Immanuel Kant hat wie kein anderer Denker die Philosophie der Neuzeit geprägt. Aufgrund seiner überragenden Bedeutung liegen inzwischen mehrere Bände zu seinen Schriften in der Reihe "Klassiker Auslegen" vor. Kant ist im wahrsten Sinne ein universeller Denker, der sein Interesse auf nahezu alle Bereiche des menschlichen Lebens richtet. Nach ihm lässt sich dieses Interesse in drei Fragen bündeln: Was kann ich wissen? Wie soll ich handeln? Und: Was darf ich hoffen? Der Antwort auf die dritte Frage geht Kant in seiner (...) Schrift Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793) nach. Hier, in seiner Religionsphilosophie, setzt er, gemäß der Grundüberzeugung der Aufklärung, seine Moralphilosophie fort. Gott ist für Kant nicht mehr wie etwa in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, auch noch bei Descartes ein Gegenstand des Wissens, sondern des Hoffens: Der moralisch handelnde Mensch hofft auf eine sinnvolle Ordnung des Weltganzen, auf einen Gott, dessen Existenz zusammen mit der Unsterblichkeit der Seele die notwendige Voraussetzung für das letzte Ziel des praktischen Handelns, für das höchste Gut, ist. Diese originelle Verbindung von zunächst als gegensätzlich Erscheinendem, von einer Moral der Autonomie mit dem Glauben an einen übernatürlichen Gott, bildet jedoch nicht das einzige Thema der Schrift. In ihr entwickelt Kant darüber hinaus eine differenzierte Theorie des moralisch Bösen und erörtert das Verhältnis zwischen einem bloßen Kirchenglauben (die "sichtbare Kirche") und dem moralischen Religionsglauben (die "unsichtbare Kirche"). Dieser thematisch reichhaltige Text wird im von Otfried Höffe herausgegebenen Band in Form eines kooperativen Kommentars von international renommierten Autoren interpretiert und somit aktuell erschlossen. Alle Beiträge wurden für die 2. Auflage anlässlich des 300. Jubiläums Immanuel Kants überarbeitet und auf den neuesten Forschungsstand gebracht. Mit Beiträgen von Jochen Bojanowski, Johannes Brachtendorf, Andrew Chignell, Katrin Flickschuh, Maximilian Forschner, Otfried Höffe, Christoph Horn, Eberhard Jüngel, Douglas McGaughey, Reza Mosayebi, Burkhard Nonnenmacher, Friedo Ricken, Allen Wood. (shrink)

The Analytic of the Beautiful in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is a text of unparalleled importance in the history of philosophical aesthetics. Its main claims are adopted by some and rejected by others. A significant number of responses, of both kinds, take the Analytic to apply to all experiences of beauty—most notably, to the beauty of both nature and fine art. Our principal claim is that this assumption is mistaken. The analysis in the misleadingly titled Analytic of the Beautiful (...) applies paradigmatically to judgments of natural beauty. The experience of the beauty of most artworks is different and requires a separate analysis. We detail the modifications required in all four moments of the Analytic and thereby explicate the experience of artistic beauty. This reveals that Kant holds an interesting and historically consequential account of the experience of artistic beauty, which is significantly different from the experience of natural beauty. The analysis further reveals that despite these significant differences, the experiences are both species of a single genus. (shrink)

