Literary critics Alexander Pope and Immanuel Kant test critics as they perform the task of criticizing criticism. In Pope's Essay on Criticism, he provides readers and critics with a criticism of critics in the form of poetry which in itself is a work of art. Similarly, Kant expresses his views on judgment in the Critique of Judgment, in which Kant teaches about judging. Both authors demonstrate to the reader how to criticize something through knowledge and example as their lessons are actually criticism themselves. Through their works, both Kant and Pope successfully demonstrate that personal taste is not a way to judge works of art when referring to the quality of the works, but rather should be used to judge one's likes and dislikes. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Both Pope and Kant want to emphasize that critics should not let personal taste hinder their judgments. In the Essay on Criticism, Pope begins by criticizing false and bad critics. As he does so, he teaches the reader what not to do while criticizing. It explains taste, telling the reader that each person will have a personal taste in things and whatnot, but something a critic personally doesn't like doesn't necessarily make it 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 only that he personally didn't like that part. Likewise, if a critic doesn't like allegory, he can't say that The Christian's Pilgrimage is poorly written simply because he doesn't like literary device. Pope is right to make this distinction and to insult critics who do otherwise. He tells the reader that most of these false critics are educated by these poets whom they seem to hate: against the poets they have turned their own weapons, sure that above all they hate the men from whom they learned. Thus the modern apothecaries, who have been taught the art by doctor's bills to play the part of the doctor, bold in the practice of wrong rules, prescribe, apply and call their teachers fools.[1] To help the critic, Pope tells the first to know himself before judging the works of others; in this way he is able to distinguish between his own personal taste and bad writing or other works of art. Similarly, Kant begins his essay in an attempt to teach the critic to judge, going beyond even the importance of taste. Kant tells the reader that the perfect judge is completely indifferent to the matter, as in the previous example: the food critic who hates onions would not be a true critic of that 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 not a pure judgment of taste. In order to be able to exercise the function of judge in matters of taste, we must not be in the least partial in favor of the existence of the thing, but must be completely indifferent to it.”[2] Kant is teaching the critic that he can never be partial if he will judge and like Pope he also emphasizes the problem with man's natural response to personal taste. Although both Kant and Pope are working towards the same goal, one thing that Pope does that is superior to Kant is when he goes beyond nature. Pope says that the second rule of the critic is to learn nature, while Kant instead teaches the different types of tastes. While both methods work in teaching, Pope's writings on nature are superb in their clarity. While both authors achieve the, 195.