  Herder’s general theory of aesthetic experience is that it is an experience of well-being arising from a perception of the true order of nature, which he opposes to Kant’s theory of the disinterestedness of aesthetic experience and attachment. Before we turn to that central issue, however, we may note Herder’s objection that Kant’s aesthetics does not pay sufficient attention to the concrete rôle of the senses in aesthetic experience. The charge of insensitivity to the specificity of the senses, as we saw, was at the heart of Herder’s early aesthetics, beginning with his critique of Lessing, and it manifests itself in various ways in his critique of Kant. One point at which it is particularly clear is in his objection to Kant’s scheme for the classification of the fine arts, a scheme based on the differing capacities of different media for meaning, tone, and gesture that Herder claims “throws us back into the old chaos.” Kant’s basic division is between the verbal (redende) and the formative or visual (bildende) arts, and Herder says that Kant’s account of the