This work was presented at the Research Center for Philosophy of Science of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (Iran) – in Aug 2020. --- -/- Briefly, in the first section of this Persian book, first of all, I (Hereafter: the writer) have presented generalities of Aesthetics and an interpretation of aesthetic universality (Hereafter: φ) and it is argued that each definition of art has to admit φ and this is a Kantian, minimalist, and subjective perspective view (some others would incline (...) objective interpretation of φ, but it is beyond the purpose of this work). What’s more, this view could be applied to all definitions of art e.g. Functionalism, Conventionalism, or Hybrid Theories. Additionally, the writer has replied to some objections, those would promote definitions of art without φ, it seems that they could not be successful to refuse φ, since it appears that φ is a premise in every aesthetic judgment. Next, in another section, the writer has written some primary notes on creativity, those have come from contemporary literature of it, and it is argued that there is a relation between creativity and φ. It is also claimed that the relation is the same φ by the creative processes, creative products, and creative persons, both scientifically and philosophically; and so, the relation represents that φ is true. Besides that, the writer has presented some potential objections to the writer’s aspect of the relation and the writer has also replied to those objections. --- -/- In the next section of the book, the writer has applied the φ by creativity to the philosophy of animal-made art, the writer revolutionarily illustrates that first of all, the normativity of the philosophy of animal-made art is prior to the descriptive one. Second of all, φ is principally the criterion to know that animal-made art is impossible. The writer’s position recognizes those other works of animal aesthetics, which means aesthetics of all of the non-human creatures in the earth or cosmos as a new part of environmental aesthetics, is the marginally second order of animal aesthetics. It is owing to the fact that first of all, the question, of whether animal-made art is possible or not, is normative. Second of all, if one does not concern normativity of the question, then one could not get the answer to the nature of it. Next, one could not distinguish between on the one side, the pleasure of drinking water when one’s thirst may cause death, on the other side, the one’s pleasure of listening to music when there is no urgent necessity of it. The fourth argument is that one needs to identify the normativity of animal-made art because one could generalize aesthetic judgments if one sets φ as the basis of it, and then, one identifies that φ is one of the most fundamental bases in Aesthetics. --- -/- The main section of this book is that the writer’s argument -Animal-Made Art Impossibility Argument- is in favor of the impossibility of animal-made art i.e. Functionalist, Conventionalist, or Hybrid Theories of the definitions of animalmade art, also the writer has replied to some possible ideas and objections to the argument. --- -/- Pouya Lotfi Yazdi --- Iran | June 2022. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the role of attention in Kant’s aesthetic theory in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. While broadly Kantian aestheticians have defended the claim that there is a distinct way that we attend to objects in aesthetic experience, Kant himself is not usually acknowledged as offering an account of aesthetic attention. On the basis of Kant’s more general account of attention in other texts and his remarks on attention in the Critique of the Power of (...) Judgment, I reconstruct Kant’s account of aesthetic attention. On this account, aesthetic attention is simultaneously directed at the form of an object and at the judging subject’s own mental states as she attends to the object. In the experience of beauty, we specifically attend to the harmonious relation between the faculties of imagination and understanding. (shrink)

The harmonious free play of the imagination and understanding is at the heart of Kant’s account of beauty in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, but interpreters have long struggled to determine what Kant means when he claims the faculties are in a state of free play. In this article, I develop an interpretation of the free play of the faculties in terms of the freedom of attention. By appealing to the different way that we attend to objects in (...) aesthetic experience, we can explain how the faculties are free, even when the subject already possesses a concept of the object and is bound to the determinate form of the object in perception. (shrink)

This paper calls into question the view typically attributed to Kant that aesthetic judgements are particularist, resisting all conceptual determination. Instead, it claims that Kant conceives of aesthetic judgements, particularly of art, as playing an important role in therevisionof concepts: one sense in which aesthetic judgements, as Kant defines them, ‘find a universal’ for a given particular. To understand the relation between artistic judgements and concepts requires that we consider what I call Kant’s diachronic account of aesthetic ideas, or how (...) such judgements unfold in the course of communication and reflection. My reading draws Kant much closer to debates in the philosophy of art on the semantic dimension of artworks. Here, illuminating the way in which aesthetic judgements about art can play a role in conceptual revision allows us to make sense of the way in which modern artworks contest concepts rather than merely presenting or expressing them. (shrink)

