of the later Haskalah. The authors argue that Bendavid’s aesthetics is not merely a commentary on the Critique of the Power of Judgment, but rather an attempt to systematically extend Kant’s project and apply it within artistic and cultural practice. Drawing on Kant’s notion of the reflective power of judgment, Bendavid develops an account of aesthetic cognition centred on the concept of Normalidee—an intuitive norm that enables the comparative grasp of qualitative features and the assessment of relations between parts and wholes in a work of art. In doing so, he integrates a theory of sensible cognition with a theory of aesthetic judgment, thereby challenging Kant’s sharp separation between transcendental and empirical aesthetics.

The article also highlights the broader historical and intellectual context: Kant’s ambivalent attitude toward Judaism and the marginalization of Jewish philosophers in the reception of Kantianism. Against this background, Bendavid’s aesthetic theory emerges as an autonomous attempt to advance Kantian thought within the rationalist tradition of Jewish Enlightenment. The authors argue that Bendavid fills a gap left by Kant by constructing a practical aesthetics—an operational theory of aesthetic judgment that encompasses sensory qualities, mixed aesthetic values, and cultural context. As a result, Bendavid’s aesthetics becomes a complementary project to Kant’s, treating the aesthetic judgment not only as a condition for the possibility of experiencing beauty, but also as a tool for the concrete evaluation of artworks and perceptual experience.