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)

This paper claims that Kant’s conception of culture provides a new means of understanding how the two parts of the Critique of Judgment fit together. Kant claims that culture is both the ‘ultimate purpose’ of nature and to be defined in terms of ‘art in general’ (of which the fine arts are a subtype). In the Critique of Teleological Judgment, culture, as the last empirically cognizable telos of nature, serves as the mediating link between nature and freedom, while in the (...) Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, the connection between art and morality passes through culture. In either case, Kant offers distinct, yet interdependent, arguments for how culture demonstrates the amenability of nature to its supersensible ground: the central question Kant claims in the Introduction that the work seeks to answer. Thus, not only does this account advance a concept essential to both parts of the work; it also demonstrates how the two parts can be conceived as complementary, with each supplementing the other to solve Kant’s central question. As such, understanding the Critique of Judgment in terms of culture enables us to see how the two parts of the work do not merely share points of similarity or common themes, but presuppose one another in order to understand how nature is amenable to freedom. (shrink)

Though the notion of common-sense plays an important role in Kant’s aesthetic theory, it is not immediately clear what Kant means by this term. This essay works to clarify the role that common-sense plays in the logic of Kant’s argument. My interpretive hypothesis is that a careful examination of the way common-sense functions in Kant’s account of judgments of taste can help explain what this notion means. I argue that common-sense names the capacity to discern the relation between the cognitive (...) faculties by means of a feeling, and I conclude that this understanding of common-sense lays the groundwork for an account of the unity of judgments of taste. I conclude that attending to Kant’s notion of common-sense is especially important because it highlights the anthropological significance of Kant’s account of beauty. (shrink)

بررسی تبییین کانت از قوای تخیل و فاهمه در نقدهای اول و سوم.

Kant often seems to suggest that a cognition – whether an everyday cognition or a scientific cognition – cannot be beautiful. In the Critique of Judgment and the Lectures on Logic, he writes: ‘a science which, as such, is supposed to be beautiful, is absurd.’ (CJ 184 (5:305)) ‘The expression "beautiful cognition" is not fitting at all’ (LL 446 (24:708)). These claims are usually understood rather straightforwardly. On the one hand, cognition cannot be beautiful since on Kant’s account, it is (...) all about concepts whilst beauty is defined by its non-conceptual nature. On the other hand, beauty cannot contribute to cognition since the former is grounded on subjective feelings whilst cognition is all about objective knowledge. However, I will argue that Kant’s view of the relationship between cognition and beauty is not as straightforward as it may seem, and that both of these claims are in fact false. As I will show, cognition can be beautiful, and the feeling of beauty is cognitively valuable. Yet it is not because beauty is a sign of the truthfulness of a theory. Nor is it because the process that gives rise to the feeling of beauty, the free play, furthers scientific progress. Rather, it is because the experience of beauty stimulates our cognitive powers and thereby enhances our cognitive activity. On this basis, contrary to what is usually thought, cognition can, and in fact should, be beautiful for Kant. (shrink)

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant introduces the notion of the reflective judgment and the a priori principle of purposiveness or systematicity of nature. He claims that the ability to judge objects by means of this principle underlies empirical concept acquisition and it is therefore necessary for cognition in general. In addition, he suggests that there is a connection between this principle and judgments of taste. Kant’s account of this connection has been criticized by several commentators for (...) the reason that it leads to the ‘everythingisbeautiful’ problem. In this paper I argue, contrary to these objections, that both finding an object beautiful and acquiring the concept represent the satisfaction of the same principle of nature’s purposiveness, which refers to the same cognitive need we have, that is, to systematize experience. I avoid the ‘everything is beautiful’ problem by arguing that aesthetic reflection refers to the synthesis of object’s individual and distinctive properties, while logical reflection refers to the synthesis of object’s general properties that it shares with other objects of its kind. Because aesthetic purposiveness is different from logical purposiveness, this allows for the possibility that we can have an object of cognition, without finding this object beautiful. (shrink)

