In §9 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant addresses what he calls the “key to the critique of taste” in the following question:  “In a judgment of taste, does the feeling of pleasure precede the judging of the object, or vice versa?”  

He clearly concedes at the outset of this analysis that if the feeling of pleasure is precedent, then the procedure involved in a judgment of taste would be self-contradictory, i.e., the judgment would have only private validity and therefore would concern not the beautiful, but the (relatively) agreeable.  As the previous sections in the Analytic of the Beautiful demonstrate, judgments of taste (or judgments regarding the beautiful) possess universal subjective validity; they must speak in what Kant calls the “universal voice” and extend their predicates “over the entire sphere of judging persons” (§8).  That is, judgments of taste cannot primarily be determined by the object as given, but must refer to a particular relation of reciprocal subjective harmony between cognitive powers (imagination and the understanding).  In addition, a judgment of taste must infer from this subjective condition (the pleasure of cognitive harmony, not subsumed under a concept) the possibility of agreement by any other cognizing subject, and then require said agreement in its judgment of the beautiful.

Consequently, in answering the question as to the priority of feeling or judging (in the case of a judgment of taste), Kant must assert a kind of “pre-condition” for subjective universal validity.  This precondition, by means of which a judgment of taste might extend its predicate beyond private validity, is nothing other than the condition for possible experience in other cognizing subjects, here designated as “the universal communicability of the mental state” (§9).  (In the same section, Kant also refers to this as the “universality of the subjective conditions for judging objects,” and in §8 as the “entire sphere of judging persons,” which I will treat as synonymous with “universal communicability.”)  The designation of “universal communicability” is crucial in the process of arguing for the a priori status of judgments of taste, as Kant claims that in order for beauty (which is “nothing by itself”) to have universal validity it must be separated from a simple or direct relation to the object, a concept, or the subject’s interests.  A judgment of taste is both private and universal, and as the combination of both demonstrates an instance of a rule—or, in effect, two rules: first, a judgment of taste demonstrates the universal subjective validity of a liking that we connect with the presentation of the object that we call beautiful, and second, a judgment of taste demonstrates the universal communicability of said experience, or “man’s natural propensity to sociability.”  

It is thus necessary, as much as possible, to remove private interest from the judgment of taste.  If an aesthetic judgment is motivated by private interest, it is unable to extend the domain of its predicate beyond the judging subject, and thus can lay no claim of necessity on any other judging person.  In the case of “interested” judgments, the presentation of the object can only be said to be privately agreeable.    Conversely, in the case of disinterested judgments that can be subsumed under a concept (and, therefore, can claim universal validity as the “application” of a rule), there is a logical operation at work, and hence not a judgment of taste but a judgment of the good.  Judgments of taste, then, must not only insulate themselves from the prejudices of private interest, but also from the machinations of logical-conceptual necessity.  Qualitatively, judgments of taste must resemble judgments of the agreeable, in that the former must relate to a feeling of pleasure (or displeasure).  Quantitatively, judgments of taste must resemble judgments of the good, in that the former must extend beyond private interests and claim universal necessity (a priority).

It is clear, at least in the first two moments of the explication of the beautiful, that Kant’s aim is twofold: he is interested in both preserving a certain heterogeneity of aesthetic judgments (insofar as there can be a diversity of human interests, of what judging persons find agreeable or disagreeable) and at the same time preserving a distinctively universal designation for the category of the beautiful (to avoid consigning all aesthetic judgments to relativism).   

In §2, after demonstrating that all aesthetic judgments cannot be other than subjective, Kant commits himself to mitigating this claim by disassociating the “subjective” with “private interest.”  The “subjective,” for Kant, refers to the subject’s being-affected by the presentation of an object.  (Variously, in §1, Kant describes this as “the subject feels himself” or “his feeling of life under the name feeling of pleasure or displeasure,” “a very special power of discriminating or judging… of which the mind becomes conscious when it feels its own state.”)  This is not the same as a subject’s private “interest,” which is connected with the existence of the object that is being considered.  In sum, this distinction is meant to demonstrate that while all aesthetic judgments are subjective (i.e., involve the subject’s feeling of pleasure or displeasure), only judgments of taste are disinterested (i.e., only concerned with the contemplation of the object and the effect that contemplation has on the subject, not the objects purported existence or nonexistence).  

