Since Kant, two models of pleasure in beauty have been opposed: one understands aesthetic pleasure as joy in a particular form of knowledge, while the other describes this pleasure as enjoyment in a game where we are free from knowledge. Both models, the knowledge model of the hermeneutic tradition and the game model of the formalist tradition, are, according to Kern's thesis, trapped in a false opposition. Kern resolves this opposition by developing the theory of aesthetic experience from its decisive characteristic: aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic experience is autonomous, Kern argues, not because it is unrelated to knowledge, but because it transforms our knowledge into a moment of play.