An epistemology of art has seemed problematic mainly because of arguments claiming that an essential element of a theory of knowledge, truth, has no place in aesthetic contexts. For, if it is objectively true that something is beautiful, it seems to follow that the predicate “is beautiful” expresses a property – a view asserted by Plato but denied by Hume and Kant. But then, if the belief that something is beautiful is not objectively true, we cannot be said to know (...) that something is beautiful and the path to an epistemology of art is effectively blocked. The article places the existence aesthetic properties in the proper context; presents a logically correct argument for the existence of such properties; identifies strategies for responding to this argument; explains why objections by Hume, Kant, and several other philosophers fail; and sketches a realization account of beauty influenced by Hogarth. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to elucidate what Kant describes as the "free lawfulness of the imagination" in judgments of beauty in aesthetic terms, as called for by the distinctive nature of beauty. I argue that the aesthetic activity of the imagination differs from the theoretical activity of the imagination, and that the difference between the two has an aesthetic ground in terms of the special form of beautiful objects and the special value of beauty. In contrast to the (...) theoretical activity of the imagination, the aesthetic activity of the imagination must be free of concepts and laws but nonetheless lawful otherwise it would not be able to unify the forms of beautiful objects, to attribute necessity to them, and by so doing to be adequate to the value of those objects as beautiful objects. On that basis, I aim to show that Kant's theory is not committed to the absurd view that some scholars have attributed to him: the view that everything we judge must be judged to be beautiful. (shrink)

According to rationalist conceptions of moral agency, the constitutive capacities of moral agency are rational capacities. So understood, rationalists are often thought to have a problem with feeling. For example, many believe that rationalists must reject the attractive Aristotelian thought that moral activity is by nature pleasant. I disagree. It is easy to go wrong here because it is easy to assume that pleasure is empirical rather than rational and so extrinsic rather than intrinsic to moral agency, rationalistically conceived. Drawing (...) on underappreciated elements of Kant’s moral psychology, I sketch an alternative form of rationalism, according to which moral activity is by nature pleasant because at least some pleasures are by nature rational. (shrink)

In the third Critique Kant shifts the focus in his enquiry from the status of factual statements in the Critique of Pure Reason and the grounding of moral imperatives in the Critique of Practical Reason to investigating two methods of considering the world which go beyond the strictly verifiable. This is a move from evaluating the interplay of a ‘determinate’ set of facts and intellectual preconditions to forming what Kant calls ‘reflective’ judgements on these facts. There are two major questions (...) which the Critique of Judgement tackles. On the one hand Kant ambitiously considers how we might properly interpret a set of facts as comprising a larger teleological system and, on the other hand, he is interested in the seemingly quite separate issue of the appreciation of objects as beautiful. It is this latter issue which shall concern us here. Consistent with the reflective stand in the third Critique, Kant argues from the very outset that beauty is not an empirical concept with which we might describe the world. Beauty is not objective in the sense that size, colour or weight might be. Objective properties of this kind belong to the world of scientific understanding. Instead, he holds that judgements of aesthetic merit should be based upon the subjective pleasure we take in experiencing works of art and natural objects. (shrink)

This article suggests an iconic turn in cultural sociology. Icons can be seen, it is argued, as symbolic condensations that root social meanings in material form, allowing the abstractions of cognition and morality to be subsumed, to be made invisible, by aesthetic shape. Meaning is made iconically visible, in other words, by the beautiful, sublime, ugly, or simply by the mundane materiality of everyday life. But it is via the senses that iconic power is made. This new approach to meaning (...) is compared with others — with materialism, semiotics, aestheticism, moralism, realism, and spiritualism. (shrink)

This paper discusses a structural analogy between Kant’s theory of regulative ideas, as he develops it in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, and Crispin Wright’s theory of epistemic entitlements. First, I argue that certain exegetical difficulties with respect to the Appendix rest on serious systematic problems, which – given other assumptions of the Critique of Pure Reason – Kant is unable to solve. Second, I argue that because of the identified structural analogy between Kant’s and Wright’s views the project (...) Kant pursues in the Appendix can be rehabilitated by recourse to Wright’s theory. (shrink)

