Abstract
Kant makes modest and ambitious claims with his idea of disinterested pleasure. The modest claim is that all aesthetic pleasure is disinterested. The ambitious claim is that all and only aesthetic pleasure is disinterested. I defend only the modest claim. I initially give a basic explication of what Kant had in mind by the doctrine. I then argue that if aesthetic pleasure were not basically disinterested, judgements of taste could not make the normative (or “universal”) claims they do. Normativity is essential to judgements of taste; they would not be what they are without it. And basic disinterest is essential for normativity. Therefore, we cannot reject basic disinterestedness without rejecting judgements of taste altogether. I then distinguish various other notions of disinterest and argue that none of them allow Kant to make his ambitions claim.
