Pleasure and Fit in Kant's Aesthetics

1998 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 117-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth F. Rogerson

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.

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (139) ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Antonio Saturnino Braga

Resumo: Este artigo tem três objetivos inter-relacionados. Em primeiro lugar, defender uma interpretação compatibilista da noção de liberdade prática exposta no capítulo do Cânone da Crítica da Razão Pura. Em segundo lugar, defender a hipótese de que a noção incompatibilista de liberdade prática exposta no capítulo das Antinomias da mesma Crítica incorre em sérios problemas. Por fim, defenderemos uma hipótese mais abrangente: se por um lado, para evitar os problemas suscitados pela interpretação incompatibilista, a liberdade prática deve ser interpretada num sentido compatibilista, para ser interpretada deste modo ela precisa por outro lado ser compreendida como propriedade da atividade deliberativa da razão prática, essencialmente distinta da atividade legislativa, à qual cabe a noção incompatibilista da liberdade transcendental.Abstract: This paper has three interrelated aims. The first defends a compatibilist interpretation of the concept of practical freedom presented in the Canon chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason. The second defends the hypothesis that the incompatibilist concept of practical freedom, presented in the Antinomies chapter of the same Critique, involves serious problems. Finally, the third defends a more comprehensive hypothesis: If, to avoid the serious problems created by the incompatibilist interpretation, practical freedom must be interpreted in a compatibilist way, on the other hand, to be interpreted in this way, practical freedom must be understood as a property of the deliberative activity of practical reason. The latter being essentially distinct from legislative activity, to which the incompatibilist concept of transcendental freedom applies.


2005 ◽  
pp. 97-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Sharpe

This inquiry is situated at the intersection of two enigmas. The first is the enigma of the status of Kant's practice of critique, which has been the subject of heated debate since shortly after the publication of the first edition of The Critique of Pure Reason. The second enigma is that of Foucault's apparent later 'turn' to Kant, and the label of 'critique', to describe his own theoretical practice. I argue that Kant's practice of 'critique' should be read, after Foucault, as a distinctly modern practice in the care of the self, governed by Kant's famous rubric of the 'primacy of practical reason'. In this way, too, Foucault's later interest in Kant - one which in fact takes up a line present in his work from his complementary thesis on Kant's Anthropology - is cast into distinct relief. Against Habermas and others, I propose that this interest does not represent any 'break' or 'turn' in Foucault's work. In line with Foucault's repeated denials that he was interested after 1976 in a 'return to the ancients', I argue that Foucault's writings on critique represent instead both a deepening theoretical self-consciousness, and part of his project to forge an ethics adequate to the historical present.


Author(s):  
Emily Van Buskirk

This chapter undertakes a treatment of the rhetoric of personal pronouns in Ginzburg's writings on love and sexuality, drawing on Michael Lucey's study of the first person in twentieth-century French literature about love. It brings together questions of genre and narrative, on the one hand, and gender and sexuality, on the other. The chapter is divided into two sections, treating writings from two different periods on two kinds of love Ginzburg thought typical of intellectuals: in “First Love,” it discusses the unrequited and tragic love depicted in Ginzburg's teenage diaries (1920–23); in “Second Love,” it analyzes the love that is realized but in the end equally tragic, depicted in drafts related to Home and the World (1930s). The chapter examines the models the author sought in literary, psychological, and philosophical texts (Weininger, Kraft-Ebbing, Blok, Shklovsky, Oleinikov, Hemingway, and Proust).


PMLA ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-98
Author(s):  
Morton Cronin

The women that Hawthorne created divide rather neatly into three groups. Such fragile creatures as Alice Pyncheon and Priscilla, who are easily dominated by other personalities, form one of these groups. Another is made up of bright, self-reliant, and wholesome girls, such as Ellen Langton, Phoebe, and Hilda. The third consists of women whose beauty, intellect, and strength of will raise them to heroic proportions and make them fit subjects for tragedy. Hester Prynne, Zenobia, and Miriam—these women are capable of tilting with the world and risking their souls on the outcome. With them in particular Hawthorne raises and answers the question of the proper status of women in society and the relation, whether subordinate or superior, that love should bear to the other demands that life makes upon the individual. With the other types Hawthorne fills out his response to that question.


2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew F Cooper ◽  
Vincent Pouliot

Is the G20 transforming global governance, or does it reinforce the status quo? In this article we argue that as innovative as some diplomatic practices of the G20 may be, we should not overstate their potential impact. More specifically, we show that G20 diplomacy often reproduces many oligarchic tendencies in global governance, while also relaxing club dynamics in some ways. On the one hand, the G20 has more inductees who operate along new rules of the game and under a new multilateral ethos of difference. But, on the other hand, the G20 still comprises self-appointed rulers, with arbitrary rules of membership and many processes of cooption and discipline. In overall terms, approaching G20 diplomacy from a practice perspective not only provides us with the necessary analytical granularity to tell the old from the new, it also sheds different light on the dialectics of stability and change on the world stage. Practices are processes and as such they are always subject to evolutionary change. However, because of their structuring effects, diplomatic practices also tend to inhibit global transformation and reproduce the existing order.


