1. The concept of the free yet harmonious play between the cognitive powers of imagination and understanding is the central concept in Kant's explanation of the experience of beauty and analysis of the judgment of taste. In Kant's view, when I make a judgment of taste I assert that the pleasure I take in a particular object is one that under ideal circumstances should be felt by any other observer of the object as well. Such a judgment therefore asserts the “subjectively universal validity” of my pleasure in the object (CPJ, §8, 5:215), thus making a claim about that pleasure; but it also makes this claim on the basis of the feeling of pleasure itself rather than on the basis of the subsumption of its object under any determinate concept – this is indeed what makes the judgment an “aesthetic” judgment (CPJ, §1, 5:203–4; FI, VIII, 20:229). In order for me justifiably to claim subjectively universal validity for my feeling of pleasure, Kant supposes, that pleasure must be based in some condition of cognitive powers that are themselves common to all human beings.