Schiller’s essays on tragedy attempt to argue that tragic experience is ethically valuable by forging a connection with Kant’s conception of autonomy. Standard interpretations hold that the connection lies in the fact that tragedies depict characters (primarily the hero) exercising autonomy. This paper argues that Schiller also views the experience prompted by tragedy as itself involving autonomy. Drawing on Kant’s discussion of aesthetic “symbols”, Schiller holds that the audience members’ experience at the tragedy is isomorphic with the autonomous exercise of (...) practical reason. Only in this way, I argue, can we make sense of Schiller’s contention that tragedy actively cultivates freedom in its viewers. Additionally, the interpretation shows how Schiller can hold that tragedy yields a kind of cognition of transcendental freedom while maintaining Kantian strictures on noumenal knowledge. (shrink)

For Kant the definitive end of art is the expression of aesthetic ideas that are sensible counterparts of rational ideas. But there is another type of aesthetic idea: ‘Beauty can in general be called the _expression_ of aesthetic ideas: only in beautiful nature the mere reflection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be, is sufficient for arousing and communicating the idea of which that object is considered as the _expression_.’ What are these aesthetic (...) ideas? I argue that Kant is drawing on the idealist conception of art, associated with Vasari, Bellori and Winckelmann, as presenting idealized spatial forms characteristic of natural kinds. He incorporates this conception into his analysis of the beauty of nature and adds that we have non-conceptual access to it. These idealized forms he names aesthetic normal ideas of natural species. §51 of Kant’s Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment opens with an unexpected claim, described by readers as ‘puzzling’, ‘perplexing’ and even as a ‘notorious mystery’.1 1 Beauty can in general be called the _expression_ of aesthetic ideas: only in beautiful art this idea must be occasioned by a concept of the object, but in beautiful nature the mere reflection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be, is sufficient for arousing and communicating the idea of which that object is considered as the _expression_. 2 2 I will argue that, in this passage, Kant states that there are two types of aesthetic ideas—namely, aesthetic ideas expressed in beautiful art and aesthetic ideas expressed by beautiful nature. This distinction is surprising for, before this juncture, there is no explicit claim that there are different types of aesthetic ideas. In fact, although Kant offers several seemingly general characterizations of aesthetic ideas, in none of them does he indicate that there is a subdivision of the genus. Noteworthy, too, is the claim that the distinct pleasure we take in beautiful nature is independent of concepts; for strikingly, it can be considered as the expression of what the passage above expressly calls ideas. In his analysis of fine art, Kant draws the distinction between natural and artistic beauty—a distinction that is succinctly repeated in the passage above.3 3 But when he goes on to explicate the notion of an aesthetic idea, he refers only to aesthetic ideas expressed in art. This fact is taken to support the assumption that aesthetic ideas are connected solely to art. This is the heart of the mystery of the passage, for in it, Kant explicitly talks about aesthetic ideas expressed by beautiful nature. This raises a crucial question: Does the explication of aesthetic ideas in the sections on art apply to aesthetic ideas of beautiful nature?I maintain that the answer is negative. Although, in the passage above, Kant uses the same term in relation to both kinds of beauty, he has a clear distinction in mind: Beauty in art is an aesthetically or sensuously unified expression of the conceptual richness of an idea of reason; beauty in nature is an expression of a purely aesthetically or sensuously unified richness. Obviously, this distinction is connected to other significant differences between the two kinds of beauty. But it is important to point out at the outset that the two types of aesthetic ideas have in common only the quality of being a sensuously unified richness. It is in this sense that they are both species of a single genus. But what more precisely does Kant mean by aesthetic ideas expressed by beautiful nature, and what unified richness do they express and how precisely do they express it? It is to the historical genealogy of this notion of aesthetic ideas of beautiful nature and its implications for Kant’s theory of beauty that this paper is devoted. This historical genealogy will reveal a sense of the notion of aesthetic ideas that we easily overlook but would have been familiar to Kant and his contemporaries. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s private language argument claims that language and meaning generally are public. It also contends with our appreciation of artworks and reveals the deep connection in our minds between originality and the temptation to think of original meaning as private. This problematic connection of ideas is found in Kant’s theory of fine art. For Kant conceives of the capacity of artistic genius for imaginatively envisioning original content as prior to and independent of finding the artistic means of communicating this content (...) to others. This raises the question of whether we can conceive of art as both original and meaningful without succumbing to privacy. (shrink)

