An Introduction to Kant's Aesthetics Core Concepts and Problems

by Wenzel, Christian Helmut

• ISBN13: 9781405130356
• ISBN10: 1405130350
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-10-14
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment is one of the most important and enduring contributions to philosophical aesthetics. It is also notoriously difficult. In An Introduction to Kant's Aesthetics, Christian Wenzel discusses and demystifies this seminal work, guiding the reader each step of the way, placing key points of discussion in the context of Kant's other work. The starting point of Kant's aesthetics, and Wenzel's treatment, is the observation that aesthetic judgments seem to hover uneasily between subjective and objective domains. On the one hand, there appear to be standards of taste, such that aesthetic judgments demand some kind of consensus; on the other hand, there simultaneously seem to exist no specific rules governing what is beautiful. Beginning with this premise, Kant delineates four moments of aesthetic judgment, considers the question of the beautiful, the sublime, and the ugly, and from this groundwork creates a new philosophical theory that reveals the essence of taste, and much else, about human nature besides. Wenzel artfully guides readers through Kant's work with thoroughness and clarity, making Kant's aesthetics accessible to newcomers and more rewarding for those returning to the subject.

Author Biography

Christian Helmut Wenzel is Associate Professor at the National Chi Nan University in Taiwan. He is the author of The Problem of Subjective Universality of the Judgment of Taste in Kant,published in German (2000).

Table of Contents

Foreword	viii
Henry E. Allison
Acknowledgments	xi
About This Book	xii
Note on the Translation	xiv
Introduction	1	(1)
The Aesthetic Dimension Between Subject and Object	1	(3)
The Meaning of ``Aesthetic''	4	(4)
Categories as a Guide	8	(5)
The ``Moments'' of a Judgment of Taste	13	(6)
Disinterestedness: First Moment	19	(8)
Disinterestedness as a Subjective Criterion	19	(4)
Three Kinds of Satisfaction: Agreeable, Beautiful, Good	23	(4)
Universality: Second Moment	27	(27)
The Argument from Self-Reflection: Private, Public, Universal	27	(4)
Subjective Universality	31	(4)
A Case of Transcendental Logic	35	(4)
Singular ``but'' Universal	39	(7)
How to Read Section 9	46	(8)
Purposiveness: Third Moment	54	(23)
Purpose without Will, Purposiveness without Purpose	54	(6)
Purposiveness and Form: Charm versus Euler	60	(5)
Of ``Greatest Importance'': Beauty and Perfection	65	(4)
Beauty: Free, Dependent, and Ideal	69	(8)
Necessity: Fourth Moment	77	(17)
Exemplary Necessity	77	(4)
Kant's Interpretation of the sensus communis	81	(5)
The Deduction	86	(8)
Fine Art, Nature, and Genius	94	(12)
Fine Art and Why It Must Seem like Nature	94	(4)
Genius and Taste	98	(3)
Genius and Aesthetic Ideas	101	(5)
Beyond Beauty	106	(22)
The Sublime	106	(7)
Beauty as the Symbol of Morality	113	(7)
The Analytic, the Dialectic, and the Supersensible	120	(8)
Two Challenges	128	(13)
Can Kant's Aesthetics Account for the Ugly?	128	(5)
Can there be Beauty and Genius in Mathematics?	133	(8)
Summary and Overview	141	(8)
Before Kant	141	(1)
Kant's Aesthetics	142	(4)
After Kant	146	(3)
Glossary	149	(8)
Bibliography	157	(14)
Index	171