Given that distinction, Kant offers two very peculiar anecdotes to buttress his arguments against relativism, the implications of which may bear significantly on his two-fold aim of preserving a heterogeneous but selectively a priori status for aesthetic judgments.  

I will take the second example from §2 first: in his second anecdote, Kant claims that if he were isolated on an uninhabited island with no hope of ever attaining human contact, he would not so much as waste the effort on erecting something beautiful (even if he could do this by wishing it alone).  This example is consistent with what Kant will later elaborate in the second moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful, the necessary precondition of “universal communicability” in judgments of taste.  In retrospect, the anecdote goes to reinforce Kant’s claim that judgments of taste have universal validity by virtue of the reciprocity of cognitive conditions in all thinking subjects, and the argument of this thought experiment would proceed as follows:  if there were no other subjects from whom I could require an agreement with my judgment of the beautiful, then a crucial element of the judgment of taste would be denied in advance, i.e. its claim to universal necessity.  In such a situation, it is not so much that the second moment in the Analytic of the Beautiful would be untrue, but rather unnecessary.  (That is, if there were only one thinking subject, with no possibility for intersubjective verification, then a quantitative moment in the Analytic is nonsensical.  Simply stated, the judging subject would alone be the verification of the universal necessity.)  Of course, Kant, alone on his island, would hypothetically still have an experience of the beautiful that is qualitatively distinguishable from his experience of agreeableness (interest), and he would hypothetically still be able to make a distinction between these two types of aesthetic judgment.  It is simply the case that, in this “Robinson Crusoe” scenario, there would be no precondition of universal communicability, no instance in which one could prove that one has taste, and therefore no reason to worry about relativist claims.  Judgments of the beautiful, and taste, would still formally retain a priori status.

However, there is a second, more problematic anecdote that Kant offers.  

In §2, he passingly mentions an Iroquois sachem who, upon visiting Paris, did not admire the “beauties of that great city” but only the eating-houses along the rue de la Hachette.  Kant employs this anecdote in his defense of the insignificance of private aesthetic judgments in the service of “proving that one has taste.”   Presumedly, on Kant’s argument, the admiration of the sachem is no more than an expression of private interest; if, in the language of the Iroquois, the sachem had in fact claimed that the eating-houses were beautiful, he would have committed himself to a gross category mistake.  In order to preserve a priori status for the “beautiful,” it is crucial for Kant that pure judgments of taste are wholly indifferent to the object being judged, as any introduction of private interests would taint the universal necessity of the judgment of taste.  That is, one can only “demonstrate one has taste” insofar as one’s judgments are not in reference to the way in which an object’s presentation may gratify (produce a feeling of agreeableness), but rather the way in which the presentation compels us to linger upon the cognitive harmony that it evokes, and that it must necessarily evoke in all judging persons.

How is it, then, that Kant so readily dismisses the judgment of the sachem as one motivated by interest?  By what criteria does Kant deduce that the sachem’s admiration of the eating-houses on the rue de la Hachette is a judgment of mere agreeableness, rather than a judgment of beauty?  

It is certainly conceivable that an Iroquois person’s first visit to Paris might present them with a range of strange objects, out of which only the eating-houses might cause them linger over the harmony evoked in a unity of multiplied sensations collected there. Is the sachem be compelled to “prove s/he has taste” by insisting that all other judging persons are required by reason to admire the eating-houses in the same manner?  In the example of the sachem, does Kant really dismiss the charge of (what we might call) cultural relativism with regard to aesthetic judgments of taste?  Or does he merely sidestep the question by delimiting the range of all judging persons, narrowing that category to all judging persons of a particular kind of taste (i.e., the kind that find Parisian palaces beautiful and eating-houses merely agreeable)?  

It is not clear how the sachem violates any of the formal conditions Kant sets forth for aesthetic judgments of taste; at least ostensibly, the sachem assumes the universal communicability of their judgment for all, and (suspending any cultural or racial presuppositions) we must assume that their judgment is both disinterested and free.  The favor that one feels for the beautiful (§5) results from the freedom that one has to make an object of pleasure for oneself without being manipulated either by interest or rational necessity, which should lead any reader to ask:

Is it the Iroquois who is deficient as a judging subject here?  Or the eating-house as a beautiful object? Or is it, rather, that Kant’s own Eurocentric and racialized prejudices prevented him from seeing not only the beauty of the eating-houses, but also the freedom, capacity for judgment, and humanity of the Iroquois?