§49 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment concludes with a striking claim regarding the freedom required for artistic expression. Kant classifies Mannerism as aping, but considers manner the only valid means of artistic expression. These opposed uses of maniera echo a historical controversy, which finds reconciliation in Kant in what I call artistic autonomy. For Kant, artistic expression of genuine originality requires autonomous action, the individual manner in which an artist selects, transforms and applies given academic rules, in (...) a way that renders an aesthetic vision meaningful. His grave concern is that artists, in their aspiration to innovate, might make the freedom to modify and transform rules into the very aim of their artistic endeavor. In order to grasp the full significance of Kant’s view, I examine the contradictory attitudes towards maniera articulated by Vasari and Bellori. Kant’s account of artistic autonomy offers an understanding of artistic succession, different from that of his predecessors. (shrink)

I identify two mutually exclusive notions of formalism in Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: a thin concept of aesthetic formalism and a thick concept of aesthetic formalism. Arguably there is textual support for both concepts in Kant’s third critique. I offer interpretations of three key elements in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement which support a thick formalism. The three key elements are: Harmony of the Faculties, Aesthetic Ideas and Sensus Communis. I interpret these concepts in relation to the conditions for (...) theoretical Reason, the conditions for moral motivation and the conditions for intersubjectivity, respectively. I conclude that there is no support for a thin concept of aesthetic formalism when the key elements of Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement are understood in the context of his broader critical aims. (shrink)

A clear-cut concept of the aesthetic is elusive. Kant’s Critique of Judgment presents one of the more comprehensive aesthetic theories from which we can extract a set of features, some of which pertain to aesthetic experience and others to the logical structure of aesthetic judgment. When considered together, however, these features present a number of tensions and apparent contradictions. Kant’s own attempt to dissolve these apparent contradictions or dichotomies was not entirely satisfactory as it rested on a vague notion of (...) indeterminacy. He addressed the emerging tensions with his distinction between pure and dependent beauty, which is a distinction I believe a satisfactory theory of aesthetic judgment would reveal as unfounded. In addition, Kant left a crucial connection unaccounted for. This was the connection between the two aspects that he envisaged characterized an aesthetic judgment. The two aspects to which I refer are the “purposiveness of form” provided by the Imagination and the associated mental content,which Kant called “aesthetic ideas.” More recent aesthetic theories treat only a subset of the features addressed in Kant’s aesthetic theory. Even so, the standard aesthetic theories, such as expressivism, cognitivism, and formalism, entrench the kind of thinking that grounds these dichotomies. In contrast, I will demonstrate that a naturalized aesthetic theory can accommodate all the features suggested by the Kantian analysis in such a way that they are shown to be complementary rather than contradictory. (shrink)

