This paper argues for the relevance of rules in aesthetics by aligning and exploring the ways in which Kant and Wittgenstein treat the judgment of beauty. While both acknowledge that a subjective, felt response to something particular is an indispensable condition for a judgment of beauty, they also connect the judgment of beauty to the notion of a rule. However, the rules in question are not conceptual formulas, nor do they regulate the aesthetic or the artistic from without. Instead, the judgment of beauty itself is offered as an example of a rule. As such, the judgment of beauty provides a model of the kind of a judgment that may be treated as normative in spite of lacking a conceptual justification. For both Kant and Wittgenstein, the availability of such a subjectively based yet normative judgment is essential for making sense of cognition in general.

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