Kant holds that when we judge a thing beautiful, we do so on no other basis than our pleasure in the contemplation of it, while at the same time, we presume to judge with validity for everyone.  To explain how this is possible is the task of what he calls the critique of taste.  Such a task has three main parts.  The first is to describe and analyze the essential characteristics of judgments of this kind.  The second is to identify the state of mind from which such judgments take rise, this being, according to Kant, a state of harmonious free play between the cognitive faculties.  The third part is the “deduction,” or proof of our right to make judgments of taste.  I argue that Kant is unsuccessful in the second and third parts of this task.  The main interest of his critical effort, I find, lies in his descriptive and analytical account of judgments of taste, specifically in his attempt to comprehend both their subjective character and their claim to universal validity.  The first of these he understands as consisting in the judgment’s being based in feeling; the universality claim he understands as a normative requirement.  I argue that no interpretation can be faithful to these basic tenets of Kant’s analysis without also accepting his conclusion that the act of judging in some sense “precedes” the very feeling of pleasure on which it is said to be based.  I offer an explanation of this conclusion in terms of the peculiar kind of consciousness of pleasure involved in such a judgment.