 Such ideas, he says, are a “counterpart” to rational ideas, that is, representations which cannot be exemplified in experience or by means of imagination (ibid.). While part of Kant’s point here is to contrast aesthetic and rational ideas, it is clear that he sees the role of aesthetic ideas as mediating between rational ideas on the one hand, and sensibility and imagination on the other. A work of art expresses or exhibits an aesthetic idea in so far as it succeeds in giving sensible form to a rational idea. Thus aesthetic ideas “seek to approximate to an exhibition” of rational ideas. For example, the poet