2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-111
Author(s):  
Przemysław Nosal

The aim of this article is to show the socio-cultural ambivalence of databases. On the one hand, they are perceived as impersonal technological representations providing their users with objective information. On the other, they are the result of intentional human action, were created in a specific context, and serve the realization of some purpose defined by their creators. The metaphor that arises from this duality is that of a mirror—reflecting the image of the world, but at the same time deforming it in various manners. The author presents the three main aspects of databases’ ambivalence. The first is the question of selecting the material for the database: the material’s ostensible objectivity and the subjective nature of the choice. The second is the question of the exhibition of cultural content within the framework of the database: the tension between an ideologically neutral presentation of the world and the strategy of exhibition. The third subject raised is the use of databases: full access for users, a framework imposed by the creators, or somewhere in between.


Kant Yearbook ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan W. Hall

AbstractIn Two Dogmas of Empiricism W.V. Quine begins his attack on the analytic/ synthetic dogma by criticizing Immanuel Kant’s conception of analyticity. After dismissing Kant’s interpretation as well as others, he articulates a view of the analytic/synthetic distinction that connects it to the other dogma of empiricism, reductionism. Ultimately, Quine rejects both dogmas in favor of a new form of empiricism which subscribes to neither one. Just as Quine believes it is possible to accept empiricism without the dogmas, I will argue that the Kantian can accept both dogmas while avoiding the forms of empiricism that Quine considers in his article. The paper is broken into four sections. First, I offer a brief overview of the two dogmas and their relationship to one another before examining Quine’s argument against ‘radical reductionism’, i.e., the position that every meaningful sentence is translatable into a sentence about immediate experience that is either true or false. The second section shows how one of Kant’s arguments from the Critique of Pure Reason anticipates the crux of Quine’s argument against radical reductionism. What is left after this argument is only an ’attenuated form’ of reductionism that Quine believes is identical to the analytic/synthetic distinction. In the third section, I explain how Kantians can draw the analytic/ synthetic distinction in a way that is consistent with this attenuated form of reductionism while avoiding the objections that Quine lodges against the two dogmas. I argue that this allows the Kantian to accept the dogmas while avoiding both the radically reductive form of empiricism as well as the form of empiricism that Quine endorses (web-of-belief holism). Finally, I will consider how this Kantian version of the analytic/synthetic distinction can be extended beyond the theoretical domain to practical and aesthetic sentences


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 866-867
Author(s):  
Robert Fatton

Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa is an insightful, refreshing, and original book that refines and expands our understanding of the so-called “politics of the belly.” A phrase made famous by Jean Francois Bayart (The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, 1993), the politics of the belly is the phenomenon of “eating” the fruits of power. The extent to which officeholders monopolize or share these fruits with the larger community has, however, significant consequences for their legitimacy. As Michael Schatzberg suggests, a “moral matrix of legitimate governance” (p. 35) embedded in familial and paternal metaphors shapes these belly politics. In turn, he argues that the moral matrix is rooted in four major premises. The first and second are related to the image of the ruler as a “fatherchief,” who has the obligation, on the one hand, to nurture and nourish his “family,” and on the other hand, to punish his “children” when necessary and pardon them when they truly repent. The third premise concerns the status of women in society; while they are not considered equal to men, rulers should, nonetheless, respect their role as “counselors and advisers.” The fourth premise “holds that permanent power is illegitimate and that political fathers…have to let their children grow up, mature, take on ever-increasing responsibilities in the conduct of their own affairs, and eventually succeed them in power” (p. 192).


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 261-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Losch

AbstractKant was not the first in whom the ‘starry heavens’ above us inspired awe and wonder. For Kant, who was firmly convinced of the existence of inhabitants of other worlds, these heavens were inhabited. He is certain that ‘If it were possible to settle by any sort of experience whether there are inhabitants of at least some of the planets that we see, I might well bet everything that I have on it. Hence I say that it is not merely an opinion but a strong belief (on the correctness of which I would wager many advantages in life) that there are also inhabitants of other worlds.’ In this statement by Kant in no less a work than the Critique of Pure Reason one can, on the one hand, recognize a reflection of Kant's earlier convictions and expositions, on the other hand, the context of the citation and the contemporary background are, of course, relevant. Following the example of Kant, this paper investigates the meaning of such reflections about inhabitants of alien worlds, which due to advances in planetary astronomy are today again on the agenda. Consideration of this subject also represents a challenge for theology.


2019 ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Sergei V. Pakhomov ◽  

The concept of jīvanmukti, “liberation during life”, arose in Advaita Vedānta as a response to the paradigm of “disembodied” liberation (videhamukti). The condition of jīvanmukti is highly appreciated in Tantrism. The concept of jīvanmukti often includes the meanings of identification with the absolute, the supreme deity. There are different kinds of jīvanmukti, for example, active and passive ones. The state of jīvanmukti is the complete independence, highest ideal, spiritual perfection. Jīvanmukta considers the entire objective world to be a reflection of the higher Self. The status of jīvanmukta can have an ideological dimension when it is opposed to traditions that are considered ineffective in Tantra. The acquisition of jīvanmukti is primarily due to spiritual knowledge. On the one hand, knowledge is a certain state of the carrier of knowledge himself; on the other hand, it is always knowledge of “something”. Although jīvanmukti can be reached through almost all tantric practices, there is a certain gradation of the time spent on it. The man reaches liberation during life not in isolation from the world. Outwardly, jīvanmukta cannot stand out among ordinary members of society; all his uniqueness is hidden inside his consciousness.


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