Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I Revisiting the capacity to judge
- PART II The human standpoint in the Transcendental Analytic
- Part III The human standpoint in the critical system
- 8 The transcendental ideal, and the unity of the critical system
- 9 Moral judgment as a judgment of reason
- 10 Kant's leading thread in the Analytic of the Beautiful
- Bibliography
- Index of citations
- Index of subjects
10 - Kant's leading thread in the Analytic of the Beautiful
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I Revisiting the capacity to judge
- PART II The human standpoint in the Transcendental Analytic
- Part III The human standpoint in the critical system
- 8 The transcendental ideal, and the unity of the critical system
- 9 Moral judgment as a judgment of reason
- 10 Kant's leading thread in the Analytic of the Beautiful
- Bibliography
- Index of citations
- Index of subjects
Summary
Kant conducts his Analytic of the Beautiful, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, according to the “leading thread” that also guided the table of the categories in the first Critique: the four titles of the logical functions of judgment. This leading thread, which has not met with much favor on the part of Kant's readers where the first Critique is concerned, is even less popular in the case of the third Critique. I will argue that this ill repute is unmerited. In fact, Kant's use of the leading thread of the logical functions of judgment to analyse judgments of taste merits close attention. In particular, it brings to light a striking feature of judgments of taste as analyzed by Kant. We would expect the main headings in the table of logical functions (quantity, quality, relation, modality) to guide the analysis of aesthetic judgments as judgments about an object (“this rose is beautiful,” “this painting is beautiful”). Now they certainly do serve this purpose. But in addition, it turns out that they also serve to analyze another judgment, one that remains implicitly contained within the predicate (“beautiful”) of the judgments of taste. This second judgment, imbedded, as it were, in the first (or in the predicate of the first), and which only the critique of taste brings to discursive clarity, is a judgment no longer about the object, but about the judging subjects, namely the subjects that pass the judgment: “this rose is beautiful, ” “this painting is beautiful, ” and so on.
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- Kant on the Human Standpoint , pp. 265 - 290Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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