This paper attacks an account of Kant's controversial distinction between "free" and "dependent" beauty. I present three problems—The Lorland problem, The Crawford Problem, and the problem of intrinsic relation—that are shown to be a consequence of various interpretations of Kant's distinction. Next, I reconstruct Robert Wicks' well-known account of dependent beauty as "the appreciation of teleological style" and point out a key equivocation in the statement of Wicks' account: the judgment of dependent beauty can be thought to consist in comparing (...) any two objects' teleological styles either in respect of how or in respect of how well each realizes a common purpose. I argue that this equivocation forces Wicks into a dilemma: either he must assert the impossibility of ugliness or he must assert that the judgment of dependent beauty is reducible to the judgment of perfection. Either way, he denies important theoretic desiderata. (shrink)

It is a common thought that mathematics can be not only true but also beautiful, and many of the greatest mathematicians have attached central importance to the aesthetic merit of their theorems, proofs and theories. But how, exactly, should we conceive of the character of beauty in mathematics? In this paper I suggest that Kant's philosophy provides the resources for a compelling answer to this question. Focusing on §62 of the ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’, I argue against the common view (...) that Kant's aesthetics leaves no room for beauty in mathematics. More specifically, I show that on the Kantian account beauty in mathematics is a non-conceptual response felt in light of our own creative activities involved in the process of mathematical reasoning. The Kantian proposal I thus develop provides a promising alternative to Platonist accounts of beauty widespread among mathematicians. While on the Platonist conception the experience of mathematical beauty consists in an intellectual insight into the fundamental structures of the universe, according to the Kantian proposal the experience of beauty in mathematics is grounded in our felt awareness of the imaginative processes that lead to mathematical knowledge. The Kantian account I develop thus offers to elucidate the connection between aesthetic reflection, creative imagination and mathematical cognition. (shrink)

Abstract In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant refers to the pleasure that we feel when judging that an object is beautiful as the pleasure of "mere reflection". Yet Kant never makes explicit what exactly is the relationship between the activity of "mere reflection" and the feeling of pleasure. I discuss several contemporary accounts of the pleasure of taste and argue that none of them is fully accurate, since, in each case, they leave open the possibility that one (...) can reflect without having a feeling of pleasure, and hence allow a possible skepticism of taste. I then present my own account, which can better explain why Kant thinks that when one reflects one must also have a feeling of pleasure. My view, which emphasizes the role of attention in Kant, depicts well what we do when we judge something to be beautiful. It can also suggest a way to explain the relation between judgments of taste and moral feeling, and begin to show how the faculty of feeling fills a gap in the system of our cognitive faculties. (shrink)

When Kant announces in a letter to Reinhold that he has discovered a new domain of a priori principles, he situates these principles in a ‘faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure ’. And it is indeed in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, named in this letter the Critique of Taste, that we find his elucidation of the relation of the principle of purposiveness to the feeling of pleasure. The kinds of judgements in which our feelings are evaluated in accordance with (...) a principle are what Kant names reflective judgements. And while reflective judgements emerge in the third Critique to include not only judgements of taste, but also judgements of the sublime and teleological judgements of nature, in this paper I will focus on the first, as the question of the relatedness of reflection to pleasure is most pronounced in this context. There is no consensus in Kant scholarship as to what the structure of reflective judgements is, as evidenced by the widely disparate views of those such as Guyer, Allison, Pippin, Ginsborg, Lyotard, and others. (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)

In recent years Nick Zangwill has gone a long way in championing a moderate aesthetic formalism in an attempt to accommodate those objects that many of us call beautiful despite their lack of any formal beauty. While there is some dispute in the literature about the extent to which Kant can be interpreted as an aesthetic formalist, the appeal of his famous distinction between free and dependent beauty should present a fairly natural ally for Zangwill's project. Indeed, such an alliance (...) has been expressed by Zangwill, who first reaches for this ‘invaluable but misunderstood and underappreciated distinction’ in his ‘Feasible aesthetic formalism’ . Here, Zangwill claims that this essential distinction can be cut loose from Kant's terminology and views about aesthetic judgement. More recently he expresses more strongly that ‘Kant was also a moderate formalist, who opposes extreme formalism when he distinguished free and dependent beauty in §16 of the Critique of Judgement’ . Yet, a decade on from the initial suggestion, there has been little further exploration or elucidation of this move, or indeed this potential characterization of Kant's aesthetics. It is the aim of this paper to begin to address that deficiency by identifying the extent to which a moderate formalist position is available in Kant's aesthetic. I will suggest that Kant's account does not require substantial modification in order to cast him as a moderate formalist. Taking the time to isolate the plausible grounds for characterizing Kant's aesthetic in this way, this discussion will enable us to explore some of the rival interpretations of his work such that we may also identify the kind of Kantian the moderate formalist is likely to be. (shrink)