This article is to be a bridge between Kant’s aesthetics and contemporary art – not by being a paper on Kant and contemporary art, but rather by being on Kant and contemporaryphilosophy of art. I claim that Kant’s views on the appreciation of art can accommodate contextualism as well as ethicism. I argue that not only does contextualism fit Kant’s views on the appreciation of art; in §§51–3 of the thirdCritique, Kant’s appreciation of art is in accordance with contextualism. I (...) go on to argue that not only does ethicism fit Kant’s views on the appreciation of art; in §§51–3, Kant’s appreciation of art is in accordance with ethicism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to resolve some of the inconsistencies within Kant’s theory of aesthetic ideas that have been left unaddressed by previous interpretations. Specifically, Kant’s text appears to be imbued with the following two tensions. First, there appears to be a conflict between his commitment to the view that mere sensations cannot function as vehicles for the communication of aesthetic ideas and his claim that musical tones, on account of being mere sensations, can express aesthetic ideas. Second, (...) his description of musical form as consisting of a play of aesthetic ideas that leave behind no thoughts appears to be incongruous with his formulation of aesthetic ideas as free imaginative representations that contain a wealth of thoughts and meanings. If what it means to express aesthetic ideas is precisely to stimulate much thinking, then how can an object exist that expresses aesthetic ideas, but without leaving any thoughts behind? I attempt to resolve these two perceived tensions by proposing a distinction between reflective and non-reflective aesthetic ideas communicated by form and mere sensations respectively. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to resolve some of the inconsistencies within Kant’s theory of aesthetic ideas that have been left unaddressed by previous interpretations. Specifically, Kant’s text appears to be imbued with the following two tensions. First, there appears to be a conflict between his commitment to the view that mere sensations cannot function as vehicles for the communication of aesthetic ideas and his claim that musical tones, on account of being mere sensations, can express aesthetic ideas. Second, (...) his description of musical form as consisting of a play of aesthetic ideas that leave behind no thoughts appears to be incongruous with his formulation of aesthetic ideas as free imaginative representations that contain a wealth of thoughts and meanings. If what it means to express aesthetic ideas is precisely to stimulate much thinking, then how can an object exist that expresses aesthetic ideas, but without leaving any thoughts behind? I attempt to resolve these two perceived tensions by proposing a distinction between reflective and non-reflective aesthetic ideas communicated by form and mere sensations respectively. (shrink)

The notion of aesthetic ideas is of great importance to Kant's thinking about art. Despite its importance, he says little about it. He characterizes aesthetic ideas as representations of the imagination and says that the gift of artistic genius is the inscrutable capacity to envision them. Furthermore, they are counterparts of rational ideas. Works of art thus sensibly present rational ideas; the pleasure they occasion is a consequence of the enriching process of reflection upon the wealth of content they sensibly (...) present. The purpose of this article is to ask whether all rational ideas have aesthetic ideas as counterparts, and so can be presented in art, or whether only some do and which. The answer should reveal what, for Kant, is the subject-matter of art. I argue that for Kant art is concerned with the range and variety of human freedom as well as with its highest fulfillment in morality. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Kant’s concept-less schematism (KU, 5: 287) in the thirdCritique1and make three claims: 1) concept-less schematism is entirely consistent with the schematism in the firstCritique; 2) concept-less schematism is schematism with noempiricalconcept as an outcome; and 3) in accordance with 1) and 2), the imagination is free to synthesize the given manifold and leads to judgements of taste without this meaning either that the categories play no role at all or that these judgements are full-fledged cognitive (...) determining judgements. While most commentators read the freedom of the imagination as its independence from the understanding, I argue that the freedom of the imagination is based on a non-determining employment of the pure concepts of the understanding. The freedom of the aesthetic imagination consists in the temporal schematization of the categories without any complementary determination of the empirical concept. (shrink)

The notion of normativity has been key to an actualizing reading of the subjective universality that for Kant characterizes the aesthetic judgment. However, in the scholarly literature little discussion is made, somehow unsurprisingly, of what exactly we should understand by normativity when it comes to Kant’s aesthetics. Recent trends show indeed the tendency to take normativity very broadly to the point of nuancing most of its core meaning. Based on how we speak about normativity in aesthetics, we seem indeed to (...) have accepted that every kind of evaluative process is normative. I will argue that the sentimentalist elements of Kant's account call for a revision of its normative interpretations, for a better framing of its subjective universalism, and finally for a reconsideration of aesthetic normativity in favour of regulativity. (shrink)

A debate between two aestheticians concerning the relative influence of Scottish and German philosophers on the contemporary discipline. -/- .

