Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
The Practical Significance of Taste in Kant's Critique of Judgment: Love of Natural Beauty as a Mark of Moral Character
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Baxley, Anne Margaret |
| Copyright Year | 2005 |
| Abstract | In ? 42 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant expanature only because our experience of it (sometiates on the relation between taste and morality how) contributes to our moral vocation. when he explains that we have an intellectual interest in natural beauty.' He insists that taking such an interest in natural beauty is always a I. THE INTELLECTUAL INTEREST IN NATURAL BEAUTY mark of a good soul (Kennzeichen einer guten Seele) and that if a person's capacity to feel Given Kant's well-known thesis that pure judgpleasure in contemplating the beautiful in ments of taste are devoid of all interest, his nature is habitual, this indicates that he or she claim that we do-and should-take any kind has a mental attunement favorable to moral of interest in the beautiful should strike us as feeling (moralischen Gefihl glinstige Gemfithsurprising. To be precise, Kant has argued, in stimmung) (KU 5: 299; 165-166).2 Further, the first moment of the "Analytic of the BeautiKant declares that we do and in fact should ful," that aesthetic judgments are disinterested require others to take a direct interest in the in two distinct senses. In the first place, no beautiful in nature, thereby suggesting that we interest can serve as the determining ground or are in some sense obligated to cultivate taste basis for a judgment of taste because any such (KU 5: 302-303; 169).3 dependence would undercut both the autonomy This paper attempts to analyze and assess this and purity of taste. In the second place, Kant particular feature of Kant's account of the pracinsists, in a note appended to the former claim, tical significance of taste, namely, his theory that "judgments of taste, of themselves, do not that an aesthetic appreciation of natural beauty even give rise to any interest" (KU 5: 205n; is intimately connected with moral character.4 46).5 Having initially defined interest in the Section I addresses the very concept of an intelCritique of Judgment as "the liking we connect lectual interest in the beautiful in nature and with the representation of an object's existence" explains what is involved in loving natural (KU 5: 204; 45), Kant later remarks that "all beauty in this particular way. Section II interest consists in pleasure in the existence of attempts to determine why Kant thought that a an object" (KU 5: 296; 163).6 The direct implidirect, intellectual interest in natural, but not cation of Kant's thesis that pure aesthetic judgartistic, beauty is a sign of a good soul. The conments of reflection are entirely disinterested, cluding section, Section III, explores one puzzle then, is that the pleasure we feel in contemplatthis analysis raises, which is whether Kant ultiing the beautiful (in art and nature) is in no way mately grants a merely instrumental value to connected with any concern we might have for natural beauty, insofar as he suggests that we the existence of beautiful objects. This is precisely take pleasure in the existence of beauty in Kant's point in noting that the question of |
| Starting Page | 33 |
| Ending Page | 45 |
| Page Count | 13 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.0021-8529.2005.00179.x |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://home.lu.lv/~ruben/Intelektuala_interese.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-8529.2005.00179.x |
| Volume Number | 63 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