Abstract: Kant declares the judgment of beauty to be neither ‘objective’ nor ‘merely subjective’. This essay takes up the question of what this might mean and whether it can be taken seriously. It is often supposed that Kant's denials of ‘objectivity’ to the judgment of beauty express a rejection of realism about beauty. I suggest that Kant's thought is not to be understood in these terms—that it does not properly belong in the arena of debates about the constituents of ‘reality’—motivating (...) the suggestion by first considering a pair of opposing views on the question of whether Kant can be understood to develop a real alternative to realism about beauty at all. (shrink)

My plan in this article is to begin by raising the question of the point of judgements of beauty, and then to examine Kant's account of beauty in the third Critique from the perspective opened up by that question. Having raised the question of the point, I will argue, first, that there is an implied answer to it in Kant's text, and, second, that the answer is ultimately unsatisfying in that it falsely assumes that there is a ‘need’, or ‘task’, (...) or ‘purpose’, that we all necessarily share, to conceptualize all that encounters us in our experience, and fit it into one unified and comprehensive system. It is only against this assumption of our transcendental cognitive interest that Kant can so much as seem to have a real story to tell about where the value that we claim for things in calling them ‘beautiful’ derives from. This, in effect, means that to the extent that Kant offers us any answer at all to the question of the point of judgements of beauty, that answer testifies to his general neglect of the question of the point of judgements. And my purpose is to draw attention to that neglect, and to begin to assess its significance for Kant's transcendental project in general and for his conception of beauty in particular. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is often regarded as an exponent of the ‘individualist’ tradition in epistemology, according to which testimony is not a fundamental source of knowledge. The present paper argues that this view is far from accurate. Kant devotes ample space to discussions of testimony and, in his lectures on logic, arrives at a distinct and stable philosophical position regarding testimony. Important elements of this position consist in (a) acknowledging the ineliminability of testimony; (b) realizing that testimony can establish empirical knowledge (...) with certainty; (c) establishing a presumptive principle regarding the acceptance of testimony; (d) arguing for a symmetry between knowledge based on experience and knowledge based on testimony. Rejecting testimony as a fundamental source of knowledge merely on the basis that no theoretically necessary ground for its truth can be given, would, as Kant puts it, indicate ‘a lack of moral interest’. Such ‘incredulity’ would be a form of ‘logical egoism’: it demonstrates an unwillingness or inability to think oneself in the place of others, yet this we must do if we are to trust our own judgements. While Kant strongly endorses testimony as a source of empirical knowledge, he does, however, make one important restriction: ‘Propositions of reason’ (Vernunftwahrheiten), such as universal moral principles, may not be adopted on the basis of testimony. I argue that this distinction, between testimonial knowledge of empirical matters of fact and individual knowledge of propositions of reason, is an important element of Kant’s epistemology of testimony, as it explains how his strong endorsement of testimony as a source of knowledge can be squared with his equally strong demand for intellectual autonomy. Finally, I comment on the overall implications of this account for Kant’s discussion, elsewhere in his work, of the public nature of communication. (shrink)

For Kant, the form of a subject's experience of an object provides the normative basis for an aesthetic judgement about it. In other words, if the subject's experience of an object has certain structural properties, then Kant thinks she can legitimately judge that the object is beautiful - and that it is beautiful for everyone. My goal in this paper is to provide a new account of how this 'subjective universalism' is supposed to work. In doing so, I appeal to (...) Kant's notions of an aesthetic idea and an aesthetic attribute, and the connection that Kant makes between an object's expression of rational and the normativity of aesthetic judgements about it. -/- . (shrink)

