Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations Used in the Text
- I MOSTLY BEFORE KANT
- II MOSTLY KANT
- 3 The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited
- 4 Beauty and Utility in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics
- 5 Free and Adherent Beauty
- 6 Kant on the Purity of the Ugly
- 7 Beauty, Freedom, and Morality
- 8 The Ethical Value of the Aesthetic
- 9 The Symbols of Freedom in Kant's Aesthetics
- 10 Exemplary Originality
- III MOSTLY AFTER KANT
- Bibliography of Works Cited
- Index
3 - The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations Used in the Text
- I MOSTLY BEFORE KANT
- II MOSTLY KANT
- 3 The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited
- 4 Beauty and Utility in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics
- 5 Free and Adherent Beauty
- 6 Kant on the Purity of the Ugly
- 7 Beauty, Freedom, and Morality
- 8 The Ethical Value of the Aesthetic
- 9 The Symbols of Freedom in Kant's Aesthetics
- 10 Exemplary Originality
- III MOSTLY AFTER KANT
- Bibliography of Works Cited
- Index
Summary
1. The concept of the free yet harmonious play between the cognitive powers of imagination and understanding is the central concept in Kant's explanation of the experience of beauty and analysis of the judgment of taste. In Kant's view, when I make a judgment of taste I assert that the pleasure I take in a particular object is one that under ideal circumstances should be felt by any other observer of the object as well. Such a judgment therefore asserts the “subjectively universal validity” of my pleasure in the object (CPJ, §8, 5:215), thus making a claim about that pleasure; but it also makes this claim on the basis of the feeling of pleasure itself rather than on the basis of the subsumption of its object under any determinate concept – this is indeed what makes the judgment an “aesthetic” judgment (CPJ, §1, 5:203–4; FI, VIII, 20:229). In order for me justifiably to claim subjectively universal validity for my feeling of pleasure, Kant supposes, that pleasure must be based in some condition of cognitive powers that are themselves common to all human beings.
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- Information
- Values of BeautyHistorical Essays in Aesthetics, pp. 77 - 109Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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