In § 60 of the Critique of Judgment, entitled ‘On the doctrine of method of taste,’ Kant suggests that the study of so-called humaniora (ancient Roman and Greek literature) will help one to become a good artist. I will argue that a proper, namely emotional, engagement with humaniora will further the two components of humanity in ourselves: the feeling of sympathy and the ability to communicate feelings. I will discuss two options of how a strengthening of these two components might (...) contribute to the creation of good artworks: it will help one to create artworks that arouse the universal communicable pleasure in the beautiful, or it will help one to create artworks that arouse sympathetic feelings. Siding with the latter option, I will argue that emotions can contribute to the enlivening of aesthetic ideas and, thus, to good art. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMatthen usefully distinguishes between mere ‘r-pleasures’ and ‘f-pleasures’: ‘facilitating’ pleasures that are valuable in drawing out the ‘self-reinforcing’ characteristic of good art. But there are reasons, especially from a Kantian Critical perspective with which Matthen sympathizes, to worry about any such ‘hedonistic’ approach to aesthetics, however valuable its general account of pleasure may be. Especially deserving of emphasis are the role of objectivity and the significance of aesthetic goals other than pleasure.

Are we really sure to correctly know what do we feel in front ofan artwork and to correctly verbalize it? How do we know what weappreciate and why we appreciate it? This paper deals with the problem ofintrospective opacity in aesthetics (that is, the unreliability of self-knowledge) in the light of traditional philosophical issues, but also of recentpsychological insights, according to which there are many instances ofmisleading intuition about one’s own mental processes, affective states orpreferences. Usually, it is assumed that (...) aesthetic statements are intuitivelyclear and self-evident. However, a long tradition in psychological researchhas called the idea of introspective transparency and the infallibility of self-knowledge into question (Wilson 2002). This topic has only recently beenrecognized as an interesting problem in aesthetics (Melchionne 2011, Irvin2014). In this paper I will discuss the main shortcomings in introspective self-knowledge, mostly referring to psychological findings. As a consequence, thedevelopment of a folk psychological account of aesthetic experience could beneeded, investigating how people develop intuitive and naïve theories abouttheir aesthetic reactions, taste, and feelings, distinct from a more objectiveand empirically grounded account of how judgment and preferences areactually formed in ourselves, even on a neurobiological level. However, itwill also be argued that bypassing the individual judgment and his expressedchoices in favor of allegedly more objective levels of description would notbe an innocent step to take. (shrink)

In § 49 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant puts forward a view that the feeling of pleasure in the experience of the beautiful can be stimulated not merely by perceptual properties, but by ideas and thoughts as well. The aim of this paper is to argue that aesthetic ideas fill in the emptiness that abstract and emotion concepts on their own would have without empirical intuitions. That is, aesthetic ideas make these concepts more accessible to us, (...) by creating image schemas that allow us to think about these abstract concepts in a way linked to sensory experience, thereby imbuing them with a more substantive meaning and understanding. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to argue that Kant’s aesthetic ideas can help us to overcome cognitive limitations that we often experience in our attempts to articulate the meaning of abstract concepts. I claim that aesthetic ideas, as expressed in works of art, have a cognitive dimension in that they reveal the introspective, emotional, and affective aspects that appear to be central to the content of abstract phenomena.

Images share a common feature with all phenomena of imagination, since they make us aware of what is not present or what is fictional and not existent at all. From this perspective, the philosophical approach of Kendall Lewis Walton—born in 1939 and active since the 1960s at the University of Michigan—is perhaps one of the most notable contributions to image theory. Walton is an authoritative figure within the tradition of analytical aesthetics. His contributions have had a considerable influence on a (...) broad range of topics, such as the role of categories in the understanding of the arts (Walton, “Categories of Art”. Philosophical Review, 79(3): 334–367, 1970), the ambiguous nature of emotions in the experience of fictional stories (Walton, “Fearing Fictions”. The Journal of Philosophy, 75(1): 5–25, 1978), the transparency of photographic images compared to other depictions (Walton, “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism”. Noûs, 18(1): 67–72, 1984) and, above all, the development of a general theory of fiction as imaginative activity. His 1990 book Mimesis as Make-believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts collects and re-elaborates articles Walton published on the subject since the 1970s. Though he does not attempt to give a definitive answer for what imagination is, Walton thoroughly investigates its role in all cases of representational works, describing depictions as a specific case of “make-believe” activity: images, in short, are specific props of a visual and perceptual “make-believe” game. (shrink)