We often speak about religious experience, and sometimes we speak about metaphysical experience. Yet we seldom hear about philosophical experience. Is philosophy purely a matter of theories and theses, or does it have an experiential aspect? In this article, I argue for the following three claims. First, there is something we might call philosophical experience, and there is nothing mystical about it. Second, philosophical experiences are expressed in something quite similar to what Kant called "aesthetic judgements." Third, philosophical experiences are (...) expressed by using words in what Wittgenstein called "secondary sense." Finally, I try to show the educational significance of pursing philosophical experiences. Through articulating them one might find one's ground, and through articulating them in a less private and more universal form one might raise oneself to universality. Thus, in expressing philosophical experiences one aspires to speak in a universal voice. (shrink)

The conception of disinterested pleasure is not only central to Kant’s theory of beauty but also highly influential in contemporary philosophical discourse about beauty. However, it remains unclear, what exactly disinterested pleasure is and what role it plays in experiences of beauty. This volume sheds new light on the conception of disinterested pleasure from the perspectives of both Kant scholarship and contemporary aesthetics. In the first part, the focus is on Kant’s theory of beauty as grounded on the conception of (...) disinterested pleasure. In the second part, disinterested pleasure is investigated in the light of contemporary debates on beauty. The third part is dedicated to the relation of theories of disinterested pleasure to the meta-aesthetical debate between realism and anti-realism. The volume clarifies the meaning, role, and implications of one of the most influential conceptions in traditional as well as contemporary approaches to beauty. (shrink)

This essay explores the meaning of Kant's transcendental definition of pleasure and displeasure. I will explain the meaning of "definition" and "transcendental" respectively in relation to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, contrasting with the interpretations of Guyer (2018) and Deimling (2018). Not only will I show how they are wrong, but I will also offer reasons for their misinterpretations. This essay proposes that the transcendental definition of pleasure and displeasure bears more systematic significance in Kant's philosophy than previous researchers (...) might have thought. My analysis also leads back to Kant's conception of the anthropological relation between life, desire, and pleasure. (shrink)

My aesthetic judgements seem to make claims on you. While some popular accounts of aesthetic normativity say that the force of these claims is third-personal, I argue that it is actually second-personal. This point may sound like a bland technicality, but it points to a novel idea about what aesthetic judgements ultimately are and what they do. It suggests, in particular, that aesthetic judgements are motions in the collective legislation of the nature of aesthetic activity. This conception is recommended by (...) its ability to explain some important but otherwise recondite features of aesthetic practice and, more importantly, by allowing us to ground the normativity of aesthetic judgement in the familiar normativity of practice. It also offers a more systematic way of understanding the rivalry between the ideals of aesthetic universality and diversity. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs and defends Kant's argument for the transcendental status of reason's principles of the systematic unity of nature in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic. On the present account, these principles are neither mere methodological recommendations for conducting scientific inquiry nor do they have the normative force of categorical imperatives, two extant interpretations of Kant's discussion of reason in the Appendix. Instead, they are regulative yet transcendental principles restricted to theoretical cognition. The principles of the systematic unity of (...) nature count as transcendental in virtue of their role as conditions of the inferential articulation of empirical concepts. (shrink)

This paper examines Kant’s treatment of the design argument for the existence of God, or physicotheology. It criticizes the interpretation that, for Kant, the assumption of intelligent design satisfies an internal demand of inquiry. It argues that Kant’s positive appraisal of physicotheology is instead better understood on account of its polemical utility for rebutting objections to practical belief in God upon which Kant’s ethicotheological argument rests, and thus as an instrument in the transition from theoretical to practical philosophy. Kantian physicotheology (...) plays this role a) by criticizing alternative speculative accounts of the ground of nature, and b) by analogizing from the structure of finite rational agency in order to represent more clearly the action of an ideal agent. (shrink)

