Aesthetics as the Precondition for Revolution (original) (raw)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: “In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature” (2003. 39). The poet captures nicely an idea, dominant in the contemporary environmental aesthetics, namely, that aesthetic appreciation of nature is intimately connected with the moral nature within us. Many of us have experienced when in contact with nature that its beauty moves us in a way that goes deeper than its initial appeal; it elicits in us a feeling of comfort, hope, a sense of well-being and belonging to the world. My aim in this paper is to propose an explanation of the connection between our aesthetic experience of natural beauty and our moral ideas. I approach this problem in light of Kant’s aesthetic theory put forward in the Critique of the Power of Judgment.
Kant’s Aesthetics: Overview and Recent Literature
Philosophy Compass 4/3, Blackwell, pp. 380-406, 2009
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.
The Moral Value of Artistic Beauty in Kant
In § 42 of the third Critique, ‘On the intellectual interest in the beautiful,’ Kant claims that it is ‘always the mark of a good soul’ (5:298) to take an ‘immediate interest’ in natural beauty because it indicates a moral interest in harmony between nature and moral freedom. In the same pages, however, he denies the possibility of a similarly morally significant interest in artistic beauty. This paper argues that according to his own theory of fine art Kant ought not to deny this value to artistic beauty. In the pages that immediately follow his discussion of immediate interest Kant defines artistic beauty as the joint product of a ‘natural gift’ of genius and a freely exercised discipline of skill and taste. This commits him to the claim that artistic beauty embodies and expresses a harmony between nature and freedom in the productive act of a human being, and thus to the claim that one can take an immediate and morally significant interest in artistic beauty, just as much as in natural beauty.
This essay presents a possible interpretation of the concept of beauty in Kant’s Critique of Judgment, which was itself suggested by Kant in the two introductions to the text and gained force among the Early German Romantics and Idealists. Such an interoperation introduces an alternative point of view into the concept of beauty and into the role it plays in the relationship between reason and sensibility. Through the analysis of the four moments of the Analytic of the Beautiful, beauty will manifest itself as the realm in which a special encounter between human freedom and nature takes place. Therefore, and as an alternative to some traditional interpretations of Kant’s aesthetic investigation, which understand Kant’s judgment of taste exclusively on the basis of its subjective conditions, the judgment of beauty will present itself also in the light of the relationship it establishes with the objects of nature.
The Importance of Natural Beauty in Kant's Project of Enlightenment
In this Article I want to show Kant’s project of enlightenment needs some metaphysical foundations that one of them is Natural Beauty. This is because achieve rational being situation for men, needs independent realm outside Newtonian mechanical nature for free human practices. This realm provided by Reflective Judgment in Natural Beauty. So, natural beauty as a metaphysical foundation of rationality and enlightenment is a necessary element for realization of highest good in mens.