Kant and the cognitive value of poetry

In light of Kant’s conception of taste, it is rather natural to assume that our aesthetic appreciation of them should focus on their formal fea¬tures. As a matter of fact, Kant acknowledges that part of the significance that beauty and art have for us depends on their relation to central interests of reason, but he seems to draw a clear distinction between aesthetic value and other kinds of value, such as cognitive and moral value. Therefore, it might seem that art cannot have (and should not be experienced as having) any further end beyond the pleasure of reflection, and Kant is an autonomist. However, in this paper it is argued that careful consideration of how Kant describes the experience triggered by artworks reveals that he is actually an aesthetic cognitivist, though a moderate one. It is suggested that the distinctive kind of pleasure that artists aim at producing, and the audience seeks to enjoy in the experience of art, can be achieved only if artworks embody representations of the imagination that occasion process of thought. Even if artists’ intentions and the audience’s expectations when approaching an artwork are not cognitive, it seems that the appreciation of form cannot be isolated from significance, and that cognitive value contributes to the overall artistic value of a work. In the paper, this claim is defended with regard to poetry, but it is argued that it can be extended, to different degrees, to other arts.