Bu çalışma, Yargı Gücünün Eleştirisi’nde estetik beğenide, hayalgücü (Einbildungskraft) ve “özgür oyun” tanımı temelinde, hayalgücü ve anlama yetisi (Verstand) arasındaki ilişki sorununu ele almaktadır. Kant transendental felsefeyle hayalgücüne kendinden önceki filozoflardan ayrı bir saygınlık kazandırmış, bu yetiyi hem bilişin hem estetik deneyimin temel yetileri arasına yerleştirmiştir. Saf Aklın Eleştirisi’nde (A basımı) duyusallık (Sinnlichkeit) ve anlama yetisiyle transendental üç yetiden biri olan hayalgücü, üçüncü Kritik’te reflektif yargı ve estetik deneyimin zeminini oluşturmada önemli bir konumdadır. Üçüncü Kritik’in hemen her bölümünde bir işlevi (...) haiz olan hayalgücü ile anlama yetisinin girdiği özgür ve kavramlara dayanmayan oyun transendental felsefeye ilişkin pek çok meseleyi de açığa çıkaran özelliklere sahiptir. Bu oyunda, birinci Kritik’te nesnenin kavramsal belirlenimine yönelik olan anlama yetisinin kavramlarıyla devrede olmaması tartışmanın önemli ögelerinden biridir. Bu bakımdan özgür oyun tanımı, yetilerin konumlarına ilişkin birinci Kritik’teki iddialara uzanan kapsam ve içeriktedir. Bu çalışmada bu iddialara açıklık kazandırılarak, hayalgücü merkezinde yetiler ve yetilerle bağlantılı tartışmalara ışık tutulacaktır. (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)

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)

When we judge something to be beautiful, do we identify an inherent feature of the object, or only our subjective response to it? This paper argues that, for Kant, pure aesthetic judgment occupies a middle ground. Such judgments are based upon affective responses to our own cognitive faculties. Thus, pure aesthetic judgment is subjective insofar as it concerns our feeling ourselves to be engaged in a certain task; it is objective insofar as the task we are engaged in is cognition (...) of an object, and the faculties that we are feeling to be at work are the cognitive faculties of the understanding and the imagination. This paper locates this interpretation in the text of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment in the third Critique and uses it to make sense of many otherwise opaque features of Kant’s account of pure aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

In this article, I first address the ethical considerations about football and show that a meritocratic-fairness view of sports fails to capture the phenomenon of football. Fairness of result is not at centre stage in football. Football is about the drama, about the tension and the emotions it provokes. This moves us to the realm of aesthetics. I reject the idea of the aesthetics of football as the disinterested aesthetic appreciation, which traditionally has been deemed central to aesthetics. Instead, I (...) argue that we should try and develop an agon aesthetics where our aesthetic appreciation is understood as involving and being embedded in our engagement in the game. The drama of football is staged but not scripted. The aesthetics of competitions like football matches—the agon aesthetics—lies in engaging in the conflict that a competition is, while being aware that the conflict is not over ordinary world or everyday life issues, but unnecessary and invented for the very purpose of having a conflict to enjoy. (shrink)

This article focuses on the intimate relationship between German aesthetic theory, particularly the philosophies of Kant and Schiller, and the pragmatic tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that many aspects of Kantian aesthetic theory – his development of reflective judgement, genius, and common sense – are reflected in the thinking of C. S. Peirce. I conclude, however, that such a comparison risks selling short the way that German idealism influenced American thinkers and instead suggest that it (...) is more fruitful to concentrate on ‘aesthetic experience’. I argue that attending to the aesthetic dimensions of experience might re-orient contemporary approaches to pragmatism that continue to focus on the way that pragmatism might intervene in debates in epistemology and philosophy of language. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider various ways in which aesthetic value bears on, if not serves as evidence for, the truth of independent statements in set theory.... the aesthetic issue, which in practice will also for me be the decisive factor—John von Neumann, letter to Carnap, 1931For me, it is the aesthetics which may very well be the final arbiter—P. J. Cohen, 2002.

At the end of §40 of the Critique of Judgement, after a discussion of the sensus communis and its connection with taste, Kant writes:If we could assume that the mere universal communicability as such of our feeling must already carry with it an interest for us , then we could explain how it is that we require from everyone as a duty, as it were , the feeling in a judgment of taste.

