Critiquing Critics' Emphasis on Personal Taste: A Comparison of Pope and Kant Joseph Patrick Peters College

The literary critics Alexander Pope and Immanuel Kant put critics to the test as they perform the task of critiquing critiques. In Pope’s Essay on Criticism, he provides the readers and critics with critique of critics in poetry form which in itself is a work of art. Similarly, Kant expresses’ his views on judgement in Critique of Judgement, in which Kant teaches one how to judge. Both authors demonstrate to the reader how to critique something through knowledge and example in that their lessons are actually critiques in themselves. Through their works, both Kant and Pope successfully prove that personal taste is not a way for someone to judge works of art when referring to the works quality but rather should be used to judge their own likes and dislikes.

Pope and Kant both want to emphasize that critics should not let personal taste get in the way of their judgements. In Essay on Criticism, Pope begins by critiquing false and bad critics. While doing so, he is teaching the reader what not to do while critiquing. He explains taste, telling the reader that each person will have personal taste in things and whatnot but something that a critic personally does not like does not necessarily make it bad. This is an important...