Book contents
- The Critique of Judgment and the Unity of Kant’s Critical System
- The Critique of Judgment and the Unity of Kant’s Critical System
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Sources
- Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles with Corresponding Translations
- Introduction
- Part I The Highest Good and the Postulates
- Part II Aesthetic Judgment and the “Moral Image”
- Chapter 4 Beauty as a “Symbol of Morality”
- Chapter 5 The Free Harmony of the Faculties and the Primacy of Imagination in Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment
- Chapter 6 Genius, Ugliness, and Nonsense
- Part III Teleological Judgment and the “Moral Image”
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 6 - Genius, Ugliness, and Nonsense
Kant on the Purity of the Ugly and the Failure of the Artist’s Power of Judgment
from Part II - Aesthetic Judgment and the “Moral Image”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2023
- The Critique of Judgment and the Unity of Kant’s Critical System
- The Critique of Judgment and the Unity of Kant’s Critical System
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Sources
- Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles with Corresponding Translations
- Introduction
- Part I The Highest Good and the Postulates
- Part II Aesthetic Judgment and the “Moral Image”
- Chapter 4 Beauty as a “Symbol of Morality”
- Chapter 5 The Free Harmony of the Faculties and the Primacy of Imagination in Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment
- Chapter 6 Genius, Ugliness, and Nonsense
- Part III Teleological Judgment and the “Moral Image”
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, I argue that Kant’s conception of aesthetic judgment in the third Critique, a conception according to which aesthetic judgment has its own a priori principle, left open the possibility for a pure aesthetic judgment of ugliness. This judgment however could not arise in response to a quality in the object of nature, but instead could only be limited to works of art. More specifically, the origin of ugliness as a pure aesthetic category for Kant is epistemic, that is, in the failure of the artist’s power of judgment, a failure of the artist to find the appropriate form or concept for the manifold content of her imagination. In the third Critique, Kant calls these works of art “original nonsense.” I conclude that, once limited to works of art, pure judgments of ugliness cannot represent a threat to Kant’s more general project of moral teleology.
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- The Critique of Judgment and the Unity of Kant's Critical System , pp. 150 - 176Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023