This essay develops a Kantian theory of sport which addresses: (1) Kant’s categories of aesthetic judgment (2) a comparable analysis applied to athletic volition; (3) aesthetic cognition and experience and athletic volition and experience; (4) ‘free’ and ‘attached’ beauty; (5) Kant’s theory of teleological judgment; (6) the moral concept of a ‘kingdom of ends’ and sportsmanship; (7) the beautiful and the sublime in sport-experience; (8) respect and religious emotion in sport-experience; (9) the Kantian system and philosophical anthropology; and (10) sport (...) and self-knowledge. (shrink)

Abstract Kant claims that the basis of a judgment of taste is a merely subjective representation and that the only merely subjective representations are feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Commentators disagree over how to interpret this claim. Some take it to mean that judgments about the beauty of an object depend only on the state of the judging subject. Others argue instead that, for Kant, the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is best understood as a response to its (...) qualities, and that, accordingly, feelings of pleasure or displeasure are no different from other representations, such as colors or smells. While I agree that the judgment of taste is best understood as asserting a claim about an object's qualities, I argue that the distinction Kant makes between feelings of pleasure or displeasure and other representations should not be ignored. I show that one's liking or disliking for an object is merely subjective in the sense that its significance depends on what one has made of oneself through one's aesthetic education. The judgment of taste, then, is merely subjective because one must first become the kind of person whose feelings have the right significance at the right time before one can determine whether an object's qualities make it beautiful. (shrink)

In 1764, Kant published his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime and in 1790 his influential third Critique , the Critique of the Power of Judgment . The latter contains two parts, the 'Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment' and the 'Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment'. They reveal a new principle, namely the a priori principle of purposiveness ( Zweckmäßigkeit ) of our power of judgment, and thereby offer new a priori grounds for (...) beauty and biology within the framework of Kant's transcendental philosophy. They also unite the previous two Critiques , the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason . Besides contributing to general and systematic aspects within his transcendental philosophy, Kant's aesthetics also offers new insights into old problems. It deals with feeling versus experience, subjectivity versus objectivity, disinterested pleasure, aesthetic universality, free and adherent beauty, the sensus communis , genius, aesthetic ideas, beauty as the symbol of morality, beauty of nature versus beauty of art, the sublime, and the supersensible. In this article I will limit myself to this critical aesthetics of Kant. But I will also discuss the ugly and the possibility of beauty in mathematics and see whether Kant's theory can successfully explain or deal with them. I will also compare his theory with philosophical ideas from a very different tradition, namely from Confucius, not only as a challenge to Kant's theory, but also because there is a growing interest from the Chinese side in combining ideas from Confucius and Kant, an interest that might well become influential in both East and West during the 21st century. (shrink)

