The four “moments” into which Kant divides his account of taste and beauty can be divided into two fairly natural pairs, the first and third on the one hand and the second and fourth on the other. This assignment covers the first of these pairs, in which the appreciation of beauty is distinguished from interest and from the recognition of purpose.

Kant isn’t easy to read and this is a fairly long assignment. I’ve avoided trimming it because seeing Kant approach the same group of ideas from a number of different perspective (which is what these sections do) can help you to understand him. Our discussion in class will focus on the first group of sections (§§1-5) and §§10 and 12 from the second group. The text browser on the Moodle course site has another translation of the work (as well as passages that were not included in your anthology—and also the original German).

First moment (HK 280-286)

§1. The term “aesthetic” had begun to be used specifically in connection with art only a few decades before Kant wrote this. The word (which is essentially the same in German) is derived from a Greek word for perception and Kant uses it in other works to refer simply to sensation and feeling; his use of the term here, too, often seems close to that meaning.

§2. Here think of Shaftesbury’s views on the difference between the love of beauty and the desire to possess or consume (HK 247f).

§3. Be aware of, and open to, the way Kant (and his translator) use vocabulary. Try to see what Kant means when he distinguishes what merely “pleases” from the “pleasant” (which “gratifies”) whether or not that is a familiar (or even an appropriate) way to use those words. (The second translation available on the Moodle course site provides an alternative approach to rendering Kant’s terms into English.)

§4. This section completes a three-part distinction between the pleasant, the beautiful, and the good. Try to think yourself into it, but also think whether you accept it.

§5. This draws together Kant’s previous points and the “explanation” at the end is famous (or notorious). Think also about the description of satisfaction in the beautiful as free. That is an important word for Kant.

Third moment (HK 293-301)

§10. The idea of purposiveness without purpose is the central one in these passages, and it is one of the most difficult ideas in Kant. Two quotations (not included in your anthology) may help a little:

He who feels pleasure in the mere reflection upon the form of an object without respect to any concept ... justly claims the agreement of all men, because the ground of this pleasure is found in ... the purposive harmony of an object (whether a product of nature or of art) with the mutual relations of the cognitive faculties (the imagination and the understanding), a harmony which is requisite for every empirical cognition. (Introduction, §VII.)

Flowers are free natural beauties. Hardly anyone but a botanist knows what sort of a thing a flower ought to be; and even he, though recognizing in the flower the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no regard to this natural purpose if he is passing judgment on the flower by taste. (§16.)

§11. You should think about this section in connection with §§3 and 4 and the second quotation above. In particular, think about the examples in §4 (HK 284) and in the above quotation.

§12. Focus on the second paragraph of this section in connection with the first of the quotations above.

§§13-14. You’ve seen the word “charm” used in connection with color (e.g., in Plotinus, HK 141), and §14 shows that Kant has something like that in mind here. If he seems too severe in his taste, notice the suggestion that color contributes to beauty by bringing out the form (HK 298). Kant might go so far as to say that relations of color are themselves part of form while the attraction of uniform pure color is a matter of charm. Later, in a passage I won’t be assigning (HK 327), he considers the possibility that, since the recognition of sound and color is the recognition of wave motion, the appreciation of tone or color is itself an appreciation of form.

§15. Kant’s real concern in this section becomes clear on HK 300. It may help to imagine he is criticizing the neoplatonic idea of beauty as the superficial appearance of goodness (something you’ve seen in Ficino HK 217). In fact, he probably has a somewhat different view in mind: philosophers of the 17th century referred to as “rationalists” tended to hold that sensation was a form of thought and that it differed from conceptual thought mainly by exhibiting a relatively high degree of what they called “confusion.”