Literary critics Alexander Pope and Immanuel Kant put critics to the test in their task of criticism. In Pope's Essay on Criticism, he offers readers and critics a critique of criticism in the form of poetry which is in itself a work of art. Similarly, Kant expresses his views on judgment in Critique of Judgment, in which Kant teaches how to judge. Both authors demonstrate to the reader how to criticize something through knowledge and example, to the extent that their lessons are actually critiques in themselves. Through their works, Kant and Pope successfully prove that personal taste is not a way for someone to judge works of art by referring to the quality of the works, but rather should be used to judge of their own likes and dislikes. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Both Pope and Kant wish to emphasize that critics should not let their personal tastes get in the way of their judgments. In An Essay on Criticism, Pope begins by criticizing false and bad criticism. In doing so, he teaches the reader what not to do when criticizing. He explains taste, telling the reader that each person will have personal tastes in things and so on, but something a reviewer doesn't personally like doesn't necessarily make them bad. This is an important distinction he makes because, for example, if a food critic hates onions and tries something with onions, he cannot say that the dish is poorly made with onions, but rather only that he personally didn't like this part. Likewise, if a critic does not like allegories, he cannot say that The Pilgrim's Progress is poorly written simply because he does not like the literary device. The Pope is right to make this distinction and to insult critics who act otherwise. He tells the reader that most of these false critics are educated by those poets whom they seem to hate: they have turned their own weapons against the poets, and are sure to hate most the men from whom they have learned. Thus, “modern pothecaries, have taught the art By the doctor's bills to play the role of the doctor, Bold in the practice of erroneous rules, Prescribe, apply and treat their masters as imbeciles.[1] To help the critic, Pope tells the first to know himself first before judging the works of others; in this way he is able to distinguish between his personal tastes and bad writings or other works of art. Similarly, Kant begins his essay by trying to teach the critic to judge by also reviewing the importance of taste. Kant tells the reader that the perfect judge is completely indifferent to the question, as in the previous example: the food critic who hates onions would not be a good critic of this chef's dish. He writes: “Everyone must admit that if a judgment on beauty is mixed with the slightest interest, then it is very partial and is not a pure judgment of taste. To play the role of judge in matters of taste, we must not be in the least partial to the existence of the thing, but we must be totally indifferent to it. »[2] Kant teaches the critic that he can never be partial if he is going to judge and like Pope, he also highlights the problem of man's natural response to his personal tastes. Although Kant and Pope both work toward the same goal, one thing Pope does that is superior to Kant is when he examines nature. Pope says that the second rule of the critic is to learn nature, while Kant teaches rather the, 195.