In the recent debate on the nature of Kantian ‘content of cognition’, some scholars argue that Kantian judgments of taste bear a nonconceptual mental content because these judgments lack any conceptual determining functions of some kind. In this article, I challenge the latter standpoint for the very simple reason that judgments of taste are no propositions, but rather formative evaluations. This implies as well the fact that we are initially in possession of no aesthetic representation. Hence, neither propositionally nor non-propositionally (...) is an aesthetic representation eligible to be counted as mental content. Instead, as the representation of the beautiful just contents oneself with itself, it refers to its objects relationally, yet not representationally in the full-fledged sense. Regarding the properties of objects, it remains consequently always ineffectively monotonous. On the occasion of agreement of the relevant cognitive faculties, we may, however, count the representation of the beautiful as phenomenal content. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of Gilles Deleuze’s interpreta- tion of the Critique of Pure Reason such as it appears in his 1963 monographic work La Philosophie critique de Kant. We will show that the originality of Deleuze’s reading lies in reading the critical project in retrospect, taking the sensus communis problem from the Critique of the Power of Judgment and applying it to the first Critique. In so doing, he points out the survival of (...) a pre-established harmony, now interiorized, both between heterogeneous faculties and between the matter of phenomena and the Ideas of reason. This implies a reinterpretation of the critical project that has passed unnoticed within Kantian studies and that places the Third Critique as the ground of the previous ones, unveiling common sense as a condition of possibility of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to an ongoing and controversial debate about non-conceptuality in Kantian aesthetics. It is a replica on a paper of Dietmar Heidemann in Con-Textos Kantianos N.° 12, to which I do consent, but I’d like to give some additional comments on a specific issue: I show in this paper that the problem about whether or not the understanding contributes to aesthetic judgment can be elucidated by means of a revaluation of the imagination’s capacity of formal representation (...) and the subsuming activity of the power of reflective judgment. I argue that the understanding is considered by the power of reflective judgment merely in his lawfulness in order to find a universal under which the imagination’s particular, the formal representation of the beautiful shape, can be subsumed. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es demostrar, en primer lugar, que el problema de la verdad no se encuentra completamente ausente en la estética kantiana y que no lo está, en segundo lugar, porque la autonomización de la dimensión estética es pensada a partir de una experiencia de la unidad de la subjetividad. A los fines de demostrar estos dos puntos, procuro reconstruir, en primer lugar, el contexto epistémico de la KU. En un segundo momento, me remito a la delimitación (...) kantiana de la autonomía del juicio del gusto y finalmente reviso aquellos momentos en los cuales Kant va más allá de sus propias pretensiones. Aquí me refiero especialmente a la idea de un acuerdo espontáneo entre las facultades cognoscitivas en la medida en que ella revela la imbricación de la determinación de la autonomía del juicio estético con problemáticas de carácter extraestético que remiten a la posibilidad de una autolegitimación de la modernidad. (shrink)

Music theory has to reinvent itself. Century-long paradigms have to be revisited, and recent terminologies and concepts coming from other fields of music have to find room within the traditional frameworks, particularly in connection with electronic music. In this work, I make an attempt at depicting a framework that might turn useful to further advancements in music theory, by representing the relation between electroacoustic and traditional musics within a scenario dominated by the Philosophy of Language. The Philosophy of Language is (...) herein proposed as a possible philosophical asset to counterbalance some limits of Phenomenology, which has dominated the field of electroacoustic music since its appearance. Within this scenario, the work suggests the notions of "mimesis" and "cadence" as two valid terms to help creating a common ground between the two genres, discussing them in detail and proposing new interpretations for both concepts. (shrink)

En este trabajo presento una respuesta a mis críticos a “El -conceptualismo de Kant y los juicios de gusto”. Mi objetivo principal es defender una lectura conceptualista de la teoría kantiana del juicio de gusto. En primer lugar, sugiero que el conocimiento en general que aparece que el marco del juicio de gusto no implica una ausencia de conceptos. En segundo lugar, indico que sin algún tipo de actividad conceptual, sería imposible fundamentar la universalidad del juicio de gusto. En tercer (...) lugar, afirmo que el carácter representacional del juicio de gusto no implica un compromiso con el no conceptualismo. Finalmente, sostengo que la irreductibilidad del juicio de gusto a un concepto determinado no conduce necesariamente al no conceptualismo. (shrink)

Feeling, for any animal, is a faculty of comparing objects or representations with regard to whether they promote its vital powers or hinder them. But whereas these comparisons presuppose a species-concept in non-rational animals, nature has not equipped the human being with a universal principle or life-form that would determine what agrees or disagrees with it. As humans, we must determine our mode of life for ourselves. Contrary to other interpretations, I argue that this places the human capacity for pleasure (...) and displeasure outside of nature and in a realm of spirit. (shrink)

There are two familiar strategic approaches to Kant's Critique of Judgement which commentators have not always found easy to combine. One would regard the work as fitting snugly into Kant's enterprise as the keystone that absorbs the forces of his theoretical and practical philosophies, uniting them and itself into a single sound structure. That Kant saw it this way is obvious from his Introduction to the Critique. But the other approach has sometimes seemed more fruitful: start with the Analytic of (...) the Beautiful and take it not as the completion but as the beginning of something, a treatise which, in offering possibly the fullest and most rigorous account of the autonomy of aesthetic judgement, plays a foundational role in the discipline now known as aesthetics. On this approach questions concerning morality and the unity of Kant's philosophy can be set aside for attention later, if ever. (shrink)